OUTSIDE OF WHISPERING WOODS
Night fell over the forest's edge, where the team had set up camp. A soft, crackling fire glowed in the center, casting long shadows over the trees. One by one, the others had drifted into sleep—some resting in tents, others simply curled up near the warmth.
But Elias sat alone, upright against a log, staring into the quiet flames. His sword rested beside him, untouched. He wasn't on watch. He just couldn't sleep.
A soft rustle broke the silence as Faith stepped out of her tent, gently wrapping a cloak over her shoulders. Her eyes found him quickly.
"You're still awake?" she asked softly, walking toward him.
"You don't have to stay up all night to scout for us. We can take turns, you know."
Elias didn't look at her at first.
"It's not that," he replied, voice low. "I just... can't sleep."
Faith sat beside him, glancing at the fire.
"Is it because of the Whispering Woods?"
He was quiet for a long moment. The flames danced in his eyes.
Finally, he spoke.
"When Dante got pulled in by the forest, I ran to help him... but the forest turned on me too. It tried to drag me in again."
He paused. "And while I was under... I saw something."
Faith's gaze remained steady, listening.
"I saw two figures. I couldn't see their faces, but they... they called me 'son.' They said they'd come back for me."
He took a shaky breath. "I think... I think they were my parents."
Faith's expression softened.
"Elias..."
"Up until now, I never really thought about them," he continued, his voice tightening. "I grew up with my relatives. Whenever I asked about my parents, they just told me they died in an accident. I believed it... but now, after what I saw... it doesn't feel right."
His eyes glistened, a rare crack in his composure.
"I want to know who they really were. What happened. Why they left me behind."
Faith gently reached out, placing a hand on his arm.
"You're not alone in that feeling."
He looked at her.
"My mother was taken when I was ten," Faith began, her voice calm but tinged with pain. "She was strong—brilliant, really. But she got caught in a war that wasn't hers. My father never spoke much after that. I guess... we both lost her in our own ways."
They sat in silence for a few seconds, the night around them still.
Their eyes met.
Neither of them spoke, but slowly—almost without realizing—they began to lean closer, drawn by the warmth and the shared pain.
Their lips nearly touched—
Snap!
A sudden twitch of movement in the bushes jolted them apart. Both turned sharply toward the noise.
Out hopped a small rabbit, darting across the camp and vanishing into the trees.
They stared for a beat, then exchanged a half-awkward, half-amused glance.
The firelight flickered between them. Neither said a word.
Faith's cheeks flushed a soft pink. Elias looked down, eyes wide, then glanced away, lips parting slightly as if to say something—but didn't.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable—just charged, warm, and gently awkward.
They exchanged a shy glance, both of them a little red, both of them quietly smiling without smiling.
IN MORNING
The fog near Cael Morhan had grown thicker than usual, almost suffocating in its silence. Each tree groaned under its own weight, branches curled like gnarled fingers praying to be released. A chill that didn't belong to the season ran beneath the forest floor.
Arkan walked through the path barefoot, each step silent, his dark cloak whispering across the mud, untouched by the damp. His posture was relaxed—too relaxed for someone walking through such dangerous territory. As if the world itself bent away from him in fear.
Ahead, torchlight broke the mist.
Ten —magic users on the outer path to Cael Morhan—stepped into formation. Their enchantments activated, lighting their arms with a golden hue. Sigils hovered in the air. One of them stepped forward, smirking.
"Oi, traveler," he mocked, "cloak down. Only cowards hide their faces "
Arkan paused. His head tilted slightly, as if observing a fly he hadn't expected.
Another one scoffed.
"He's mute, maybe? Or just another human trash."
A third conjured a spear made of crackling white energy and spun it.
Arkan's voice finally surfaced, calm and unbothered.
"You shouldn't have spoken."
They barely had time to register the words.
What followed wasn't a fight. It was art. Blood-soaked, relentless art.
Arkan raised his hand—and the space fractured.
In an instant, two of the ten were sliced cleanly in half, vertically. A red flash, and their organs spilled out like severed fruits, steaming against the cold ground.
The third, who had mocked him, found his legs snapped backwards, bone jutted out of his thighs, and his body was impaled by black tendrils summoned from Arkan's palm.
A fourth screamed, but was cut short when Arkan blinked and appeared behind him, driving his hand into his spine and ripping out his spinal cord like a serpent, hissing as blood fountained.
The remaining tried to conjure shields—too late.
With a wave, black shards emerged from the earth, impaling three of them through the jaw and up through their skulls, shattering teeth and eyes, brains bursting through bone.
The ninth tried to run—he didn't get far. Arkan pointed, and the man's body crumpled in on itself, legs folding into his chest, ribs cracking as his heart was crushed under his own ribcage.
The tenth simply froze. Paralyzed in horror. Arkan approached him slowly, gently cupping his cheek.
"It's not your fault. You were born weak."
And then—his thumb pierced the man's eye, and he fell, twitching.
Silence returned. Ten corpses painted the forest red, blood dripping from branches, pooling under roots.
But then—
Arkan opened his right eye. A red glyph spun inside his iris, ancient and violent.
Time twisted.
The air around the corpses shimmered, like heat waves dancing over fire. Their bodies reversed—bones snapping back into place, blood retreating, flesh sealing.
They lived again—for half a second.
Just long enough to realize they had died.
Just long enough to scream.
And Arkan slaughtered them all again. Slower.
The first man's jaw was ripped off. Another had his face peeled back by shadowy wires. One had his stomach opened and intestines pulled out like ropes, Arkan wrapping them around his neck and strangling him with his own gut.
