Randia traveled west beneath a sky as black as cinder. The stars, veiled and distant, offered no company. It had been long—too long—since he had walked alone. If Viena were here, she would be curled in his arms by now, her breath slow against his chest as he carried her through the dark. The thought cleaved through him. His mind gnawed relentlessly at what might be happening to her even now. His heart felt flayed raw with every step. He had to find her.
By any means necessary.
Fifteen minutes later, he reached the edge of the main road. To his left, a narrow path vanished into the bristling dark of the forest. Nearly invisible to the inattentive eye—especially at this hour—but not to one hunting like a wolf with its nose to the ground. According to the wounded guard’s rasped confession, the bandits' camp was hidden somewhere in the thick beyond.
It was the only place the patrols hadn’t dared to search.
Randia pushed forward.
“Ugh—”
His foot snagged on a root slick with moss. He staggered, his cane slipping sideways. The world pitched. His vision swam, blurring into grey shadows and deeper blacks. His breath burned hot in his chest. His limbs were trembling reeds.
Randia is failing.
Then—
A voice. Soft as silk, sharp as glass.
“My lord.”
A whisper, threading itself directly into the hollows of his mind.
Feminine.
Familiar.
Unwanted.
“Please… embrace it once more. Your divinity.”
Randia’s jaw clenched until the tendons ached.
“. . . No. Never,” he spat, voice dry as parchment.
But his body betrayed him. His knees buckled; his hands quivered uselessly against the earth. His consciousness frayed at the edges, slipping in and out like a lantern guttering in a storm. He could feel it—one of his oldest objects of hatred, the Stasis—creeping up from his marrow like frost.
A blessing, they called it. A gift of the gods.
A curse, to him. A mockery that defied death and chained the soul when all it wished was to fall into eternal quiet.
Then—light.
Blue orbs, like will-o’-the-wisps, rose languidly from the loam. Dozens, then hundreds, weaving together until they blazed as a single argent flame. From the heart of the brilliance, she emerged.
A wolf.
Her fur was snow incarnate, white so pure it blinded, chasing back the dark with effortless dominance. Her eyes—twin pools of ancient blue—met his, reflecting his soul back into him.
“Stella . . .”
Her name left his lips in a rasp of wonder and dread.
“Have faith, my lord,” the wolf murmured—not with a mouth, but directly into his battered mind.
“I will veil you, albeit only for a moment. Her gaze upon this land is unbroken, as it always has been.”
Her paw falls were silent as silk as she padded close. The brush of her tongue across his battered face was cool and soothing. His breath hitched.
“Please, my lord. Save the little girl.
Save her… so you can be saved.”
Randia doesn't understand her words. Yet, he knows for sure that the bitter reality demands of him the power he once had. It takes strength to protect something and that fact never changed since the dawn of time.
Thus, Randia slowly places his hand on Stella's head, tapping once more into the power which he had despised and forsaken.
We hear and obey your call.
We cherish and share your heart.
May evil be eradicated, and justice reign supreme…
Stella closes her eyes with graceful silent. Her tears joined the ancient litany, mournful but resolute.
“…We honor and welcome you.
Valdrin, Spouse of Lightning.”
The sky inhaled—and exhaled—the greatest chilling wind. Dark clouds gathered and churned like leviathans wrestling in the void. Thunder cracked open the heavens with a sound both anguished and hungry.
Across Rosmayne, the surge of Anima and cataclysmic power shattered the sleep of all who dwelled in the land. Windows flung open. Faces, pale and wide-eyed, poured into the streets. Every head turned skyward.
One thought rippled through the collective heart.
Something is not right.
Rain fell—if it could even be called rain. Each droplet struck the earth like a thrown stone, sharp and deafening, they are coming like there's no tomorrow. It's as though the sky had chosen to drown the land by force. And beneath that merciless storm, deep in the shrouded woods, the bandits scurried like rats disturbed from their nest.
They were slavers—human traffickers. They did not discriminate. Men, women, children, the young and the old of every race; they took all, whether by commission or to stock their filthy trade. Nearly a hundred strong, they worked with brutal efficiency.
Viena sat among them. Silent. Obedient.
She had seen what happened to those who spoke, those who wept too loudly or resisted too much. She sat in her cage, her thin arms wrapped around her knees, tears slipping soundlessly down her face as she cradled the cuts and bruises inflicted earlier. Her small frame shuddered under the cold steel bars.
“Papa … help me ….” she whimpered into her knees.
The reply came in violence.
Her cage door slammed open with a kick so hard it rattled her bones.
“GET UP AND MOVE, YOU LITTLE BRAT!”
Viena scrambled, legs quaking, heart shriveling with raw terror. Never—not even the day she was caught by the merchants before Randia found her—had she known fear like this. Her feet barely found the ground before a boot slammed into her shin. She crumpled into a puddle of mud.
"I SAID MOVE, QUICKLY!" A kick crashed into Viena's right leg.
"Hey, stop. Don't vent your anger on the goods. You'll break them and they will sell for less," said a female bandit.
"FUCK YOU!"
The brute reared back for a final kick, but the other one shoved him back with force. She glared at him as she kept pushing the man back.
"Asshole! You shit at playing cards and getting a tantrum like some little bitch?! Want me to tell the boss about this?! Huh?!"
"Tsk!"
The man spat to the side and stormed off. The woman knelt beside Viena and yanked her upright. Her grip was rough but not cruel.
