The dust had stopped settling months ago.
When a stone room sits untouched for long enough, the air itself loses the urge to stir.
The temple occupied the lowest hollow of the sunken clearing, ringed by tall pale pillars that looked like sun-bleached ribs rising out of the dirt. It was cleaner than it had any right to be. She had spent the first few months sweeping dead leaves, scrubbing black rot off the stone with her bare hands, and polishing the floor until it reflected the green canopy overhead like dull glass.
Then, when the floor was spotless, she sat down on the altar steps.
And stayed there.
She was waiting to see if anything was left to want.
It was an odd, quiet kind of exhaustion. She had spent her whole life bound to a single conviction: human impulse was the only honest truth in a world full of fake rules. Desire was a compass, and she had followed hers without looking back.
Years ago, when a quiet sudden urge told her to turn her steel against the very order that had raised her, she hadn’t fought it. Denying a clear impulse was the only sin she recognized. She cut them down, left their books to rot in the sun, and walked into the trees alone.
She had followed every desire until she ran out of ground.
And at the end of the line, there was nothing.
No urges left to chase. Not even the basic instinct to keep breathing — a fact she had spent three days sitting with, turning over in her mind with quiet indifferent curiosity. Letting her lungs stop seemed like a reasonable next step. Existing was just an old habit she hadn’t bothered breaking, and she was simply waiting for the moment to let go.
Then something heavy smashed against the marble steps outside.
A wet, dull thud echoed through the archway.
She didn’t move at first. She kept her eyes on the empty doorway, her white dress pooled around her on the cool stone.
She almost let it go.
But a strange cold twitch stirred in her chest. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t concern. It was just different — a tiny spike of something unexpected, and unexpected was a word she hadn’t used in months.
She stood up and walked to the entrance without a sound.
A man was sprawled over the top step, bleeding out into the dirt.
He was a mess. A dark red smear stretched down the white stone behind him where he’d dragged himself through the mud. His clothes were slashed to ribbons, his left arm black and swollen with some heavy foul curse, and four raw trenches carved straight across his ribs.
She didn’t feel sorry for him.
She just watched the way his jaw stayed locked, teeth grinding in a stubborn ugly fight against dying while his pulse sputtered out. She couldn’t place that kind of desperation.
Why bother? she thought. What is out there that you want this badly?
She wanted to find out.
She grabbed his sticky mud-caked wrist and pulled him across the threshold.
Healing a body on the brink of death took everything a caster had. To pull someone back while taming a black festering curse required burning out the soul’s anchor entirely.
She knelt beside him on the floor and started anyway.
She was simply curious about what he’d do next, and for the first time in a year, she actually wanted to see how something played out. For someone who lived by desire, that alone was enough.
She placed both hands flat over his torn chest. A pale cold light bled from her palms, laced with faint streaks of pink. The energy pressed into his flesh, closing open veins, joining split muscle, settling the angry black lines in his arm until the poison went quiet.
She couldn’t lift the curse. It was buried too deep in his marrow, rooted like old iron. But she forced it to sleep, cooling the fever in his skin.
As the light grew, her energy drained down to the absolute marrow. Her vision dimmed, the heavy weight of exhaustion wrapping around her spine. She watched her strength bleed out into his veins with a mild quiet interest.
It wasn’t a sacrifice. It was just pursuing a new whim before her scheduled end.
In a way, it was better. Something had actually made her want to be present for her last moment.
His breathing turned even. The black rot in his arm dulled into pale dormant marks. The wounds on his torso closed into silver lines. His chest rose in a steady rhythm.
By the time his pulse locked in, her consciousness slipped away entirely, her physical form giving out and folding against the altar stone beside him.
He shifted slightly, a low breath escaping his lips.
She leaned back against the cool marble, her voice barely a breath.
"I found something I wanted," she whispered. "That’s more than I had this morning."
The ambient light flickered out, leaving the sanctuary in silence.
Where her physical hand rested on his chest, a small pale metal ring remained pressed against his shirt.
My eyes snapped open.
I sat up fast, my hand flying to my ribs.
Huh.
My thoughts were actually clear. Sure, I still had some strange impulses crawling around in the back of my skull — the Horror blood doing whatever it did — but I could think again. That alone felt like a miracle.
