The smell of blood no longer startled them.
Asari walked through the scorched remains of what once might have been a town. The buildings were hunched over like corpses, their charred bones creaking in the wind. Blackened bodies lay in twisted piles. Some still clutched weapons. Others held each other in death. He didn't need to ask what happened here. Velmara was ruthless. It consumed the weak without pause, without pity.
Aicha rolled beside him in silence. Her face was paler than ever, her lips trembling as she held back the bile that rose in her throat. Her wheelchair bumped over uneven ground, bone fragments crunching under the wheels. Yet she never looked away. Her eyes, wide and hollow, soaked in the horror. Each corpse was a question left unanswered. Each ruin, a scream never heard.
They had seen worse.
But not like this.
The sigils painted on the walls pulsed faintly with leftover Eather—corrupted, wrong. They moved, just barely, like wounds that still bled. This wasn't an invasion. This wasn't war. It was ritual.
Someone—no, something—had used this village for sacrifice.
"They were drained…" Aicha's voice came as a whisper. "Their Eather. It's gone. Stripped clean."
Asari nodded. "Harvested. With precision. Not a drop wasted."
Then came the crying.
A sharp wind howled through the ruins, and with it came a sound that shouldn't exist anymore. Soft, broken. Like a lullaby meant to mourn the world. It came from a shattered chapel at the edge of the village, its spire twisted like a broken finger pointing to a god long dead.
They approached cautiously.
Inside, a single child sat curled up beneath the altar, his arms hugging his knees. His skin was cracked with glowing veins, and tears streamed down his face in silence. The moment he saw them, he screamed—not in fear, but in rage.
"You're late! You let them die!"
Eather exploded around the child, swirling like a storm. Asari raised his hand instinctively, a dark shimmer dancing along his skin. Aicha reached into her sleeve, clutching a seal for defense.
But the boy collapsed.
All the Eather vanished.
And for a moment, it was just… quiet.
Asari moved forward and picked him up gently. The boy was burning up. His body had been forced into awakening far too early, likely as part of the ritual. He'd survived it. Barely.
"A survivor…" Aicha murmured. "Another cursed one."
Asari's eyes narrowed. He could see it now—the same sigil etched faintly into the boy's neck. The same one from the cavern in the south. A spiral of hunger. The same entity's work. The same web pulling tighter.
"We're being pulled into something," he said. "A bigger plan."
They left the village behind, heading toward the mountains. Each step felt heavier than the last. The land itself seemed to reject life. Animals were absent. Trees were twisted like limbs in agony. Even the air stung when they breathed.
They passed another corpse—this one nailed to a tree upside down. Its face was split in a grin, its eyes gouged out. Words were carved into its chest in old script.
"I offered joy. They wanted salvation."
They didn't speak of it. Some things weren't worth the weight of words.
At nightfall, Asari sat beneath the hollow sky, staring into the fire. The boy slept fitfully, muttering names and apologies in his sleep. Aicha rested nearby, her eyes locked on the stars that refused to shine.
"What if we can't stop it?" she asked quietly. "What if Velmara… swallows us whole?"
Asari didn't answer immediately.
Then he whispered, "Then we carve a path with our bones."
Aicha chuckled bitterly. "So poetic."
"I'm not trying to be," he said. "It's just the truth."
She looked at him then—really looked. The shadows of firelight danced across his face, making the blood dried on his cheeks seem like war paint. There was a deadness in his eyes now, something that hadn't been there before Velmara.
Later that night, when both Aicha and the boy were asleep, Asari stood alone.
The forest around their camp shifted unnaturally. The trees no longer swayed with the wind—they leaned in. From the shadows stepped a figure cloaked in silk and shadows—an Observer.
Its face was hidden beneath layers of veil, but its voice echoed like thousands speaking as one.
"You move against the current. Why?"
Asari didn't flinch. "Because something worse is coming."
"The wheel must turn. Suffering must grow. Only through the abyss can truth emerge."
"I've had enough of truth," Asari said coldly. "Especially if it demands corpses to speak."
"You are not ready."
Asari gripped the hilt of his sword. "Then let me bleed until I am."
The Observer tilted its head. Its shadow lingered long after it was gone.
Only the cold remained.
---
At the edge of despair, some walk forward not to survive, but because turning back means forgetting who they are.