(Elsewhere...)
Karl’s miasma tore open like a wound in space on the other side.
A soundless scream followed...the air itself shuddered,then folded in on itself and through the bleeding rift Karl stepped out, boots hitting ground that wasn’t quite solid.
The world on this side was wrong. It was still the Old World... but corruption had taken over the entire stretch. Completely enveloped.
Black mist rolled like slow, breathing smoke, pulsing faintly crimson...as if the darkness itself had a heartbeat.
In his arms, Freya hung limp, small fists curled, pale light trembling faintly at her fingertips. Her hair lifted around her in defiance of gravity. Seed like she was mumbling sothing though her lips were sealed, her jaws did not move, not ever her throat worked.
Karl grinned. The miasma coiled tighter around him, drawn to him like adoration.
"Ah..." he exhaled, voice dripping with satisfaction. "Finally."
He looked down at Freya...at the faint luminescence trembling under her skin...and for a fleeting mont, his expression flickered. Sothing like awe. Or maybe fear.Anticipation?!
But it passed.
He chuckled, brushing a strand of hair from Freya’s face. "Let’s see what happens when the light burns itself."
He released her.
Freya didn’t fall.
She stayed suspended midair, small body unmoving, tendrils of miasma wrapping around her like ribbons. The air humd with unbearable pressure...ripples spread in slow concentric circles through the void.
Karl took a few slow steps back. He turned towards the ancient shrine of Isolde rising from the darkness...the once sacred runes now crawled with the sa red corruption
The shrine breathed.
Each crack pulsed in rhythm, expelling waves of miasma that curled upward like serpents.
The shrine shuddered. A deep, subterranean sound...half growl, half whisper...stirred within it. Shadows pooled at its base, and a faint glimr flared deep inside, like an eye opening after centuries.
Karl’s grin widened.
"I’ve brought what you wanted." His tone turned mocking, playful. "Took a few corpses to get here, but...I keep my promises, don’t I?"
The shadows thickened, crawling up the air toward Freya’s glowing form. She twitched...just once...as if so invisible hand brushed her cheek.
Karl’s smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. Then his voice dropped.
"It is ti."
He stepped closer to the shrine, pressing one palm against its corrupted surface. The red veins flared instantly beneath his touch, racing like wildfire across the cracked stone.
The sanctuary of Isolde was no more. The sacred place had long since been taken over, tarnished, maligned and mutilated.
At this point the stench carried only and only evil.
A deep hum rose from the ground...slow...sothing vast and hungry.
Karl’s eyes glead.
"We better get things prepared..." he said, glancing back at the floating child. The miasma around her began to throb faster, syncing with the shrine’s pulse.
"...for the absorption."
The last word rolled through the void like thunder...and the shrine answered with a deafening crack.
Red light burst outward, bathing everything in blood glow. Freya’s small body began to shimr violently...
The air scread.
The shadows trembled.
At first, it was only a tremor.
A soft vibration running through the ground, like the heartbeat of sothing ancient waking from a grave.
Then the air began to hum.
It wasn’t sound.
It was the cry of the dead.
Karl winced, clutching the sides of his head, yet the smile never truly left his face.
"Well, well..." he rasped, half in laughter, half in awe. "Guess soone’s too eager. "
The miasma responded, rippling violently across the floor like black water under a storm.
And then hands began to rise.
Shadowy, translucent, long fingered... erging from the black fog like drowning souls breaching the surface. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. Their shapes flickered in and out...
They didn’t touch Freya.
They circled her.
She floated there, small and still, a single drop of light in a sea of endless dark. Her hair drifted upward like smoke, brushing the ghostly palms that hovered inches away.
The shrine pulsed again.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
And with every pulse, the spectral hands moved in rhythm, swaying... "That’s it... feed on her light. Take what’s yours."
But the hands didn’t move to obey him.
They didn’t feed.
They danced.
The hum grew deeper, louder.
The sound twisted into a dirge...a hymn sung by sothing that had forgotten language long ago.
Freya’s eyes twitched beneath her lids. A faint whimper escaped her lips.
Karl’s smirk faltered.
He looked up and saw the shrine bleeding.
