The morning air in Velmara's northern region was razor-sharp, the kind that sliced through clothing and settled into bone. The sky was pale, nearly white, and the forest trees were tall and bare, their bark stained with frost and old blood. Aicha stirred from a restless sleep beside a dying campfire, her cheeks red from the cold. Asari was already awake, seated against a stone, his eyes open but unfocused, lost in a silence too dense to disturb.
Adamas, the boy from the northern village, sat nearby with his legs pulled to his chest, watching the flames. His short, dark hair was matted, and frost clung to his cloak. He'd hardly spoken since joining them two days ago. He was young—maybe fourteen—but the way his eyes refused to show fear spoke of something more ancient buried within him.
"There is something wrong with this part of the woods," he said quietly.
Asari shifted slightly, his voice low. "You can feel it too."
Aicha looked up, brushing the frost from her cloak. "Eather is thinner here."
"Not thinner," Asari corrected. "Distorted. Like it remembers something foul."
A sudden gust howled through the clearing, making Adamas shiver and Aicha instinctively reach for her blade. But it was not wind. It carried a sound—a whisper—no, a chant. Faint, ancient, and broken, as if a thousand tongues spoke in disharmony.
Adamas stood abruptly. "That... That chant has been heard in my village. Before the disappearances began."
Asari stood too, unsheathing his sword slowly. The weapon hummed as if resonating with the dark sound. Eather coiled faintly around the blade.
"It's close," Asari muttered.
They moved cautiously through the woods, the frozen underbrush crunching beneath their boots. The chant grew louder. Not in volume, but in clarity—as if each word became more understood, more implanted in their thoughts.
They reached a hill overlooking a ruined chapel made of blackened stone, barely standing. Surrounding it were figures in robes that blended into the winter landscape. They knelt, unmoving, their heads bowed.
"Are they alive?" Aicha whispered.
"They don't breathe," Adamas answered, and there was no doubt in his voice.
Asari stepped forward. "Stay behind."
He descended the hill alone, each step measured. The robed figures didn't stir. Not until he crossed a broken threshold did one finally raise its head.
The face beneath the hood was stretched, unnatural—a human visage fused with ash and bone, eyes hollow but glowing dimly. It spoke with a voice that layered over itself.
"You carry the curse. The Devil Cry stirs."
Asari's eyes narrowed. "I buried that name."
"Names do not die," it replied. "Only transform."
The chapel shook. The ground trembled as Eather spiked wildly. Aicha and Adamas cried out as shadows rose from the stone, forming jagged, monstrous limbs.
Asari raised his blade, Eather pulsing through it.
Devil Cry: Domain Open.
The world slowed. Colors drained. Everything was grey, and only Asari moved in color. The robed figures convulsed as if dragged into his domain. Screams echoed not from mouths, but from memory—a memory of death, of massacre, of rage. Aicha collapsed to her knees as the pressure grew, her vision clouding.
Adamas, though shaking, remained upright. He whispered, almost like prayer:
"He is no man. He is the storm."
Asari's blade swept through the robed forms, cutting through flesh that resisted like stone. Each strike released a burst of corrupted Eather, which twisted in the air before being absorbed by the chapel's altar.
The altar cracked.
Something beneath it moved.
A long, skeletal arm, plated in black stone, reached out and dragged itself free. A torso followed—a being at least ten feet tall, eyeless, yet seeing everything. Its body was not flesh, but malice made manifest.
Asari turned to Aicha. "Get him out of here."
She gritted her teeth and nodded, pulling Adamas away.
Asari faced the creature.
"What are you?"
The thing smiled without lips.
"We are the echo. The echo of what you were."
It charged.
Asari met it halfway, the impact shaking the ground. Blade against claw, Eather against shadow. The trees around them shattered from the clash.
In the distance, as the fight blurred into chaos, Aicha looked back. Her heart sank.
Asari was smiling. But not out of joy.
Out of recognition.
Like he had found an old friend buried in the dark.
---
"To walk the abyss is not to fall, but to understand why others did."