The wind in the Reach never truly blew—just whispered.
Between twisted branches and long-dead roots, it carried echoes of forgotten screams and prayers swallowed by stone.
Ian moved through the bone-colored woods, eyes sharp, soul heavy.
This place didn't just want him dead.
It wanted him broken.
His path twisted deeper into the Reach, where sunlight no longer filtered down and even shadows seed to bleed. Still, he pressed forward, his steps guided not by sight but by certainty.
He already knew what waited at the heart of this place. Knew what had to be done.
To leave the Reach, the books had said, you must not just survive. You must proof yourself.
He whispered the na under his breath like a curse.
"The Heart of Ruin."
It wasn't a taphor.
At the deepest pit of the First Reach, past gnarled trees and rivers of marrow, lay a broken altar carved from obsidian and bone.
Beneath it: molten bone. Cursed ground. Ruin soaked into every grain of stone.
And bound to that altar was a demon whose na had not yet faded from history.
Xul'Vek the Wretched.
A prince once. Of the Third Reach.
Now, a dying god-thought, shackled, leaking essence like oil from a cracked tomb. His mind was fractured, his soul bleeding into the ruin he ruled.
But his power still lingered.
So did his purpose.
To earn passage beyond the First Reach—to pass through the gate—Ian needed more than strength.
He needed the Three Broken Relics.
Decay. Hunger. Silence.
Each relic locked behind a shrine steeped in madness and rot. Each a test in itself. And only by uniting them, only by presenting them before Xul'Vek and enduring his judgnt, could the path forward open.
If he deed you worthy, you left.
If he didn't…
Your soul was unmade.
No rebirth. No resurrection.
No necromantic thread to tie you back to the world.
Oblivion.
Ian's jaw clenched as he moved through the crimson undergrowth, ducking beneath twisted bramble arches.
It wasn't fear that curled in him—it was pressure. A weight crawling down his spine. The Reach was alive, and it was watching.
He already had a plan.
He'd mapped it out in his mind the mont the books had revealed the structure.
The Relics. The Altar. The Demon. The Trial.
He'd seen the pattern beneath the ruin. There was always a pattern, no matter how chaotic things seed.
And he would crack it.
But that plan had to wait.
Because he now had another thread pulling him—a looming obligation that refused to be ignored.
The First Descent Tournant.
The words still echoed in his skull, like a tolling bell he couldn't silence. The red-cloaked stranger—The Cardinal Fang—had nad it his next destination.
A eting. A promise.
Or a threat wrapped in ritual.
Ian knew a summons when he heard one.
'Fine,' he'd thought. 'I'll go.'
If the capital wanted to throw its monsters at him, he'd carve his na into their bones.
But before he could even chart a path to the tournant's staging ground beyond the Reach, his pace slowed.
His senses sharpened.
Because the stench of blood had changed.
It wasn't old. It wasn't ash-covered.
It was fresh.
Ian crouched low behind a shattered pillar of spine-shaped stone, his eyes narrowing. The trees ahead opened into a clearing scorched black by so unnatural fire.
Sothing had torn through this place recently.
Sothing strong.
He slled sulfur. Mana. Steel.
He moved silently toward the sound—tal clashing, earth shattering beneath monstrous weight. His heart didn't quicken.
His breath stayed level.
But his grip on Vowbreaker's hilt tightened as he stepped between the trees and caught sight of the scene unfolding.
It wasn't another trap.
It was war.
In the clearing, a demon stood—towering, armored in chitinous plates the color of old rust. Its mouth was a jagged hole, its eyes two burning coals of hunger. Its claws crackled with hellfla, tearing through stone like wet parchnt.
It was no imp. No mindless servant.
This was a Greater Demon. A high breed.
Possibly a hellspawn.
And it was fighting—for once—not alone.
Ian's gaze moved past the demon, toward the humans locked in battle against it.
Ian's gaze moved past the demon, toward the humans locked in battle against it.
Not Church agents he hoped to find.
Not scavenger bands or cultists drawn to the ruin's call.
No — these were different.
At first, Ian thought they might've been rcenaries, but the way they fought said otherwise.
There was purpose in their desperation. A unity born of blood and shared suffering. Their formation was ragged now, broken by the demon's relentless assault, but still they held on — three figures, silhouetted against the volcanic haze.
A man, tall and bloodied, held the front with a battered greatsword cracked down the middle.
Every swing of it left trails of ash, his breathing sharp and pained, yet controlled.
His armor was scorched and lted in places, but still clung to his fra like a new skin — stubborn, defiant.
To his left, a woman danced through the field of corpses and shattered bone, her short blades flashing in the warped light.
Fast. Too fast.
Her movents blurred the line between instinct and deathwish — reckless only on the surface. She flickered in and out of the demon's reach, leaving behind shallow cuts and trails of dark ichor, her breath hitching with each dodge.
There was fury in her eyes, but also fear.
Not of dying — but of failing soone.
The third knelt behind a ruined pillar, hands raised in trembling focus.
A suppprt mage, young.
Blood trickled from his nose and ears as he poured what little remained of his essence into a weakening ward circle, trying to keep the demon from breaching further into the canyon path behind them.
His face was pale, skin blistered from backlash. One wrong twitch, and the shield would shatter.
Ian narrowed his eyes.
These were more fools.
People who had chosen to fight and die for each other in a place where no one rembered nas.
The demon roared, a guttural shriek that sent molten cracks spiraling through the stone.
It charged, a beast of horn and scale, with eyes festering coals and limbs wrought from corrupted marrow.
Ian didn't move. Not yet.
But as he watched the girl lunge to intercept the beast mid-charge, already bleeding from a torn side, as the mage scread and the sword-bearer stepped forward with shaking knees—
Ian felt sothing.
Not pity.
Not duty.
But opportunity.
He exhaled, slow.
Then took his first step forward.
Reviews
All reviews (0)