The cold mist crept across the dirt, clinging to my boots.
I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. Every muscle in my neck throbbed. The Ether I’d absorbed from the Ferryman was still settling in my chest, making my lungs feel bruised with every breath.
"Aseren?" Aurelia’s voice came soft and hesitant.
"I’m awake," I muttered, not opening my eyes.
"The stone behind me feels... strange." She shifted. "It’s warm. And soft."
I opened my eyes. Aurelia was pressing her palm against the dark wall, brows furrowed. Where her back had rested, the rubbery surface was slowly smoothing itself out.
I pressed my hand into the dirt on the floor. Beneath a thin layer of mud, it gave way with a spongy resistance.
Deep under my palm, something hummed. A dull, massive vibration.
Thump.
"What..." I muttered, pulling my hand back like I’d been burned. "What the hell is this?"
"Is this... one of the dead gods?" Aurelia whispered. "The ones he buried?"
My head snapped toward her. "WHAT?"
"The Antlered One," she said, backing away until her spine hit the dirt near me. "The old books in my family’s library said he hunted down the other ancient entities that ruled this continent, killed them, and buried their corpses right here in these mountains."
She looked around the shadow-draped alcove, trying to make sense of it.
"When he vanished, the other churches turned on each other. They fought brutal wars over whatever territory was left. The Church of the Antlered One lost badly. Their followers were scattered, hunted down, driven out of every major city."
She hugged her knees.
"So the survivors migrated here, deep into these mountains, because nobody else wanted to come near the graveyard where their ruler buried those things. They built Saint Aldren’s and settled right on top of the rot just to have a place to exist."
She let out a tired breath.
"My family always forced us to pay tithes to the major sects, but I can’t stand any of them. The Church of Radiance, the Antlered One, all of them. They claim to offer salvation, but every church is just using people as pawns while they fight over land and old power."
I stared at her, my mind reeling.
The Antlered One slaughtered other god-like entities and buried them here, and his scattered followers built their last refuge right on top of the grave.
And whenever I closed my eyes, I kept seeing that same doppelganger with antlers staring back at me.
My stomach tightened. Was this why the corruption here was so overwhelming? Had everyone who lived in this place been doomed from the beginning, their ruin born from something they’d once worshipped as a god?
"I’m exhausted," I muttered, rubbing my face. "And now you’re telling me things like that actually exist?"
She glanced at me. "You didn’t know?"
Aurelia swallowed hard, looking toward the dark entrance where the crimson fog drifted. "We need to leave, Aseren. As soon as there’s light, we have to get out of this pass."
I stared down at my hands, feeling the stolen heat from the Ferryman pulsing in my veins.
"Right," I said softly.
Sir Richard woke an hour later, his armor clanking against the spongy floor. When I warned him not to cut into the ground, he gave me a look like I’d lost my mind, until he pressed his own gauntleted hand into the dirt and felt the faint heartbeat humming beneath us. After that, he sat in silence, sword across his knees, staring at the cave mouth until dawn broke.
When the crimson fog finally began to thin, we packed up what little we had left and stepped out into the freezing mountain air.
The trek down was agonizing. Every step felt like dragging iron through cold sludge. My ribs ached, and the Ether inside my furnace was still churning, making my lungs feel bruised with every breath. Aurelia walked right behind me, eyes fixed on the dirt, avoiding any patch of ground that looked too smooth, too rubbery.
I kept my head down, listening to the crunch of boots on gravel.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
"Aseren," Aurelia said quietly. "If the Shepherd really is corrupted, what’s your plan once we get there?"
"Avoid him," I muttered, not turning around. "Get the information I need, figure out where to go next, and leave."
"And if he doesn’t let us leave?"
"Then we fight."
I took three more steps. The wind picked up, carrying a sharp chill through the pass.
Crunch. Crunch.
Wait.
I stopped. The footfalls behind me didn’t stop, they just vanished entirely.
I turned to answer her, but the words died in my throat.
The path behind me was empty.
No Aurelia. No Sir Richard. No Thomas or the other guard. Just a barren stretch of gray gravel curving back up toward the mist-shrouded ridge.
"Aurelia?" I called out, my voice swallowed by the dead quiet of the mountain.
Nothing. Not a shout, not a rustle of metal, not even a footprint. The dirt behind me was completely smooth, as if nobody had walked there in years.
My chest tightened.
They’re gone...?
I took a step back, heart hammering, and then it hit me.
No. I’m the one who’s gone.
I looked around frantically. The jagged granite peaks were gone. The narrow ravine was gone. I stood in the middle of a sunken valley choked with stunted, black-barked pines. The air didn’t smell like cold wind anymore. It smelled like burning incense, wet copper, and rotting wood.
