A white light tore across Desan's vision, blinding him.
Then—wind.
Cold, clean, and wrong. It blew across his face like a memory that didn't belong to him.
Desan opened his eyes to the outside for the first time.
Fog.
Thick. Heavy. Wrong. It clung to the air like something alive, with a faint hue that shimmered just out of understanding. He tried to focus on the color, to name it, but his mind recoiled. It wasn't a color meant for human eyes.
Something about it made his skin crawl.It felt oppressive.It didn't just fill the air—it watched.
And yet… he could see through it. Perfectly. The fog was clear, in the way dreams sometimes are before they become nightmares.
He looked up.
Clouds circled above like vultures. From within them, an eye emerged. Vast. Alien. Impossible.
It looked at him.
And he knew—it saw him.
A chill shot down his spine, locking his breath in his throat.
Blink.
Gone.
Reality snapped back.
He stood at the edge of a ruined yard, its rusted gates bent and torn. Behind it, a forest loomed—tall, gnarled trees twisted into unnatural shapes, as if something had forced them to grow wrong.
Bodies littered the earth like discarded meat.
Burnt, broken, half-buried. The ground was soaked in blood and ash, the aftermath of a battle with no victors. Just carnage.
Velcrith's voice rasped in his head."So… they died."
Desan glanced at the corpses. "You knew them?"
"I saw them once," Velcrith said. "They used to guard the mansion."
A pause.
"They never came back."
Silence again.
Desan moved through the ruins, boots crunching over shattered glass and bone. With every step, the creak of his armor echoed louder—like old wood under strain. The smell hit him again. Acid. Rot. Sweat baked into fabric. Himself.
"I smell disgusting," Desan muttered, yanking at a chest strap. The armor peeled off with a wet, tearing sound, and hunks of ruined flesh-padding slipped free, slapping the dirt like dead slugs.
From deep inside his skull, Velcrith groaned."How do you think I feel? I'm stuck in here with your meat stench."
Desan rolled his eyes. "Then crawl out and get your own body."
"Tempting. There's a high probability I'd die."
Desan dropped the old armor with a grunt, stretching out his battered limbs. The breeze kissed raw, half-healed skin—cold, but not clean. The wind carried more than chill now. It carried rot. Smoke. Blood long dried into the dirt.
He turned over another corpse, finding a cleaner set of armor beneath it. Not spotless—just less awful. He tugged it free, examining the faded crest stamped on the chestplate: a chained tree, gnarled and starved.
"Forest Watchers," he muttered, half to himself.
"What are they even about?" he asked, slipping on the gear piece by piece.
Velcrith's voice buzzed in his head. "Well, for beginners… they were a minor noble house. Offshoot of one of the major families. Their job was to keep the forest in check. Hunt the beasts. Maintain the borders. Keep the wild where it belongs."
Desan frowned, tightening a belt strap. "They clearly fucked that job sideways."
"Cult rituals and monster experiments weren't in the original handbook, no. But you know how these things go—there's always someone in the bloodline who decides, 'You know what? Tradition boring. Let's do blood sacrifices instead."
Desan found a sword nearby. Still sharp. A strange second symbol etched into the steel, one he didn't recognize—older than the crest.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Always one lunatic trying to rewrite the story."
He strapped the sword to his side, the wind shifting again. The fog thickened, and something unseen moved in the trees.
Then he felt it—The air split in two, pressure sucked outward like the world had been slashed by a god's blade.
A static burn crawled across his palms.
Instinct hit.
He dropped, low and fast—
A breath later, the rusted gate and the compound wall were sliced clean through.
Thud.
The shockwave didn't stop there.
The slash carried on, carving through stone and silence alike, reaching the mansion wall behind with a bone-shaking crack.
BOOM.
Chunks of stone flew. Dust erupted. The world roared.
"What the fuck was that," Velcrith muttered under his breath.
Desan didn't answer. He just stared through the settling dust.
"…Looks like I can't catch a break," he said, voice low.
Then movement—A shape stepped through the ruined gate, framed in falling ash and fractured stone.
Humanoid.
Almost.
Seven feet tall, wrapped in obsidian-black armor that drank in the light.And at its hips—tied like some grotesque ornament—hung the gutted remains of a goat, its innards coiled like offerings, swinging gently with each step.
Desan's breath caught in his throat.
The humming pierced his skull—no rhythm, no melody, just raw, broken devotion. Prayer twisted into a weapon.
Desan's eyes stung as the figures stepped forward. Two smaller ones, flanking the towering armored monster. Their eyelids were sewn shut with black thread, heads tilting unnaturally as if listening to something Desan couldn't hear.
He unsheathed his sword with a shriek of metal, eyes darting for any gap, any crack in the compound's ruin that might serve as an escape.
Velcrith wailed inside his mind, spasming like a struck nerve.
Their shared soul buckled under unseen pressure.
Every beat of Desan's heart brought it closer.
Its blade was already raised.
Desan didn't even get the chance to choose.
It was on him.