I ignored the noise from the kitchen and went straight to my room. I was exhausted, sore enough that even conversation felt like work. Doyle had anticipated that much. The bath was already waiting.
The sword stayed on my mind the entire time.
Last time, it had dragged me into the dark and shown me things I still hadn’t grasped. With the grime gone, I set the blade beside me on the bed, closed my eyes, and waited for the world to fall away.
The sword hummed.
I was back in the memory.
A white scar hung far above, unmoving, its glow the only light that reached this place. I followed the man down into a vast crater of obsidian, its walls sloping inward toward a distant centre. Every step pulled at the chain between us. He never loosened his grip. Not once.
Something ahead commanded the hollow.
Tall. Branching.
Its crown pierced the crack in the sky, rising from the crater’s heart like it had grown through the world itself.
The man stopped.
He tilted his head, listening, then said a word I had never heard before.
“Tree.”
We moved again. It was still impossibly far away.
The descent fought us from the first step. The ground dipped and sheared away, forcing us lower in broken paths. Slabs of stone collapsed underfoot, sending us sliding until we clawed our way down, fingers tearing into obsidian.
Far below, creatures streamed toward the tree in broken lines, spilling down the crater walls. Some skittered low, all limbs and hunger. Others dragged their bulk behind them, carving fresh scars into the stone as they descended. A few moved upright, slow and deliberate, never slipping.
None of them turned away.
Something small moved in the dark to my left. I turned toward it without thinking. Hunger flared sharp and sudden, old and familiar.
The chain snapped tight.
“Don’t.”
The word hit harder than the pull. I twisted back, teeth bared. “Why no eat?”
He studied me for a long moment, eyes flicking once toward the shadows before returning to me.
“You become what you eat,” he said. “That is why you’re changing. If you ate here now, it would rot in you.”
I understood the refusal.
Not the reason.
As we moved, he spoke. Not to teach. To keep time. He told me about places where the ground did not bite back. About light that burned in the sky.
I didn’t understand any of it.
I followed. Chained.
His hand slammed into my shoulder without warning and drove me flat against the stone.
“Quiet.”
I froze.
The ground ahead shifted. Not a tremor. Not wind. Something deeper. The mountains themselves seemed to lean.
At first, I thought the land was breaking. The world rumbled beneath our feet, and we fought to keep our balance as stone slid and cracked.
Then I saw the chains.
They wrapped a colossal form rising from the earth, links thick enough to crush hills. Driven deep into the rock, they bound the creature so tightly that the land itself had bent around them.
The shape towered over everything. I couldn’t take it in all at once. Each time I tried, my eyes slid away, as if my mind refused to hold something that big.
“What is that?” I whispered.
He did not answer at once. When he did, his voice was quieter.
“It is like you.”
I looked down at my hands. Long fingers. No claws. Softer than before. With a faint shine.
He kept staring at the colossal creature, awe in his eyes. “Edar,” he murmured.
“What is Edar?” I asked.
He glanced toward me and gave a flat smile. “Where I’m from, it’s a thing that grows fast. Eats crops… everything in sight.”
I followed his gaze to the massive form, bound and unmoving. The chains were enormous, grown into the creature itself.
“I eat,” I said. “Edar.” I rolled the name around in my mouth, then looked back at the monster that shared my blood. “We are Edar.”
He studied me longer than before, eyes narrowing, as if the thought unsettled him.
He nodded once. “You may be the only one of your kind,” he said slowly, “who’s eaten human flesh.”
The words did not settle.
I pressed a hand to my chest without knowing why. The motion felt old. Practiced. Beneath my palm, something struck back. Slow. Steady. Not hunger. Not rage. A rhythm.
“I am different now,” I said.
“You no longer belong to just this place,” he said.
I swallowed. “You take me with you?”
He didn’t answer at once. His gaze dropped to the chain at my neck, followed its length to his hand. His fingers tightened, then loosened.
“We will see,” he said at last.
He started walking again before I could ask more. The answer felt thin, stretched over something heavier.
We moved on.
The ground dipped and rose in broken waves, forcing us to pick our way carefully. More than once, I slipped where stone had been crushed smooth by immense weight. He caught me once, hard, fingers digging into my arm until the bone ached.
After a long stretch of silence, he spoke.
“There are no names here.”
I kept my eyes on the land ahead, on the scars torn through it.
He stopped me. Forced me to look at him. He touched his own chest.
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“Adarin.”
The sound carried farther than it should have.
He glanced at me, then away. As we walked, he tested a few sounds under his breath. Short. Sharp. None of them held. He stopped again, studying my face.
“Your skin,” he said. “It shines.”
He waited.
Then said, “Lumi.”
Something eased in my chest. The chain did not pull.
The sound fit.
