The Bloodlands weren't made to be survived.
Vale knew that.
It was a world stitched together from corpses—white skin like grass, flesh like dirt, bones like trees. The air stank of blood and memory. Nerve-flowers twitched in the wind. Rivers ran thick and red, pulsing like arteries, whispering secrets no one should hear.
Every breath out here was a gamble. The wind carried things—fragments of rot, lost screams, laughter with no source. Even the trees leaned inward, listening.
But fear?
He didn't show it.
Vale crouched near a ruined arch of bone, threading wire between two stakes made of sharpened femurs. He'd mapped this kill zone hours ago—three traps, built to slow down the Unspoken just long enough to make them bleed.
He didn't want blood to drink.
It gave him no strength.
That was a lie people liked to believe about his kind—that the thirst was power. But for Vale, it was only survival. A hunger that didn't answer desire. It gnawed and burned and never fed him anything but pain.
His hands shook. His wounds still wept. The Blood hadn't responded right in days.
Still—panic gets you killed.
He moved with care. Slower than before, but steady.
Then—snap.
One of the traps went off.
A scream followed—low, wet, wrong.
Vale turned, gun already raised. The Unspoken writhed in the wire, caught between rusted nails and bone-pins. It twitched violently, dragging long, black tendrils of worm-flesh across the ground. Each time one fell off, it crawled back, worming its way into the mass again.
Their bodies were made of coiled darkness—black, pulsing cords ringed in pale white edges like bone. They had no eyes. No faces. Only hunger.
And hate.
He didn't hesitate.
Vale uncorked the vial he'd prepared—his own blood, mixed with ash and iron filings—and poured it onto the creature's wounds.
It convulsed.
The blood hissed against its flesh, steam curling upward as the thing shrieked and folded in on itself. It thrashed once, then collapsed into a pile of twitching sludge.
Silence returned.
Vale staggered slightly, breath ragged.
Too much effort. Too little return.
His blood wasn't strong enough. Not anymore. Not here.
But theirs—the marked, the ones whose blood bent the land, warped the sky, stirred the moonlight—that was power. Not to be drunk. To be understood. Stolen, maybe. Repurposed.
He wiped the vial clean. Ignored the burning in his ribs.
And moved on.
The Bloodlands shifted around him, a breathing graveyard underfoot. Somewhere, the Green Stars blinked behind the clouds. The Blue Sun would rise soon.
But Vale didn't look up.
He didn't need the sky to tell him what he already knew.
The world was dying.
And fear?
Fear didn't get the final word.