"This is where you are to enter from."
The retainer spoke as he pointed towards the forest sprawled before us, its trees rising so high and thick that they seemed to swallow the entire expanse beyond them, leaving nothing but a wall of dark trunks and tangled branches for me to look at.
From what he had explained earlier, every participant was meant to enter the Brink from a different point through the forest, each of us brought there alone by a retainer.
His eyes drifted to the Jian strapped at my side before moving to the glove I now wore over my left hand, a small frown taking over his features as if he had already decided that the sight of me was somehow offensive.
Goddamn bastard.
I knew it. He was looking down on me.
That was how it had always been for Yun. Everyone saw him as some entitled idiot who had coasted through life on his father’s name without ever putting in any effort himself, as if simply being born into the main line of House Claiom had meant I had never needed to struggle for anything.
But they were wrong.
And I would make sure to shove that fact down their throats during this Rite.
"You are to enter when the gong sounds," the retainer continued, his voice carrying that same dry disinterest.
"The same gong will signal the end three days from now. If you leave the forest before then, you will be disqualified."
He placed just enough emphasis on those final words that I almost looked back at him.
I barely acknowledged him, already tired of the disdain he seemed to carry as I looked towards the forest and started walking.
The closer I came, the stranger the air felt around me, as if something cold and heavy had seeped into the trees themselves, pressing quietly against my skin in a way I had never felt before.
Miasma.
The twisted energy sat over the forest like a thin, invisible mist, the root of every problem that had plagued this world and so many others long before it.
The people of Acheron did not know it yet, but Miasma was far more than the corruption Crimson had supposedly brought with its arrival, and I almost laughed at how thick the web of lies around this world truly was.
Miasma was not simply an energy, nor was it brought about by Crimson.
It was alive.
Not alive in the way humans were, but alive in the way a disease was alive, spreading wherever it could reach and consuming everything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path.
It moved through the universe, finding world after world and feeding on them until there was nothing left but pieces of what they had once been.
And Acheron was simply next.
The worst part was that it did not only open Rifts into those worlds and unleash horrors from within them. When Miasma consumed a world, it tore away fragments of it, swallowing places, people, stories and all the rules that had once governed them, before leaving those pieces trapped somewhere beyond the tears it created.
That was why Rifts were never the same.
Each one was linked to something Miasma had already consumed, a piece of a world that had been long gone by the time anyone on Acheron saw it.
One Rift might carry the remains of a city, another a ruined battlefield, another some strange place built upon rules no human mind was supposed to understand, all of them holding onto faint traces of the stories that had existed there before they were devoured.
And if one of those Rifts was not Undone in time, it would become a Wound and everything within it would spill out.
I let out a breath, my eyes moving beyond the trees.
The retainer behind me shifted, probably intending to stop me from walking any further before the Rite officially began, but before he could say anything, a deep sound rolled through the forest.
The gong.
It was heavy enough that I felt it in my chest, loud enough that for a second it almost seemed as if it had been rung right beside me.
I did not wait for the retainer to say another word.
I broke into a jog, heading deeper into the forest as the trees finally closed around me from all sides, swallowing the last sight of the entrance behind me.
I kept moving.
In fact, I knew that no matter what happened, I wanted to win this Rite.
I was tired of being looked down on by this House for no fucking reason at all, tired of everyone deciding what Yun was before they had ever bothered to see who I actually was, and for now I did not want anything more than to shove their assumptions down their throats. This chapter was taken from novelping(.)com without permission.
It was not even that I thought I was better than all of them just because I knew more about this world than they did.
Well, maybe I did think that a little.
Still, being looked down on by those insignificant, insufferable bastards was not the greatest feeling, and if I wanted to make them regret it, then I had to push myself to my limits over the next three days.
I had to find as many Hollows as I could and slaughter every single one of them before anyone else got the chance.
As I moved deeper into the forest, the minutes passing without any sign of another participant, the trees grew denser around me.
Their branches tangled overhead until the light became thin and uneven, while the same eerie feeling I had noticed at the entrance pressed closer against my skin, enough that I could almost feel the Ichor within me pulling back from its presence.
I did not even realise how long I had been walking before a smell reached me.
Iron. Heavy and sharp, lingering through the air beneath something else that I could not quite place.
I slowed, my senses stretching thin as I moved around the trees before my eyes finally fell upon it.
A carcass.
At first, I thought it was a Hollow, but after taking a closer look, I realised it was only a deer.
Well, only was probably not the right word.
To put it mildly, it was not pretty.
Its head had been torn from its body and left a short distance away, half-hidden beneath the roots of a tree. Its stomach had been pulled open as if something had clawed through it without even trying to be careful, its entrails spilling out over the dirt beneath it and staining the ground a dark, wet red.
A Hollow.
That was the only reasonable answer.