Did I step into a trap?
I reached into my pouch, my hand locking around the grip of my cleaver. My fingers were trembling. One second I was leading a group down a mountain path, and the next, reality had folded around me and dropped me somewhere else entirely.
Through the pale fog drifting between the black trees, the dark outline of a structure loomed ahead.
Saint Aldren’s.
It sat in the middle of the valley like an overgrown, decaying tomb. A high wall of wooden palisades surrounded a massive stone cathedral, its spires clawing at the overcast sky. Above the front archway, carved into the dark stone, was a sprawling pair of jagged antlers.
The heavy gates stood wide open on their rusted hinges.
I crept forward, boots sinking into damp mud. The air was unnaturally still, wrapped in a silence that made my own heartbeat sound like thunder in my ears.
I passed through the gate, expecting an ambush, expecting guards, expecting anything.
The courtyard was deserted. Empty wooden huts lined the muddy perimeter, doors hanging loose. The fog swirled sluggishly, clinging to the base of the cathedral like a shroud.
Then a tiny noise broke the quiet.
It came from the shadow of a broken stone pillar near the cathedral steps. A soft, breathless hiccup, followed by a low, trembling sob.
I raised the cleaver and took a slow step toward the pillar. "Who’s there?"
I pulled back just enough to look at her face, my hands resting on her small shoulders. Her skin felt strangely cold, almost damp, but I brushed the thought aside.
"How are you like this, Nia?" my voice trembled as I wiped the wet tracks from her cheeks. "Why are you... why are you a kid again? Did your age regress when you got brought here too?"
She stared up at me, her dark eyes glassy and wide. "What?"
"Did you transmigrate into this world too?" I asked, the words tumbling out. "The world from that game wiki I was reading back home? Did whatever pulled me in drag you here as well?"
Nia blinked, her brows pulling together in genuine confusion, as if I were speaking nonsense.
"A... B-Blo... Aseren...?"
Her mouth moved oddly around the word. A strange, wet hitch cut through her voice, almost like two names were overlapping at once, a dark, raspy slur beneath a young girl’s tone. But my mind smoothed it over, locking onto the name I wanted to hear.
"What are you talking about?" she whispered. "What is a wiki?"
My brain felt like it was swimming in syrup. I knew something was wrong. I knew there was a gap in logic standing right in front of me, but every time I tried to reach for it, my mind slid off the thought.
It was Nia. She was right here. Nothing else mattered.
"It doesn’t matter," I said quickly. "It doesn’t matter how it happened. You’re here."
"I was so scared," she murmured, her fingers plucking at the hem of my coat. Her nails were bitten down to the quick, just like always. But as she moved her hand, a faint smell drifted off her sleeve.
It wasn’t cut grass. It smelled like burnt wood and copper.
"Where are the others?" she asked.
"What others?"
"The ones you were with," she whispered, looking past my shoulder toward the foggy gates. "The ones who were helping you."
"I..." I blinked, trying to clear the haze. "I don’t know. I got separated from them."
"Are you going to burn them too?"
The question hung in the air, light and innocent.
I froze. "What?"
Nia blinked, her face perfectly smooth. "I said, are they going to help us too?"
I pressed a palm against my forehead, my heart thumping. "Yeah... yeah, I misheard you. My head just hurts."
"You look tired," she murmured, reaching up to touch my cheek. Her fingers felt sticky. "You look like you haven’t slept in forever."
"I haven’t," I rasped, forcing a small smile as I leaned into her touch. "It’s been... really hard, Nia. You have no idea."
"I do," she whispered, her voice dropping into a soft rhythm that felt vaguely familiar, like a song from a bad dream. "I know how hard you worked. I know how much you hated it."
I wrapped my arms around her again, burying my face in her shoulder. I needed her to be real so badly my chest ached with it.
"We’re going to get out of here," I promised into her hair. "I’m going to take care of you. Just like before."
Against my neck, her small frame gave a subtle shudder.
"Okay," she whispered, her arms wrapping around my back.
As she squeezed me back, I felt something hard pressing through her thin tunic against my chest. A small, smooth wooden bead, resting against her collarbone.
An ash-wood bead from a prayer necklace.
"A charming reunion, isn’t it?"
The voice didn’t echo. It simply existed inside my head, soft, cultured, devoid of sharp edges.
The warmth beneath my chin vanished.
I opened my eyes to a sudden haze. My arms were still locked in a desperate hug, but I was kneeling on cold, polished black stone, squeezing empty air.
"Nia...?" I choked out, scrambling backward.