And now I was wearing a black cloak?
Who the hell changed my clothes?!
Never mind that.
I looked down at my body expecting damage.
Four fresh silver lines ran across my skin where the wounds had been. Nothing else.
I checked my left arm. The black veins were still there, but the burning had disappeared. The curse had gone quiet, sitting beneath the skin like a cold ember. Even the Bloodburst fog was gone.
My head was clear. My legs felt steady.
"What..."
I muttered it to no one, voice raspy in the enormous room.
I got up slowly, backing toward a pillar with one hand on my hip.
Vast open hall. Stone floor scrubbed clean enough to catch my reflection in the dim light. No one. Just an altar, a single stone bench, and a stale heavy silence that had been sitting here undisturbed for a long time.
Then I caught a glint of metal on the floor right where I’d been lying.
I walked over.
A ring — plain, smooth, pale metal, no markings, no stones. I stared at it. Nothing suspicious humming off it, but my hand moved on its own anyway. A weird persistent itch at the back of my brain told me to pick it up.
I grabbed it.
Warm. Like a rock left out in the sun all afternoon.
I slid it onto my index finger.
"You took longer than I expected."
I flinched, spinning and wrenching Mercy from my pouch in one motion. "Who’s there?!"
A woman stood two paces away.
Long white dress. Pale pink ribbons hanging off her sleeves. Dark hair resting over her shoulders. She looked entirely solid — standing firmly on the stone floor, hands folded neatly in front of her, watching me with a completely blank relaxed face.
"You..." I kept the cleaver up, arm stiff. "You were the one at the door before I went under."
"I was," she said, taking a quiet step closer. Her slippers clicked softly against the marble. "And you’re pointing a meat cleaver at someone who just mended your skin. Seems a bit useless, doesn’t it?"
I lowered the blade a fraction, mind already racing.
She looked real enough. But something about her felt off. Maybe the way she moved. Maybe the fact that she was just standing here like this was a perfectly normal place to be.
Who the hell lives alone in a ruined temple in the middle of a corrupting dead zone?
"Who are you?" I said. "What are you doing here?"
"I was planning to stop existing today anyway," she said, tilting her head. "I had it all lined up. But then I found something new I wanted to look at, which meant I wasn’t as empty as I thought."
A small thin smile.
"It was a pleasant surprise."
I stared at her.
"...Wait."
My eyes dropped to the silver lines across my ribs. Then to the black veins in my arm.
"You saved me?"
"I did."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"...I guess I should be flattered." I gave her a tired look. "Didn’t think I’d be interesting enough to ruin someone’s suicide plans."
"Curiosity is enough," she said, her pink eyes locking onto mine with flat, calm intensity. "You dragged yourself through two miles of mud with your chest torn open just to get one more breath. And... I want to see more, so I simply followed my own desire."
"That’s a pretty weird reason to save someone."
Instinct took over before she could answer.
I didn’t trust strangers. Especially ones who talked about death like it was an inconvenient appointment. I looked down at the pale ring on my index finger, hooked my thumb under the band, and pulled.
It didn’t move.
I gritted my teeth and yanked harder — hard enough to strip skin. It felt welded directly to bone. Completely unyielding, like it had always been part of my hand.
"It won’t come off," she remarked calmly, watching my struggle with mild amusement.
"What did you put on me?" I snapped, eyes flicking back to her. My grip on Mercy tightened again. "Tracking spell? A binding curse?"
"It’s just a ring," she replied smoothly, a quiet laugh escaping her lips. "Why are you staring at it like I just cursed your bloodline? It’s not going to bite you."
She giggled again, her expression remaining completely serene.
She glanced at my hand.
"Your heart beats because I was kind enough to put it back together. So really, shouldn’t you be a little more trusting of your priestess?"
Every survival instinct I had was screaming.
But she had healed my ribs. Quieted the poison in my arm. If she wanted me dead she could’ve finished the job while I was passed out on the steps.
I stowed Mercy back in my pouch and pulled my shirt over the fresh scars.
She’d saved my life. Trusting her was out of the question — but basic manners didn’t cost anything.
"Thank you."
"No need." She folded her hands again. "I simply followed my heart’s desires."