If a Rift was not Undone in time and turned into a Wound, the Hollows within it would eventually leak out and claim the surrounding land as their own, twisting it to fit them as they slaughtered anything unlucky enough to be caught nearby.
And that was not even the worst part, because most of them did not stop at killing. They multiplied, their numbers growing larger while the creatures themselves became stronger with every day they were allowed to remain.
That was why it was so dangerous for a Rift to remain unresolved.
And even after it became a Wound, it was just as dangerous to let the Hollows that escaped it roam free for too long.
I could still feel heat coming from the body in front of me, while the blood continued to leak slowly into the earth.
It was close.
And by the look of what it had done to the deer, it was one damn gruesome bastard.
My eyes followed the faint trail of blood smeared across the forest floor, first to where the deer’s head had been thrown, then further into the trees where the trail grew thinner as it moved deeper into the forest.
I slowed my breathing and followed it.
For several minutes, there was nothing but the sound of my own steps against the dirt, each one placed carefully between the roots rising from the ground, until a faint rustling came from somewhere ahead of me.
It was quiet at first, almost like something dragging itself through the leaves, but as I moved closer I heard another sound beneath it.
Wet tearing.
Then my eyes finally fell upon it.
Damn, aren’t you pretty.
For a moment, my mind struggled to understand what I was looking at.
Its body was long and thin, almost twice my own length, while its skin clung so tightly to its frame that every ridge of bone beneath it seemed ready to split through.
Its limbs were far too long for the rest of it, thin and bent at too many angles, each joint sitting wrong beneath the grey hide as it dragged itself forward with arms that looked more like sharpened pieces of bone.
Its hind legs had been twisted backwards, forcing it into a permanent hunch as it leaned over its front limbs, its body moving with an awkward, uneven sway every time it took a step.
Then there was its spine.
It rose above its back in a jagged curve, tall enough that from where I stood it almost looked like a second head had grown from it, bony spikes jutting through the creature’s hide as if its own body was trying to tear itself apart.
Where its face should have been, there was only a swollen knot of pale flesh, with six short tentacles hanging from its base and curling through the air as though they were tasting it. Follow the newest chapters on novelping(.)com.
Its torso was worse. A long gash ran across where its stomach should have been, opening and closing like a thin mouth lined with jagged teeth, while streaks of fresh blood dripped from it onto the leaves beneath.
My brain almost could not comprehend its shape at first.
It was not simply ugly. It felt wrong in a way that made some old part of me want to look away, as if it was something that had never been meant to exist, much less be seen by human eyes.
I gritted my teeth as my heartbeat picked up.
Was I scared?
I raised my palm against my chest, feeling the uneven drumming beneath it.
Then I scoffed.
To think something like this could still scare me.
My mind ran through the memories I tried to bury every day, the same sensations that had followed me from the Trial and still came back whenever I let myself think too hard about them.
Could something this meagre even compare to that?
What was the worst this bastard could do to me, eat me?
Well, I had been eaten by something far bigger than that.
With a quiet chuckle, I moved.
Fighting it head-on would have been stupid. It had not seen me yet, but I had seen it, and for once I had an idea of how to use that advantage.
I circled around its side, moving as quietly as I could while keeping its figure at the edge of my vision, before slipping deeper between the trees.
It should pass through here, based on where it was heading.
Letting a thread spin out from my left hand, I caught it against my gloved palm and pulled it forward, running it around the trunk of a nearby tree before guiding it back towards me from the other side. I tied the end of it to the tip of my blade, holding the Jian firmly in my right hand as I watched the Hollow continue dragging itself closer.
Perfect.
Let’s see how you like this.
I crouched behind the tree, slowing my breathing as I waited for it to come.
It was still ravaging the remains of its meal, or at least whatever it had carried away from the deer, faint traces of blood smearing the gash across its torso every time it moved.
It walked strangely too, swaying from side to side as if it had been drunk on blood.
What a weird bastard.
I waited there with bated breath, my heartbeat beginning to pick up again as it drew closer and closer, its bone-like limbs scraping through the leaves.
Now.
I pulled.
The thread shortened and sharpened at the same time, while I kept the Jian in my right hand, still tied to the end of the strand.
More thread returned to me through my left palm as the loop around the Hollow shrank in an instant.
The creature did not realise what had happened until the thread caught around its body from all sides and yanked it sharply towards me, dragging it into the tree standing between us.
It wailed.
The sound tore through the forest as the sharpened thread bit into its hide, and as soon as it did, I pulled from both ends.
The strand sliced over the black glove without leaving so much as a mark, while the Hollow’s body was dragged from the ground beneath the tightening pressure.
My arms burned in protest, but I kept pulling, making the loop smaller and smaller until the creature finally crashed into the tree between us hard enough to make the entire trunk shake.
For a second, I almost thought it would come down.
The Hollow wailed again, whether from pain or surprise I had no way of knowing.
But all I felt at that moment was pure ecstasy.
Damn, its wails really were music to my ears.