Across the wide hall, a young girl sat in a high-backed wooden chair. She wore a simple white novice’s robe, hands resting quietly in her lap, head bowed. A heavy iron chain snaked down from her chair into the stone floor.
Beside her stood a man, tall, clad in pristine cream-colored vestments with subtle silver thread. His face was pale and handsome, though thin violet veins branched around his eyes. He held a smooth ash-wood staff tipped with silver antlers.
His hazel eyes were clear and intelligent as he looked down at me.
"Forgive the intrusion," he said, stepping around the girl. His voice carried the relaxed cadence of an academic. "The mind constructs anchors out of pure desperation, Aseren. I merely allowed yours to take form."
My hand twitched toward my belt, but my cleaver was gone. So was my purse and my boots. I wore a rough linen tunic, bare knees on freezing stone.
"Saint Aldren," I rasped.
"Some call me that," he replied, tilting his head. "Though I prefer Shepherd."
He gestured toward the silent girl.
"Your mind calls her Nia," Aldren mused. "An entity from your origins, I presume? A remarkable defense mechanism. Your subconscious projects her image to protect you, though the girl sitting here is far more... connected to your recent past than you realize."
I stared at the girl. She pulled her knees together, shoulders trembling beneath the oversized robe. Her dark hair hid her face, but I could see a jagged line of faded purple scar tissue along the edge of her collarbone.
A memory flared, fire, screams, a small child fleeing into the dark forest after I burned her family alive.
No. It’s Nia. She’s just scared. My mind pushed the thought away, the haze flattening the realization before it could take root.
"Let her go," I said, pushing myself up. My legs felt like lead. "She has nothing to do with this."
Aldren chuckled, a warm, genuine sound.
"Oh, but she has everything to do with this," he said, resting both hands on his staff. "She is the tether. As long as she sits in that chair, unharmed, you will remain compliant. You will not attempt to tear this sanctuary apart."
He took three unhurried steps toward me, eyes scanning my face with clinical curiosity.
"Look at you," Aldren whispered. "A pristine foundation. Unmarked by standard Ascension, yet your vessel endures Ether capacity far beyond your rank. You are extraordinary, Aseren."
"I’m going to kill you," I muttered.
Aldren didn’t flinch. He smiled with profound pity.
"Humanity is an incomplete draft, Aseren," he said, turning toward the arched window at the end of the hall. "A temporary shell. You have been brought here for a sacred purpose. We are going to complete you."
Two figures in heavy iron armor stepped out from the shadows behind me, their gauntlets locking around my arms.
I didn’t fight them. I kept my eyes on the girl in the chair, watching her cling to the edges of her robe, terrified to look up, as they dragged me down the stairs into the dark beneath the monastery.
The stairs gave way to a cold basement that smelled like wet limestone, sulfur, and copper.
The guards dragged me into a circular room lit by pale blue glass tubes. In the center sat a black slate table fitted with heavy iron clamps. They hoisted me onto it, pinning my wrists and ankles before I could pull away.
My Ether was useless anyway. Stagnant, frozen in my chest like a block of ice.
Saint Aldren came down the stairs without a sound, his white robes sweeping the wet floor. Two men in gray coats followed, setting down wooden cases filled with scalpels, bone needles, and long glass syringes.
"Release his bind," Aldren said.
One of the men unlatched the clamp on my forearm.
Aldren pulled up a stool and sat beside me. His fingers were freezing as he pressed them into the crook of my elbow, tracing my veins with terrifying precision.
"Such dense pathways," he murmured, like an art collector examining a painting. "Unrefined, yet remarkably strong. Like a wild creature caught in a trap."
He tilted his head. "A little beast. Biting at the bars, completely blind to the world outside."
He nodded to one of his men.
A long silver needle went straight into my shoulder joint, deep enough to scrape the bone.
Fuck.
I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth groaned, grinding my head back into the cold stone. It wasn’t just pain, it was an invasive, filthy sensation, like someone stirring a freezing wire inside my muscle.
"No poison, little beast," Aldren assured me, watching the fluid drain into a glass tube. "Just mapping. We need to see how much your marrow can expand under pressure. Your heart pumps Ether far too violently for a normal human vessel; we must widen the channels before the real work begins."
For three hours, they didn’t stop.
They hammered fine metal pins into my joints to measure bone density. They forced dense, raw liquid into my veins through glass needles, making my nervous system feel scorched alive from the inside out. My furnace churned, trying to flush the foreign liquid, but the iron clamps held me still while my body burned.
I stared at the ceiling, counting the cracks to keep from screaming.
One. Two. Three.
Near the end of the second hour, the heavy iron doors at the far side of the room groaned open. A line of gray-clad servants shuffled past, carrying wooden crates toward the deeper vaults.