Thin threads of blood began to drift upward from its base. They floated, weightless, like ribbons caught in slow wind. Each thread shimred faintly crimson, trailing glowing droplets that never fell.
One thread beca two.
Two beca ten.
Ten beca a thousand.
They crawled outward like a living net, weaving through the air.
Karl whispered under his breath, "...The Veins of Origin...didn’t think this little bastard had it in herself to make Isolde reveal this side of her...damn...guess my stars are indeed lucky tonight..."
The shrine throbbed.
Freya’s small body arched slightly midair. Her aura flickered gold and blue, crackling against the blood threads that inched closer. Her lips moved, whispering sothing too faint to catch.
Karl stepped forward, one hand half raised.
"Easy, little Autumn," he muttered. "Don’t fight it. Just let it in."
But the air itself rebelled.
Every whisper, every pulse, every shadow began to move faster, until the whole space seed to breathe.
The hands reached higher.
The blood threads wrapped closer.
And the hymn of the dead turned into a scream.
Karl shouted over the noise, "You wanted her, didn’t you?! Then take her already!"
The shrine pulsed once more like a dying heart rembering its last beat.
Karl’s eyes shifted towards the deeper dark beyond the shrine.
Sothing moved there.
He straightened, grin returning.
"Co out," he called, voice echoing through the cavernous void. "I know you are there. No need to play shy."
For a mont...silence.
Then...
A ripple in the miasma.
The shadows folded in on themselves, and from their heart, a figure began to step forward.
Karl tilted his head, smirking. "Finally. Took you long enough Alpha Velor."
Velor didn’t answer imdiately. His gaze slid from Karl to the child still floating in the air...Freya, surrounded by that delicate cage of blood threads and ghostly hands.
The way he looked at her wasn’t cruel.
It was... heavy. As if he was staring at a truth he had spent centuries trying not to face.
Karl broke the silence first, mockingly polite.
"I have already kept my part of the deal," he said, his voice oily smooth but strained beneath the grin. "The old man’s gone. Split him right down the middle. You should have seen that part. Quite the show, if I may say so."
He spread his arms wide, as though awaiting applause.
Velor’s head tilted slightly. The sigh that left him sounded too tired...like wind moving through forgotten ruins.
"Yes," he murmured at last. "I felt it.The vengeance I dreamt of...always..."
Karl took one slow step closer. The miasma shifted beneath his feet, recoiling as though it feared him.
"Now it’s ti for you to hand her over," he said, voice low . "You have done enough, Velor. More than you were ant to...for keeping her safe all these years.Now is the ti for her to beco whole...rge together....you brought her with you, didn’t you? "
Velor’s smirk twitched, uncertain now.
"Safe," he repeated softly, almost mocking but not quite. "Is that what you call this? Keeping her hidden from the world? From herself?"
Karl’s eyes flickered crimson for a heartbeat. "I don’t have ti for this nonsense.She was never ant to remain incomplete."
His voice deepened, vibrating faintly through the air. "Now she will finally find her true form."
Velor didn’t answer. His silence was louder than any defense.
Instead, he turned slowly...his shoulders heavy, like the motion itself pained him.
The miasma behind him stirred.
Thick coils of black fog slithered and then...sothing moved within it.
A sound rose...low, guttural.
A snarl.
Wet chains clinking.
Karl froze for a heartbeat. "Sothing that still rembers hunger."
From the dark behind him, sothing shifted...sothing bound, writhing. The chains strained and rattled, glowing faintly with runes that pulsed in ti with the shrine’s heartbeat.
" It’s not her fault... " Velor added affectionately as if talking about a doll or a loving pet. " She has never stepped out of her cell. Never seen the world around. She is just a little anxious... And curious... Aren’t you my little darling? "
A growl rolled through the air...so deep it made the ground tremble.
Then a shape...too broken...lurched against its restraints.
Karl’s smirk faltered. His hand twitched, ready to summon his miasma.He turned his head slightly, eyes glinting red beneath his hood.
"And it’s almost awake."
The shrine flickered violently, blood threads trembling like nerves under a blade.
Freya’s body turned once more midair, light flickering uncertainly.
Karl took a small, uneasy step back, tongue clicking against his teeth.
"Oh... shit."
The sound of sothing heavily breathing filled the void.
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