Sowhere in the Midlands, where the sky hung dark as if veiled with a blood-red curtain and the earth looked long dead and rotten, a group of black-robed figures knelt on dry, lifeless, foul-slling soil.
There were hundreds of them, but even the weakest of them exuded the aura of a Rank 4 Practitioner, waiting in total silence, unmoving, kneeling on the dead soil, heads bowed, and all facing the sa direction.
All of them were strong enough to found a kingdom and rule their own lands in the Outer Region, yet the place where they now knelt as if in worship held nothing grand. There was no towering palace, no sacred monunt, only a small pond of blood with a small body lying calmly on its back on the still surface.
It was a baby.
Its tiny hands were clenched into fists and resting on its chest, giving it the illusion of peaceful sleep, harmless at first glance.
It would have looked completely innocent if not for the two small dark-red horns jutting from its skull, its skin shriveled and dark like a dried, dead leaf, and its lidless eyes, entirely red, like two orbs of raw flesh staring straight up at the sky without ever closing.
Its entire body was soaked in blood, as if, whatever species it belonged to, it had been violently ripped out of its mother's womb and never given the chance to be cleaned.
If Adyr were here to see this newborn, he would have been shocked, not because of how corrupted it looked, but because of the aura it was spreading.
From this tiny body, a black and red aura flowed out in every direction, rolling across the land in thick waves and covering kiloters of ground.
It was the very reason the entire sky was wrapped in a blood-red veil, the reason the soil had died, and everything that had once lived there had been reduced to a stinking, rotting mory.
The aura was very similar to what the Lunari ancestors had been releasing, yet it was so much stronger that theirs felt fake beside it, like cheap imitations, as if they had only borrowed a fragnt while this newborn was the true owner of that power.
At the very front of the kneeling crowd, the figure leading them lifted her head slightly. She looked at the baby with eyes filled with affection and love, and from her dark, blood-colored lips fell the most blasphemous words one could hear anywhere in the Beyond.
"We are finally so close to eting our God."
Her words rippled through the rows behind her. Robes moved, shoulders tightened, and breathing patterns changed, but not because they were scared. What they shared was excitent, a tight, eager anticipation that made their hearts throb louder.
They were a group of lunatics, a powerful secret organization ford by people who refused to bow to the four ultimate Gods or accept the fate those Gods had written.
They prayed only to the God they intended to create with their own hands. And today, they were closer to that goal than ever before. Today, they were very, very close to bringing that Divine being into existence.
"Bring the sacrifice here," the woman said, her voice carrying to the back rows, making it clear she was the cult's leader.
Even though her face was hidden beneath her robe and the blood-red mask she wore, her beautiful voice alone was enough to make everyone present, man or woman, move without a trace of hesitation.
Soon, two figures in the sa black robes and blood-red masks rushed forward, dragging a man by his arms toward the front.
"Stop it, you crazy maniacs, let go!" The man scread as he was pulled along. He thrashed with all his might, his muscles straining as he tried to break free from the iron-like grips that were holding him, but they did not move.
He was dragged, helpless, to the front row and thrown down in front of the
woman.
The two robed n held him down and made him lie on his stomach in front of their leader, pushing his head down into the dry, cracking ground.
One of them spoke in a calm, almost funny way. "Stay silent and show respect to our master... if you want a peaceful death, of course."
At those words, the man suddenly stopped resisting. The fight drained out of his body. A cold chill ran through him as he finally understood that there was no escape from this place. The only thing waiting for him here was death.
"Raise him," the woman ordered.
They hauled him up and forced him onto his knees.
She moved closer with small, unhurried steps, the hem of her robe whispering over the dry ground. She bent down slowly at the waist and looked at his sickly, pale face for a mont before turning her attention to his pitch-black eyes.
"You have the scent of corrupted blood on you," she said. "Tell why, and I will make your death easy."
"I..." The man opened his mouth to answer, but when his gaze t the two blood-red orbs behind her mask, the words died in his throat.
His body began to shake. His mind went blank. In all his centuries of life, he had never felt fear like this.
And it ca from nothing more than looking into the woman's eyes.
"What? You would rather not speak?" The woman asked. Her tone was not frustrated, not annoyed; instead, it was soft, almost caring.
Sohow, that gentle tone only made his trembling worse. The fear he could not even describe spread through him, seeping into every part of his body like
ice water.
"Please..." The only sound that escaped his lips was a broken plea.
"That is a word with no aning in this place," the woman replied quietly as she straightened up. Then she extended her fair white hand toward his face, her long black nails catching the dim light for a mont.
"Let us see where that scent is actually coming from."
Then, without warning, she pushed her entire hand into his mouth.
As her hand forced its way into his mouth, his breath vanished in an instant. The delicate-looking arm slid past his teeth and tongue, then pushed down his throat into his esophagus until her elbow disappeared between his jaws.
A disgusting, suffocating sensation filled him, growing heavier and more unbearable as he felt long fingers moving deep inside him, pressing against his insides, searching for sothing buried there.
"Found it."
After a short search, the woman slowly began to pull her hand back. Wet, gurgling sounds echoed obscenely as her arm slid back up his throat.
When her hand finally erged, her fingers were wrapped tightly around the
end of sothing red and viscous, like thick, living blood clinging stubbornly to
her grip.
She pulled harder.
The blood-like mass stretched and thickened as she dragged it out from within
him, refusing to break.
The more she pulled, the more ca out until it turned into a massive stream
of blood pouring from the man's mouth. As it spilled into the air, the blood twisted and coiled, slowly shaping itself into a dragon.
By the ti the last drops left his body and the blood finished forming outside, it had beco a massive Blood Dragon, its entire body a brilliant, wet crimson, radiating a brutal, ancient majesty.
Yet despite that mighty appearance, the dragon did not roar. It glanced briefly at the hundreds still kneeling on the ground, then turned its gaze to the woman, then lowered its head and bowed in complete submission, not daring
to lift it again.
The man who had just vomited this Blood Dragon out of his mouth could only stare, eyes wide and empty with shock.
He had just seen and experienced sothing he would never have believed
possible.
What the woman had done was simple and impossible at the sa ti.
She had just pulled his Rank 4 Spark out of his Sanctuary with her bare hand.
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