My eyes dragged sideways, blurred from sweat and blood loss.
Among the servants, one figure stopped my breath cold.
A tall, broad man, hunched over under a crate. His skin was rough and gray like cracked leather, the left side of his face stretched into a jagged, toothy ridge.
Willard.
He didn’t look at me. His eyes were milky and dead. He just marched forward, a hollow husk wearing the face of the hunter who’d died in the river to give me a chance to run.
Behind him was a woman dragging a small cart.
Her torso was horribly swollen, her stomach stretched into a translucent, dark mass. Fused into her chest, pulsing under a thin layer of gray skin, was a squirming thing, a baby with pale, lidless eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Her face was gaunt, lips pulled back in a permanent, silent grimace.
Eliza.
My fingers twitched. My heart slammed against my ribs, and a spike of hot Ether cracked the silver ink drawn across my chest.
"Careful, little beast." Aldren’s voice cut through the noise in my head. He didn’t look up from his parchment. "You’re throwing everything off. Try not to move. I’d hate for all this pain to be for nothing."
I forced my hands flat against the slate. I forced my breath to slow, tasting bitter copper in my mouth.
Nia is upstairs, I lied to myself, clinging to the image of the girl in the chair to keep from losing my mind. She’s up there. If I snap now, she dies.
"You recognize them," Aldren mused, setting his quill down. He looked toward the door with a faint smile. "Do you feel pity for them?"
"Are you the reason behind the corruption? Did you turn them? I saw the broodmother’s diary," I rasped.
"I saved them from being nothing," Aldren said, leaning closer, pressing the cold metal probe against my chest. "People are scared of change, little beast. They see what happened to them and call it a tragedy because they can’t imagine what comes after. They were never complete to begin with. At least now... they have a purpose."
He pushed the probe down until my sternum groaned under the pressure.
"And soon, so will you."
The question screamed inside my head, but I kept my mouth shut.
Serve a purpose? What the hell did he mean? I was already a Horror. What more did he want from me?
My chest burned where he pressed the probe. Deep beneath my skin, my Soul Core churned with an unnatural weight. The corruption spreading through this ruined region, the black rot, the mutated beasts, the shifting forest, had already taken root inside me days ago. The antlered doppelganger in my mind had forced my being to break, dragging me past the point of being a normal human.
I was already a monster. He just hadn’t realized it yet.
Aldren leaned closer, his eyes vacant as he noted the way my tissue pushed back against the metal tip. He didn’t see the corruption nestling inside my soul. He saw a blank slate. An untainted, pristine human vessel.
Maybe he was too blinded by his own god complex to see the shadow stretching out beneath his nose.
He lifted the probe, leaving a small, bloody circle on my skin.
"Remarkable," he murmured, wiping the probe clean with a silk handkerchief. "Your body adapts almost immediately. Most people would reject this kind of change, but yours simply... adjusts. The pressure should’ve fractured your sternum, yet you’re still intact."
"Fuck you," I rasped, spitting a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the stone floor.
Aldren gave a faint smile, unbothered. "It isn’t entertainment, little beast. It is preparation. The foundation must be flawless. If a structure is too weak, the house collapses when the owner arrives."
What is he talking about, the owner of what?
My life was fucking miserable. Why did I always end up getting kidnapped by some lunatic with a god complex and dragged into a basement so they could play around with my body? What about me? I had shit I wanted to do too.
My eyes narrowed through the haze of pain. "What owner?"
"You’ll meet him soon enough," Aldren said, turning toward the wooden table to pick up a thick glass cylinder filled with a dense, shimmering black liquid. It moved inside the glass like a living thing, clinging to the sides. "A vessel must be wide enough to hold the tide. Tonight, we begin expanding your Ether channels directly."
One of the gray-coated men stepped forward with a long, hollow brass needle, thicker than a quill, its tip jagged, designed to bore directly into marrow.
"Hold him," Aldren instructed.
The two guards pressed their gauntleted hands onto my shoulders and collarbone with crushing weight.
"Wait," I choked out, heart hammering. "What is that?"
"A minor adjustment," Aldren replied, entirely calm, as if reassuring a frightened dog before surgery. "It will hurt, little beast. Very much, I expect. But pain is merely the sensation of the old flesh yielding to the new."
He raised his hand.
The brass needle descended toward my chest, aiming for the center of my sternum.
I clamped my eyes shut, locked my jaws together, and focused every ounce of my fading sanity on a single, desperate thought.
Nia is upstairs, still sitting in that chair. I can deal with everything else later. For now, I just have to endure this and get back to her. She’s counting on me.
Then the metal hit the bone, and my world dissolved into pure, shrieking white.