“Lumi?” I repeated.
He nodded. “Your name.”
I didn’t understand.
“When I say Lumi,” he said, placing a hand on my chest where the rhythm held, “that means you.”
I froze, unsure how to answer. Then I said his name.
“Adarin.”
I placed a hand on his chest.
He nodded once. Then he said it again. “Lumi.”
I nodded too.
Understanding.
We followed the damage left behind by the smaller creatures as they moved toward the tree. Trenches carved through stone. Plates of earth shoved aside like loose skin.
“Why we going to tree?” I asked.
He did not slow. “Because it might be our only chance.”
“What chance?”
He lifted a hand and pointed toward the white scar splitting the sky, then kept walking.
Much later, the ground fell away, revealing the final stretch toward the vast roots of the tree.
The space between them was not empty.
Hundreds of camps spread across the stone like an infection. Bone frames stitched with hide. Green, sickly embers burned in shallow pits, fed by dark stones that pulsed faintly, as if breathing. Smoke clung low, refusing to rise. The air tasted wrong. Thick. Oily.
Movement crawled through it all.
Small things skittered between camps in swarms, hunched and fast, limbs snapping at odd angles. Larger shapes loomed farther back, slow and deliberate. All of them pressed toward the base of the towering tree, gathering in uneven ranks.
“Here,” Adarin whispered, crouching within a massive scar in the ground.
Rain poured down in a steady curtain, as if falling straight from the white scar above. His jaw tightened as he watched the creatures move.
“Sluagh,” he said quietly. The name he gave them.
They were everywhere. I watched one scramble over another to reach the roots.
“They will climb,” I said.
“That they will,” he replied. “But they’re waiting for something.”
He fell silent, thinking. His fingers tightened on my chain.
“We need to be smart,” he said at last. “If we move now, they’ll swarm us. Drag us down. Stay here. Do not feed. No matter what you see.”
Hunger stirred at the word.
He met my eyes. “Lumi. Don’t feed. Stay out of sight.” He looked away. “If you draw attention, I won’t reach you.”
I nodded. “Lumi won’t feed.”
“Good. Stay hidden.”
Then he slipped away into the rain, his shape swallowed by darkness and wind.
I waited. Edged closer for a better look at the tree, keeping low among the broken stone.
Time dragged.
Hunger rose again, slow and gnawing.
I listened to Adarin. No feeding.
Below me, the Sluagh never stopped moving. Some dragged screaming things from the edges of the basin. Others tore apart bodies already cooling.
I turned my face away and locked my jaw until it hurt.
Something shifted beside me.
I turned.
Its skin was layered in smooth black scales, split by thin red scars that pulsed faintly. A dark chain was wrapped around its neck.
Familiar.
But its face was wrong.
Too still. Too empty. Its eyes were black hollows that reflected nothing.
Before I could react, its hand closed around my chain and yanked.
I slammed into stone. Pain burst through my skull. Warmth ran down my cheek and into my mouth.
Blood.
I clawed at my throat, fingers scraping uselessly against metal as it dragged me forward. I shouted, but the sound tore loose and vanished into the rain.
Nothing answered.
The ground ripped at my skin as it hauled me downhill. Stone bit into my ribs. My strength bled away with every pull. With it went hope, thinning until it felt foolish to have held it at all.
Green energy flickered ahead.
The Sluagh gathered, teeth clicking softly, claws scraping stone. They did not rush me.
They watched.
Red threads pulsed beneath their skin. Their movements were strange. Restrained. As if held.
I hit the basin floor hard.
The familiar creature released my chain and bounded away at once, vanishing back into the darkness to hunt.
A sound like splintering bone cracked through the basin.
The smaller Sluagh scattered, clicking and scrambling aside as if shoved by thought alone.
Something tall stepped forward.
It stood straight backed. Lean. Wrong. Bones cracked as it moved, skin hanging in torn black folds that flapped loosely over a body that no longer fit itself.
It gathered my chain in one bony hand and lifted me.
The chain crushed into my throat as I rose.
In its other hand was something.
Blood turned sharp.
Its surface rippled, wet and alive, as if breathing.
The tall one studied me.
Calculating.
The smaller ones crept closer, circling. Their heads tilted as they watched me, nostrils flaring.
“Adarin,” I choked.
My voice broke halfway through his name.
Nothing answered. Not even the tall thing. Its mind was still working through what it had caught.
No footsteps came.
He was not coming.
The realisation hurt more than the chain. Whatever thin hope I had been clutching bled out of me, leaving something raw behind it.
Anger.
At myself for believing words could weigh more than teeth. For thinking chains ever truly loosened.
The tall one hauled me closer. Hot, rotten breath washed over my face. The sharpened blood lifted.
Instinct took over.