“Sorry about that, kid. Bastard lost a bet and can’t keep his temper.”
She hauled Viena to her feet, letting the girl lean against her as they limped toward the nearest shelter. The storm had drenched the camp and muddied the ground into a mire. The slavers ushered their prisoners into the mouth of a cavern to escape the torrent.
“Come on. You don’t want to freeze to death in this weird weather.”
"T-Thank you, lady," said Viena as they were waiting for their turn to enter the cave.
The woman chuckled—a cold, mirthless thing.
"Thank you? Haha! Why would you thank me? Haven't you realized yet? I'm the one who took you from your father."
Viena’s breath caught. Silence swallowed her again as she was led into the cavern. The prisoners huddled in a wide, dank cell carved into the rock. Most sat with hollow eyes, limbs limp, gazes fixed on nothing.
No hope flickered here.
No salvation.
Viena curled into herself in the middle of the room, arms wrapped tight, ears covered against the sobs and screams echoing around her. One by one, captives were dragged from the cell, their cries muffled by the howling wind outside. The shadows seemed to close tighter with every passing moment.
She tried to make herself small. Invisible. Forgettable. But fear gnawed at her, sharp as broken glass.
Until finally, her turn came.
Rough hands seized her.
“No… get away from me!” Viena bolted to the back of the cell, but fists struck her side and yanked her forward.
No one moved to help. No one even flinched.
Everyone here had long since learned: save yourself first. Or not at all.
They dragged Viena down a dim corridor slick with damp moss, her bare feet slipping on the cold stone. Every step sent white-hot needles of agony through her right leg—the bone cracked, maybe broken, from the bandit’s earlier kick. She staggered and gasped, but the men hauling her forward showed no mercy.
At the end of the hall, a heavy wooden door creaked open. Inside, an old man sat waiting.
His smile was a ruin—crooked, lecherous, glistening with hunger that had nothing to do with food. The air in the room curled greasy and foul. Viena’s heart seized the instant her eyes met his.
Danger and disgust, pure and unfiltered.
The door slammed shut behind her.
"No… no! Please! Let me out!" Viena pounded her fists against the wood, her cries sharp as glass splinters. When she turned to flee, her injured leg buckled beneath her. She collapsed hard onto the cold stone floor, breath knocked from her lungs.
The old man rose slowly, like a spider uncurling from its web. His fingers knotted in her hair and yanked her head back hard, forcing her face up to his. His breath stank of sour herbs and rot as he traced her cheek with the back of a trembling hand. Viena’s tears spilled in hot streaks, her body shivering with disgust and terror.
She squeezed her eyes shut—but her defiance meant nothing. A muttered incantation crawled from his lips, and with a twitch of his gnarled fingers, her eyelids snapped open against her will. She gasped, unable even to blink as her wide, terrified gaze locked on his.
“Aah… as I thought,” he crooned.
Another wave of his hand. A thin veil of magic shimmered and dissipated over her face.
Randia’s enchantment unraveled.
Her true eyes—deep crimson, radiant and cursed—blazed into view.
“A cursed child! Demonborne…! A Mistari…! How lucky! How lucky!”
The word stabbed into Viena’s memory. Mistari.
Randia had told her long ago—a cursed child, marked and hunted.
But she had not understood what kind of nightmare people can inflict to a Mistari. Not until now.
“You know,” the old man whispered, voice syrupy with glee, “do you know how much my folks are willing to dig their pocket for the eye of a Mistari?"
From a drawer behind him, he withdrew an array of instruments. Long, thin blades. Hooks. Pincers. Syringes. The cold gleam of steel made her breath hitch, her pulse hammering so wildly she thought she’d faint.
“Twenty thousand Rios,” he sang, almost jovial, “is my worst haggle!”
Tears flooded her cheeks. Her sobs came sharp and thin, catching in her throat. The more her fear blossomed, the brighter his eyes burned with unholy delight.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured, rolling the syringe between his fingers, "I’ll put you to sleep. Wouldn’t want you dying from the pain too early.”
The needle’s point flashed before her. Viena thrashed, hysteria overtaking her.
The agony in her leg twisted her gut, but her survival instinct drowned it beneath pure panic.
He chuckled.
“Oh? Frightened of this little thing? Here, let’s make it easier on you…”
A rough cloth wrapped around her head, cutting off her vision. Darkness swallowed her world. Only his voice remained.
“It’s more fun, isn’t it?”
His breath brushed her ear.
“Knowing nothing, except what you can guess from the sounds I make… That makes your imagination run wild, doesn’t it?”
The sharp clatter of steel tools rang out. Metal scraped on metal, cold and precise. Viena’s breath broke into short, high-pitched gasps. Her small frame trembled uncontrollably—and wet warmth spread down her legs as her body betrayed her in terror.
Her broken limb throbbed mercilessly beneath her, pinned and useless.
“Can you hear it? Can you guess what I’m holding now?”
The old man laughed, giddy and shrill, as steel kissed steel again and again.
Then—
Silence.
Sudden, absolute silence.
The steel fell mute. The rain outside, gone. No breathing, no echo, no heartbeat but her own frantic thrum. It was as if sound itself had died.
And then darkness deepened—not just darkness.
A void.
The very light drained from the air, as though the world itself recoiled and shrank away.
It was not fog. Not smoke.
It was the light and sound retreated.
A suffocation of sight and sense.
The old man’s breath hitched—his glee curdled into confusion.
.
.
.
Something had arrived.