The soil beyond the Bleeding Marshes no longer bled.
It scread.
Raen stepped lightly, his boots sinking into the ground like it breathed. Faces swelled beneath the mud—flesh not rotting, but rembering. Eyes opened, then closed. Hands reached, then gave up. mory lingered in every shadow here.
"Do you feel that?" Lyra asked.
Her voice was thin, as though the land siphoned strength from every word.
Raen didn't answer. He couldn't.
This place—the Hollow Vale—was not marked on any map. It was the land that ti refused, where traitors were buried without nas, and Godmarked soldiers were rumored to feast on nightmares. Raen's fingers twitched against the hilt of Mournfang.
He felt the presence.
Watching.
Mocking.
Breathing.
"Raen," Lyra said again, firr this ti. "We shouldn't be here."
But they were.
Because he was.
The First General of the Godmarked.
And Raen had co to kill him.
---
They reached the first corpse by dusk.
Except—it wasn't a corpse.
It was kneeling.
A soldier in cracked obsidian armor, runes carved into his bones, whispering to no one.
"He's dead but not gone," Lyra said, staring at the way the wind shifted around him.
The soldier turned his head.
No eyes.
Only a hollow socket where a divine sigil used to burn.
Raen stepped forward, drawing his sword. The soldier didn't move. Instead, he spoke:
"You carry the curse of the Throne. You sll of betrayal."
Raen narrowed his eyes. "And you sll like cowardice."
A flicker of movent.
The soldier's body snapped—too fast—and lunged. Raen blocked the strike, tal clashing with an echo of pain, but sothing was wrong. The soldier wasn't fighting.
He was crying.
"He waits in the chapel." The voice cracked, full of static mories. "He carved my na out of ... and replaced it with his own."
Then the soldier shattered into ash.
Lyra whispered, "They're puppets... remnants of who they were."
Raen stared at the path ahead—lined with bones twisted into prayer circles.
This was no ambush.
This was an invitation.
---
The chapel sat at the heart of a dead forest, built of pale stone and old sins. Vines wrapped the steeple like veins choking a heart, and stained glass depicted a wingless god kneeling before a throne made of faces.
Raen and Lyra entered.
No candles burned.
No silence remained.
Only a single man sat within.
The First General.
Clad in rusted silver, his face covered by a white mask—its surface cracked and weeping black sap.
"I've been waiting, Raen Valor," he said, not rising.
Raen stepped forward. "You knew my na?"
The General tapped his mask with two fingers. "I rember your death."
A flash of mory—Raen impaled by a god's lance, crying out as his bones lted in holy fire. That pain. That mont. This man had seen it.
"Then you rember what I promised," Raen said. "That I'd co back."
"And kill us all," the General whispered.
Lyra stepped closer, but the shadows recoiled from her presence. This place was bound to a single will—and it was not theirs.
"You serve the gods," she said. "You enforce the Throne's lies."
The General didn't deny it.
Instead, he removed his mask.
Raen flinched.
Not from horror.
But familiarity.
The face beneath was young—no older than Raen had been when he first died. But broken. Eyes hollow. Mouth trembling. And carved into his neck was a curse written in ancient script.
"I was sixteen," the General said. "They marked when I refused to kneel. I scread when they took my na. Then I killed my family... because I couldn't rember if I loved them."
He smiled.
"Tell , Raen. Do you still believe you're the monster here?"
Raen gripped his blade.
"I stopped believing in monsters," he said. "Now I just kill them."
The General rose.
Power surged through the chapel, shattering stone and glass. Lyra staggered back as chains of light erupted from the altar, forming a halo of weapons around the General. Each sword was forged from a mory—each one a na devoured.
"You fight with darkness," the General said. "I fight with what was stolen from ."
They clashed.
---
It wasn't a battle.
It was a trial.
Raen's blade t the mory-swords, each one echoing with the voices of the dead. Every strike filled his mind with doubt. Guilt. Rage. Each cut whispered his sins.
But Raen didn't falter.
He welcod them.
The blood. The screams. The betrayal. He drank it all.
Lyra, watching, felt her throat close. This man she followed—this anti-hero reborn—was unmaking himself every second he fought. Not because he had to.
But because he chose to.
"You want freedom?" the General roared. "You want vengeance?!"
Raen didn't speak.
He simply drove Mournfang into the man's heart.
But it wasn't blood that spilled.
It was nas.
Hundreds of them.
Won. Children. Warriors. Slaves.
All of them carved into the General's soul by the gods—and now, freed.
The General collapsed.
Raen caught him.
The dying man looked up and whispered, "I prayed soone would end ."
Raen, voice hoarse, replied, "Then you should've prayed harder."
---
Outside, as the chapel burned, Lyra touched Raen's hand.
"Did you feel it?" she asked.
Raen's eyes burned red.
"I didn't just kill him," he said. "I consud the mories of everyone the gods took."
His voice cracked.
"And now... they live in ."
She held him tighter.
And far above them, the Throne watched.
And trembled.
To be continued....
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