I struck with everything I had.
My fist slammed into its jaw. Pain detonated up my arm, bone shrieking as it met something harder. The impact rocked the creature back half a step.
Just enough.
Its grip faltered.
The chain slipped from its hand and hit the ground hard.
For a heartbeat, I was free.
I staggered upright, shaking. My arm hung limp at my side. My breath tore in and out of me, ragged and loud.
Then the tall one moved.
Its body convulsed violently, jerking hard enough to wrench its spine out of alignment. The sound followed a heartbeat later. Splintering. Sharp.
Skin split along old seams, tearing wider as it arched. Inside, it wasn’t muscle.
It was bone.
Too much of it. Packed tight and wrong, stacked like broken roots forced into a hollow space.
One arm tore through the cloak.
Then another.
Then more.
Each new limb burst free, joints wrenching themselves into shapes they had never held.
The smaller creatures scattered, scrambling back on all fours. Not in panic.
In formation.
They spread out, closing gaps, shaping a rough circle around me. No openings. No path through.
I stumbled back, nearly losing my footing as my heel caught on rock. Fear surged up my spine, sharp and sudden.
Pain anchored me.
Rage kept my legs under me.
The thing straightened. It towered now, its many limbs flexing as if testing themselves. Its gaze locked onto me. The curiosity there had sharpened into something far more dangerous.
I felt it before I saw it.
From beneath the shredded cloak, one limb raised the sharpened blood.
It stepped toward me.
I twisted aside.
Not fast enough.
The blade drove into my side. The impact ripped the breath from my lungs. Pain flared white, then something colder followed, spilling inward, rushing through me.
My scream tore free as the blood burned.
Not with heat.
With instruction.
Submit.
No words. No sound. Just intent.
My legs folded before I could think to resist. Stone scraped my knees as they hit. My hands slammed down, fingers clawing uselessly at grit.
No!
I fought. Teeth clenched until my jaw screamed. Muscles locked and strained, tendons quivering as I tried to rise. The chain at my throat went slack as my body seized, spine arching hard enough to steal what little breath I had left.
My vision narrowed.
Movement came before thought. My limbs answered something else.
I was hauled upright, dragged by my own bones. Breath rasped in shallow, broken pulls as the pain settled into something colder.
Deeper.
Control.
The creature loomed close. I felt its satisfaction, heavy and patient, as the intent pushed further in. Each beat of my heart drove me farther back, shrinking me behind my eyes.
I screamed again, but even that no longer felt like mine.
Then something struck it from behind.
Hard.
Bone cracked. Marrow splashed, staining the ground.
The pressure wavered.
Just for a breath.
“Down,” a voice barked.
Adarin.
He hit the creature like a landslide.
Both hands were wrapped in a blood-soaked length of chain, links biting into his palms as he swung it down. The blow landed with a sound like splitting stone. Bone cracked. He struck again, and again, driving the chain into the joint at the wrist.
The creature thrashed. Limbs flailed, clawing at him, tearing furrows through his side and shoulder. Blood sprayed across them both, hot and slick. Adarin grunted but did not let go. He leaned into the attack, teeth bared, muscles screaming as he hammered it down.
He snarled, more breath than voice.
Another strike.
The bone gave way.
The arm tore free at the wrist with a wet snap. Marrow sprayed. The severed hand still twitched, the sharpened blood pulsing in its grip.
Adarin did not slow.
He wrenched the blade from the twitching fingers.
It resisted.
Adarin growled under his breath and leaned his weight into it, boots skidding on stone. His jaw locked. Veins stood out in his neck.
“Now,” he hissed.
The tall one faltered. Its limbs stuttered.
Adarin lunged.
The blade punched into its chest and stuck. The wail that tore out of the creature shook the basin.
Inside me, something broke loose.
The pressure holding me ripped backward through the wound. I collapsed, lungs burning, body jerking as control slammed back into place. My hands scraped stone as I tried to breathe.
Around me, the other creatures seized mid-motion. Claws froze. Heads snapped up.
The tall one convulsed. Dark ichor spilled from the wound as the sharpened blood fed on itself, chewing inward. Its limbs buckled. The mass of bone folded, joints failing one after another until the body collapsed under its own weight.
Adarin shouted, wordless, and twisted the blade.
The scream cut off like a throat crushed shut. The weapon softened in his hands, losing its edge, running down his arms as ordinary blood.
Silence followed.
The Sluagh stood frozen across the basin.
Whatever had held them together drained away, leaving only hesitation. Then fear.
Adarin stood a few steps away, blood and black fluid streaking his arms. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked at me. “We’re not finished,” he said. “There’s more of them.”
Then, quieter, “Can you stand?”
I tried. Failed. Tried again.
I nodded.
