The road to north was a merciless trial. Splintered trails clawed at their boots, and winds like knives cut through layers of armor. The sky remained like a sheet of gray, swallowing even the memory of sunlight.
Each step forward brought Dahaka closer—not as a place to reach, but as a nightmare creeping into reality. A place waiting to devour them whole.
Aden marched at the front, silent but ever alert. The knights behind him, an elite squad sent by the Emperor, rode with heavy hearts and heavier eyes. They weren't there to follow him—they were there to watch him.
The glares they gave him needed no words.
"Don't get too comfortable," the knight snapped, his voice crackling with irritation. The fire reflected in his narrowed eyes as he leaned closer. "The Dahaka's not a place for a brat like you."
Aden said nothing. He stared at the flames, then at the stars hidden by clouds, as if seeking a memory that refused to surface.
They had been ambushed twice already—packs of nocturnal predators with glowing eyes. They struck in patterns, coordinated, then vanished as quickly as they came.
Still, Aden remained composed.
In the silence of his tent, he opened the Book of Vasco Memoir again. Each passage dripped with metaphor, cryptic and old. At first glance, it felt like the ramblings of warriors lost to time.
But then—something stirred in him.
A voice from the past—his father's—whispering techniques through memory. One line, clear and sharp, rang louder than the rest:
"Bend the sky, fold the breath—where no sound walks, you draw death."
It echoed like an incantation.
A technique, buried beneath poetry.
But only one line. The rest remained a fog.
As they neared Dahaka, the very air changed. Fog wreathed the gnarled trees, thick and cold. Silence fell—
not the stillness of calm, but the hush of something watching.
"This place…" muttered a knight. "It's cursed."
Aden gave no answer. His gaze was fixed on the trees.
The beast came before dawn.
It didn't stalk. It charged.
From the fog burst a creature born of nightmare—towering, hunched, with bark-like flesh and arms that split into clawed branches. Its moth stretched too wide, lined with jagged teeth, it's face of the appearance of not a man or an orc, but something more sinister.
"Positions! Shields up!" shouted the squad leader.
Too late.
The creature slammed into them like a storm. The leader was impaled, his scream cut short as he flew into a tree with a sickening crunch.
"Fall back!" screamed another.
"It's tearing us apart!"
"Hold the line! Circle formation!" barked a grizzled knight, swinging his blade.
Blades scraped against the monster's hide, most snapping or glancing off. Blood—thick and black—splattered the forest floor.
"We're not making a dent!" a knight cried. "It's not dying!"
Aden was puzzled on what he must do, the sight of the monster was terrifying, but if he had to life, he had no choic but to move forward.
Aden stepped forward, eyes sharp. "Draw it out into the clearing. Don't fight in the fog!"
He darted past two knights and lunged upward, his sword catching what little moonlight pierced the haze. With a roar, he drove the blade into the creature's eye.
The monster let out a deafening screech, thrashing wildly.
"Keep pressure on it!" Aden shouted. "Flank it—aim for the joints!"
A knight with a shield slammed into the beast's leg. Another hurled a vial of flaming oil onto its back.
"Push it! Push it now!" Aden growled, ducking a massive swing.
The knights roared as one, forcing the creature toward open ground. A blade sliced its knee, another took a finger. Fire licked its limbs. Smoke blinded its other eye.
A final coordinated surge forced the monster to retreat. It ran into the fog, bloodied and furious.
Panting, drenched in blood some theirs, some not. the knights regrouped.
One of the knights stumbled back, eyes still wide with shock. "You really went for its eye? Were you trying to die, or just insane?"
Aden wiped his blade clean, glancing at the wounded. "Better a madman than a corpse."
Another knight gave him a begrudging nod. "That charge saved us."
Aden shrugged. "I only moved first. You followed. That's why we're still breathing."
That night, he stood alone on a cliff, staring into the sea of trees. Though his words had been arrogant, the truth was undeniable—his presence had saved the hounds. Without him, they would have been torn apart by the monster's fury. The silence now felt earned.
He opened the book, the verse glowing softly:
"Bend the sky, fold the breath—where no sound walks you draw death."
The wind , moved through the trees like breath through a sleeping beast. The forest was not silent, it was merely listening.
And in that moment, Aden understood the irony.
They had thrown him into a land of monsters, hoping he would die.
Dahaka was not his grave.
It was his inheritance.