Darkness clung to me like a second skin. I didn't know how long I'd been asleep—or if I'd even been alive before now—but when I finally stirred, it was as though the world itself exhaled.
My limbs felt heavy, foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. I sucked in a breath—stale, metallic, ancient—and tried to move. My hand brushed against my chest, and I froze. Heat pulsed beneath my fingertips, something alive. Slowly, I looked down. A symbol was etched into my skin, coiled across my ribs like a brand carved by fate itself. It shimmered faintly with golden light, shifting ever so slightly as if it breathed with me. I didn't recognize it, but it felt right. Familiar. Powerful. And then, from deep inside, a whisper echoed through my skull.
You are not empty.
This voice was calming. After it spoke, I felt as tranquil and relaxed as a child in summer. Even the pain in my body significantly subsided. Unlike the voice masquerading as my own, this voice wasn't foreign. It was me, a part of me, but as for what part I did not know.
After stabilizing myself I began to look around.
Crimson.
That was the first color I knew.
It stretched out endlessly—an ocean dyed in blood. The stone beneath my feet, the air I breathed, the sky above. Crimson had soaked it all.
Blood.
I didn't need memory to recognize it.
This wasn't the aftermath of a battle. This was the battlefield—eternal, unmoving. So thick and ancient the ground itself had been stained. Time had dried nothing. There was no decay, only the permanence of slaughter.
All of it surrounded me, devouring the world whole—everything except a single, ruined altar.
And five towering onyx pillars encircling it like sentinels. The blood drifted toward them as if drawn by some formless pull. When it touched, the pillars drank deep—then spat it back into the sea, over and over again. Like the tides of some monstrous shore. Grotesque. Unnatural.
Separation. Convergence.
The words bloomed in my mind, unbidden. I didn't understand them—but they belonged to me. Or perhaps they didn't.
I was slumped against another pillar—taller than the rest. Ten feet at least. It radiated a coldness that wasn't temperature but sensation. My skin prickled just leaning against it.
Cold. Black. Evil.
That was the impression. Not from any logic, just… knowing. Some ancient instinct screamed when I looked up.
Above it hovered a broken sphere—an orb of pitch darkness suspended in the air. Shattered, fractured, bleeding shadows from every wound.
And yet—
I couldn't look away.
I felt it.
The connection.
It pulled me without words or reason. A tether rooted in bone and soul.
Symbols scarred its surface, barely visible through the damage. My eyes traced them, again and again, but they danced away from understanding. Symbols for something older than language. Older than me.
I raised my hand.
I had no idea why.
But it felt right.
That was when the voices came.
"Touch it."
"Don't you dare."
"Run. Leave. Now."
"Go on, child. Claim it."
Countless whispers flooded my skull like a chorus of ghosts. They tore at me with contradiction.
But my hand kept moving.
Just before my fingers met the orb, I was thrown back.
Lifted like a puppet and cast away.
I hit the bloodstained floor hard, breath knocked from my lungs.
And somehow… I understood.
I couldn't touch it.
Not yet. Not now.
It wasn't a matter of courage. It was impossible.
A rejected offering. A failed sacrifice. The scene felt like some ancient ritual, long since completed. Or perhaps one waiting to begin.
I sat in the silence, breathing hard. My hand still trembled from the force of the rejection.
Where… was I?
Who was I?
The millions of formless images that once floated through my mind had finally dispersed. Now there was only silence. Only emptiness.
And a single voice that had always been there—just beneath my thoughts.
Still.
Present.
Watching.
Not mine, but not entirely other.
Shouldn't I be afraid?
I wasn't.
Not of the altar.
Not of the blood.
Not even of the voice that masqueraded as my own.
I didn't feel peace. Not exactly.
But something similar.
Kinship, maybe.
To this place.
To this voice.
To this stillness.
But I wanted to know—something. A name. A face. Anything.
And the world offered nothing in return.
Then, the cracks began.
Hairline fractures spreading across the onyx pillars. One after another.
I didn't need warning.
But I got it anyway.
Leave.
The voice thundered in my skull now, louder than ever before.
The pillars had been restraining something. The ritual had held. Until now.
A few drops of blood slipped past the defense, trailing toward me with unnatural precision.
They latched onto my skin like leeches—and bit.
I recoiled.
"What the hell?" I whispered, shaking my arm.
Then it clicked.
These pillars weren't threatening me. They were protecting me.
And now they were failing.
Leave. Leave. Leave.
The voice became frantic, a pulse in my veins, hammering with urgency.
"Where?!" I shouted, turning in every direction. "There's nothing but blood out there!"
Forward, it said.
I paused.
Forward… meant the sea.
A boundless, endless ocean of blood.
My brain said no.
My body didn't care.
I moved.
I ran.
I stumbled—hard—onto my hands and knees.
But I got up again.
And I ran.
Then I dove straight into the pool of blood.
Instantly I felt a sense of incredible weakness as my body sank like it was in quicksand.
The viscosity clung to my limbs like oil and grief, dragging me downward with a hunger that wasn't physical.
There was no sound—only the dull, suffocating silence of liquid iron closing over my head.
The moment the blood touched my skin, it knew me.
It tasted my origins.
The dragons in my veins. The echo of Kael in my mind. The curse of fate trailing behind me like a shroud.
And it hated me.
It wasn't just blood.
It was memory. It was punishment. It was alive.
The surface vanished above me, warped and distant, like a forgotten dream.
I kicked. Struggled. The blood responded with pressure—not just on my body, but on my mind.
It whispered:
"Sink, little echo. Sink and be still."
Pain lanced through my chest.
My mana hadn't awakened yet—I had no defense.
No strength.
Just flesh. And fear.
Then the blood changed.
Faces rose around me.
Some weeping. Some screaming.
Kaya's eyes. Serenya's voice.
Kael's hands—outstretched, but not in salvation.
They pulled.
"You are not ready."
"You are not worthy."
"You are not real."
I opened my mouth to scream and only drew in blood. It filled me, coiled in my lungs. Every heartbeat was slower.
Heavier.
The color drained from my skin. My thoughts began to flicker—
And then—
A voice. Cold. Calculated. Familiar.
"Bend your right leg. Shift your weight. Lock your shoulder."
I didn't question it.
I moved.
The blood resisted—but now I was using it. Not flailing. Guiding.
"Again. Rotate your core. Streamline."
A current of thought. Not mine. Not exactly.
It cut through the ocean like a blade.
I kicked. Harder. A new rhythm forming—not panicked, but precise.
The blood recoiled. Just slightly.
But it was enough.
The voice grew sharper.
"This is not just death, Lucien. This is a test. Of strength. Of will. Of self."
"You are not here to survive."
"You are here to prove you exist."
My arms stopped shaking. I could feel them again.
I wasn't swimming anymore.
I was carving through the blood.
The hallucinations stopped pulling—they watched. Waiting.
And I rose.
The surface came into view—dark and distant, but it was there.
The voice faded.
The blood screamed.
"You are not meant to rise."
I did anyway.