I turned away and started walking deeper into the temple, keeping my ears open for her footsteps behind me.
The layout was strange.
No statues adorned the walls, nor were there any carvings dedicated to a god. Above the main archway sat a single abstract glyph, a sprawling circle fractured into jagged, uneven splinters.
I moved toward a side alcove, scanning rows of heavy parchment scrolls, rotting leather bindings, and stone tablets lined along the low benches.
I picked up a chunk of dark slate from the nearest pedestal. Deep jagged lettering across the top:
TO BIND THE SPIRIT IS TO ROT THE FLESH. DESIRE IS THE ONLY DIVINE ORDER. ALL LAWS ARE CONSTRUCTS OF THE WEAK.
"Is this place dedicated to a god?" I ran my thumb over the coarse carving. "I’m guessing it is, considering you’re a priestess."
"No."
Her voice came from just behind my left shoulder.
I turned slightly. She was standing beside me, looking down at the tablet with detached indifference.
"Gods demand reverence and devotion," she said. "We don’t worship gods. We worship something a little more... fundamental."
"So what was this."
"A sanctum for those who worshipped concept rather than form," she said lightly. "They believed that human urge — unfiltered, unrestrained, absolute impulse — was the only sacred thing in existence. They worshipped Freedom itself. Not a god. The concept."
I set the tablet down and picked up a faded scroll. Ancient ink, tight frantic script. It read like a manifesto.
The Pure Impulse. Freedom unbound by consequence.
"Worshipped it how?" I asked.
"By acting on every whim without hesitation," she answered, tone as casual as discussing the weather. "If a priest felt the urge to starve, he starved. If he felt the urge to walk into the sea, he walked. To deny an impulse — no matter how small, no matter how destructive — was considered the only true sin against the Concept."
A chill ran down my spine.
I looked closely at the marble floor beneath my boots. Faint discolored stains sat deep in the white stone grain. Not age. Not rust.
Old blood. Thoroughly scrubbed.
"Sounds like a cult waiting to fall apart," I muttered, watching her from the corner of my eye. "Guess that explains why the place is empty."
She tilted her head. Her face gave nothing away.
"Impulses are unpredictable things," she said softly. "When a philosophy demands you never resist a sudden urge... eventually, someone receives an urge that leaves no one left to preach."
She didn’t elaborate.
The temple’s quiet felt suddenly much heavier.
I looked at her hands folded over her dress. Then back at the blood-stained floor.
A thought flickered at the back of my skull.
She was one of them. And if her entire faith was built on doing whatever impulse surfaced without a second thought — relying on her goodwill was playing with fire.
I put the scroll back and looked down at the pale ring on my finger, feeling its faint warmth humming against my skin.
An anchor. Holding me to a woman who had followed her own terrifying logic all the way to total isolation.
I turned toward the temple doors where the gray canopy swayed in the wind outside.
"Well," I said, adjusting my pouch strap and keeping a healthy two feet between us. "Let’s see if your freedom survives out there."
She walked past me toward the threshold, white dress rustling softly against the marble, quiet serene smile on her lips.
"..."
She glanced back. "I’d prefer it if you told me your name, though."
I ignored her.
I stepped past the ruined threshold and onto the cliff edge.
And stopped.
The forest below was unrecognizable.
It stretched out like an endless writhing sea of violet and sickly gray. The trees weren’t green anymore — the corruption had eaten into the bark, twisting the trunks into jagged skeletal spires reaching up toward a bruised heavy sky. Thick luminescent spore-fog drifted through the low valleys like breathing gas, pulsing with faint unnatural violet light.
Stunning in a grotesque breathtaking way.
Then my eyes caught something that made my stomach drop.
The landmark I’d used to orient myself before the fight — a towering ridge of dark rock to the east — was nearly buried. Thick black tendrils of corrupt growth had swallowed the stone entirely, climbing hundreds of feet up the cliff face. Pockets of forest that had been completely clear when I dragged myself into the temple were now dense rot-choked thickets.
"This shouldn’t have spread this fast," I muttered, hand dropping to Mercy’s hilt. "I was only out for a few hours."
"Hours?"
