The scene stretched out like a painting by the hand of a god who had lost his passion for beauty… A mighty castle, rising from the heart of the decaying forest, its cracked walls reflecting the absurdity of antiquity, and the tall towers seemed like stone fingers stabbing the gray sky. But beauty here was nothing but a trap, for everything throbbed with the breath of death. There, in the bowels of the rotting forest… darkness was moving.
The fortress—a massive structure of dark stone, topped with ancient cracks like the scars of an old warrior.
Erased inscriptions on the walls told forgotten tales,
and ruined towers looked like the tips of ancient bones peering into the void.
But… that wasn't what caught the eye.
It was what was moving in the bowels of the dense forest below the fortress.
There… were two monsters—no… two monsters walking on two feet.
It was as if the earth had given birth to two giant bears.
Their hide was pitch black, but the cracks covering their bodies glowed the color of lava, a deep red that flared whenever they moved, as if fire itself breathed beneath their skin.
Their footsteps shook the earth… each step a small earthquake.
Tall trees crumbled, their roots exposed like ruptured intestines.
The breath of the two beasts was pouring from their mouths like black vapors, rising into the air like burning souls.
Their eyes… oh, their eyes… two blazing, ember-colored balls, containing the chaos of an animal and the consciousness of a killer.
The entire forest seemed small compared to the enormity of their bodies, like two material nightmares emerging from deep within the earth only to destroy everything that stood in their way.
The air around the fortress grew thick… cold despite the flames of the beasts, as if the whole place was preparing for something inescapable.
From above the fortress—
the observer could see only one thing:
This is not a battle.
It is a postponed funeral…
And the sky… gasped with them in heavy silence.
Their eyes—those deep red spots sunken into their faces—were not looking at anything in particular, but they knew their way. They knew the target.
And the castle was the target.
—
And above…
Mayoth was looking at them from between the cracks of the shattered fortress.
He wasn't afraid.
Not because he was brave. But because… he was empty.
He hadn't been a whole human for a long time.
He didn't know if he felt hunger, thirst, or life itself…
All he knew was that this fortress… and this moment… was the beginning of something dark to come.
—
And suddenly, without warning, that voice appeared in his mind.
The voice of the Order.
Whispering… faint… but like the whir of a blade being slowly drawn from a rusty sheath.
"The Order is speaking to you now…"
"The Tablet of Nothingness appears before you…"
And indeed it was—a stone tablet, dark, engraved with cracked letters as if they had been cut into the back of a rock immersed in mist.
—
{ Tablets: Nothingness - Freedom }
{ The First and Last Judgment - Prison of the Dead }
"Your energy—the Spiritual Rin—contains five buried layers..."
Healing the broken body.
Strengthening bones and tendons.
Clearing the soul of mental confusion.
Enhancing weapon skills and fighting instinct.
*And finally... Willpower. That alone opens the Gate of the First Ghost."
"And you cannot cross... unless you find your heart before your strength."
—
Mayoth didn't answer.
He just slowly raised his head... toward where the giant columns of smoke were rising from the backs of those bears.
And something inside him whispered:
"Either cross... or vanish."
—
—
Suddenly, the ground shook.
It wasn't an earthquake... but a transition.
The ground split beneath his feet...
He fell.
The light went out.
And Mayoth returned to the Prison of the Dead.
—
The sounds here were different.
Cracked metal bells jingled tonelessly, like the calls of blacksmiths in the depths of hell.
He was bound.
Strange strings made of organic matter... human skin? Or perhaps the sinews of slaughtered beasts.
And beside him...
A crowd.
Men. Women. Children.
They all held a single gaze: the gaze of someone who had their dream slaughtered before their eyes.
Ghosts.
Victims of the curse.
Those who tried to escape... those who tried to resist... those who tried to understand why they were here in the first place.
And whenever someone tried to scream, the very air would choke the sound before it could escape.
—
The walls?
Stone mountains smeared with black spots that resembled the handprints of those who had tried to climb and escape.
Above, the sounds of soldiers' footsteps.
But they weren't human.
Dolls.
Soldiers of broken bones and rusted metal, their faces covered in distorted masks—some without eyes at all—carrying long spears with the remnants of human fingernails and fingers visible stuck to the tip of the blade.
—
A scream.
One of them tried to escape.
The iron sky suddenly opened—a shower of bone arrows falling over them like a sharp rain.
Corpses falling.
Dreams ending.
Mayoth didn't Moving.
He knew… from the beginning… that this was only the beginning of the massacre.
Above…
The Council.
A stone throne raised above broken columns.
On it sat men dressed in white, shroud-like robes.
On their faces were masks made of human skin—ancient skin, glued together until it became part of the flesh itself.
At their center was the Grand Judge.
A skull-shaped mask, engraved with gray inscriptions, like maps of roads leading to death.
—
The trumpet sounded.
"Mortals…
You are no longer human.
You are… numbers in a long death ledger.
Why have you come? You ask?"
"It is the Order that brought you. Not me, no one here… but the Order.
The first… and final reckoning."
—
Whispers turned to screams.
"Why us?!"
"A lie! A deception!" "I want to see the sun!"
"My children are outside...!"
"Get us out!"
But the loudest voice was the voice of a distorted mind.
Someone started laughing.
A long, crackling laugh... like bones exploding from within.
Some started tearing at their skin with their hands.
Madness spreads here like an infection, like smoke slowly burning through the lungs until they suffocate.
—
Above all this noise...
Mayoth stood.
Silent.
Without expression.
"I will not die."
He said it, not as a threat... but as a fact.
—
And at that moment...
The tattoo on his arm glowed.
A silvery, calming light... It was Mayoth within himself.
"I still don't know why I'm here or why I'm here, but I do know one thing: after being reborn from a new resurrection, one of your first ghosts, I will never die again."
The two bears drew closer to the fortress.
The ground shook.
The walls cracked.
The soldiers prepared.
Bone arrows were sharpened.
The masks were fastened securely.
Elsewhere in Mayoth's mind...
The Order whispered:
"This is the reckoning... the first...
But the end, it will be... yours alone."
Mayoth closed his eyes...
In his heart, a small flame of unquenchable determination burned.
Not because he loved life...But because he hated Surrender and acceptance are weakness