Her voice came from right beside me. She stood at the edge of the drop-off, hands resting behind her back, looking down at the canopy with mild fascination.
"You dragged yourself up those steps six days ago, little Beast."
I froze.
"Six days?"
"Nearly seven," she corrected smoothly, turning her head to meet my eyes. "A body doesn’t rebuild four severed ribs and tame a black curse over a lunch break. It takes time for the flesh to settle."
Six days.
Cold sweat broke across my back.
I had been completely gone while the woods rotted around me. Six days of the corruption spreading unchecked. Six days I didn’t have.
How long before I can’t step foot in this place at all?
If I wanted to kill the Four Regents, I had to move fast. Otherwise some random local Horror was going to finish the job before I even reached the actual problem. It would be pathetic dying here instead of by the hands of the actual main characters of this whole mess.
A low guttural roar rolled up from somewhere deep in the valley, vibrating through the soles of my boots.
Not the screech of lesser beasts. Something heavier. Deeper.
Whatever made that sound was big enough to drag its armored hide through the treeline and crush whatever got in its way.
Down in the canopy, a swath of towering black trees snapped like dried twigs.
I leaned over the edge, squinting through the spore-fog. Something moved through the treeline — a hulking quad-pedal monstrosity the size of a siege wagon. Skin like cracked basalt, oozing thick glowing purple sap that melted the undergrowth wherever it dripped. Where its head should have been, a cluster of pale twitching tendrils whipped at the air — snagging a flying scavenger out of the sky and snapping it clean in half in one wet crunch.
"They weren’t that big when I came in," I said quietly.
"The forest is acclimating," she noted, taking half a step closer to the ledge to see better, completely unbothered by the nightmare below. "The rot feeds on ambition and desperation. The more blood it drinks, the faster it evolves. It seems while you were sleeping, the local wildlife found quite a bit to drink."
I stared at the ruined landscape, pulling my cloak tighter.
The path I’d come through was completely gone. Replaced by a hunting ground for things far worse than what had nearly killed me.
I looked at the ring on my finger. Then at her pale serene face standing beside me.
Strange. Dangerous. Completely unpredictable.
But also the only reason I was still standing here at all.
"Well," I rasped, tightening my grip on my gear. "Looks like getting out of here isn’t going to be as simple as walking back the way I came."
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on the rotting canopy below.
I followed her gaze, watching the black growth crawl over the trees. The more I looked at it, the harder it was to understand how things had gotten this bad this quickly.
My thoughts drifted back to the Broodmother’s nursery. The heart. That strange thing I’d read about in the diary. The way it had been described, the way the corruption seemed to spread outward from it...
Could that have something to do with this?
"The corruption," she said.
I glanced at her.
She tilted her head slightly, eyes still fixed on the forest.
"A failed ascension. A broken vessel. Something that reached beyond its own nature and tore the boundary open."
She paused.
"What remains seeps outward, feeding on everything it touches. Flesh, soil, thought. It all becomes part of the same mistake."
Another pause.
"An unfinished transcendence. A wound pretending to be life."
I stared at her.
"...What?"
She finally looked at me, that same calm expression on her face.
"The thing in the Broodmother’s diary," she said. "You were thinking about it."
My body went stiff.
I hadn’t said a word.
Wait.
Could she read my mind?
My eyes moved over her face, searching for any sign she was messing with me. Nothing. She just stood there watching me with that faint smile.
No. There was no way.
Unless—
My thoughts immediately started racing. Had she been listening this entire time? Could she hear everything that went through my head? What if she knew about the diary? What if she knew about the heart? What if she’d already seen everything I’d done since I entered this forest?
I instinctively took half a step back.
She raised an eyebrow.
My eyes dropped to the ring on my finger.
No, it probably wasn’t that.
Was it because of this? Could she see my thoughts through it? Or worse — my memories? If she could, did she know about old Earth? About everything I knew about this world?
No.
She probably didn’t know anything from before I put the ring on.
Probably.
"How curious." She tilted her head, watching me with that same serene smile. "I wonder what else you’re hiding."
***
Author’s note
I’m going to bulk upload 10 Chapters soon, so if you want, feel free to throw a few Power Stones my way, hehe.
As a reminder, he enters the academy at Chapter 30 or 40.