One woman screamed for mercy. Arkan nodded solemnly.
"You'll get it in your next life."
He pressed a finger to her forehead and blew her head apart, chunks of skull and scalp smearing the trees.
As the last body hit the mud—again—Arkan breathed out calmly.
He wiped a single drop of blood from his sleeve and whispered:
"Half a second. Enough to remind the world... who I am."
Then, without another glance, he walked forward into the mist... leaving behind a massacre that even the forest itself seemed too afraid to absorb.
Outskirts of Cael Morhan
The team finally stepped out of the dense, haunted trees of the Whispering Forest. Before them lay the shattered remains of a once-majestic city — Cael Morhan. The morning sun struggled to pierce the mist that clung to the crumbling towers and broken streets, giving the ruins a ghostly shimmer.
The air was thick — not just with dust, but with the heavy pressure of magic long decayed, hanging like a fog around every shattered wall.
Faith pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, staring at the devastated landscape. "They say this used to be the most beautiful city in the world," she said quietly, almost in mourning. "Gardens that touched the sky, towers carved from living stone... A masterpiece." She paused, her voice dropping even lower. "And the first to catch the wrath of Nyxoth."
The team fell silent.
Elias stared at the ruins, feeling a cold weight settle in his chest. The remnants of a great dream lay broken before them — proof that not even the strongest walls, the brightest cities, could withstand what was coming.
Vance whistled low under his breath, breaking the heavy silence. "Yeah... whatever hit this place didn't just want it dead. They wanted it erased."
Logan crouched beside a scorched statue of a knight, running his fingers over the cracks. "The magic here... it's still unstable. Like the city's bleeding."
Alice shifted uncomfortably. "Feels like the ground's watching us."
A quiet gust of wind blew past, carrying with it faint, broken whispers — voices too shattered to understand, but heavy enough to stir the heart.
Elias felt something stir deep within him, the faint hum of something calling... something ancient.
The team exchanged glances. There was no turning back now. Cael Morhan awaited them, and whatever it hid, it wasn't going to reveal itself easily.
Logan's eyes lit up with excitement. "Let's go! Let's move ahead!" he said, already taking a few eager steps forward.
Dante grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. "We have to wait for Dorian before moving any further, dumbass," he muttered with a smirk.
Before Logan could protest, Alice's expression darkened. She tensed, her eyes scanning the misty ruins around them. "I can sense something," she said quietly. "We're not alone here."
The group instantly fell into a cautious silence, their earlier momentum freezing as a new layer of tension crept into the air.
Then, the ground shuddered.
A low, guttural roar echoed from beneath the earth, and in a violent burst of stone and dust, something erupted from the cracked plaza ahead.
A hulking, six-limbed beast, made of fused armor, bone, and sinew, stood tall—its body wrapped in rusted chains, with dozens of runic symbols glowing faintly beneath its skin. Its head resembled a shattered mask with nothing beneath but pulsating darkness.
The creature let out a screech that shattered glass in the nearby ruins, slamming two of its massive fists into the ground and sending a shockwave of blackened flame toward the group.
Vance activated his barrier. "Everyone spread out! Don't let it focus on one of us!"
Faith launched a spear of light into its shoulder, causing it to stumble but not fall.
Logan and Elias dashed forward, circling opposite sides. "I'll go low, you go high," Logan shouted. Elias nodded. "Let's tear it down!"
Dante, though magicless, distracted it by drawing its attention with thrown debris and tactical shouts.
The creature swung its chained arm toward Elias, but Alice warped space just in time, teleporting him above it.
Elias's blade slashed across its shoulder, exposing the glowing sigils beneath. "That's its core! Aim there!"
Faith, Vance, and Alice combined their powers—light, arcane pressure, and gravitational crush—stunning it just long enough for Elias and Logan to launch a dual strike, plunging their weapons directly into the glowing runes.
The creature shrieked—its entire body cracked like glass—and with one final roar, it exploded into a burst of black ash, sucked back into the earth from where it came.
The morning air returned to silence.
Everyone stood, panting, bruised, and in awe.
Dante broke the silence. "Remind me never to wake up early again."
The team chuckled.
Vance wiped the sweat from his brow, eyes scanning the ruined skyline.
"Why are these beasts even here? According to intel, this place was supposed to be totally abandoned."
Faith stepped forward, her eyes lingering on the shattered remnants of the creature.
"Maybe it was abandoned... decades ago. But now? Looks like these things have claimed it. They've infested the ruins. Inhabitants of silence and death."
Alice tightened her grip on her staff.
"If that's the case, we'll face more the deeper we go."
a sudden chill swept through the ruins—a cold, sharp wind that didn't belong to morning air.
The skies above Cael Morhan seemed to dim for a moment, as if something unnatural had crept into the light itself.
Faith's expression tightened. "That aura..." Her voice was barely a whisper.
Logan took a step back instinctively, gripping his sword. "It's not like the beasts... this is different. Heavier."
Alice's eyes widened in realization. "No... someone's here."
A few meters ahead, at the edge of the shattered plaza, a figure in a black and crimson cloak emerged from the shadows—silent, effortless in his stride. His footsteps made no sound. The very world seemed to still around him.
The group turned, alert and tense.
Elias's eyes locked with the man's.
Arkan stood there, cold and composed. One eye a dull grey... the other glowing faintly red, smoldering like dying embers ready to reignite.
Neither of them spoke.
The wind stopped. The silence deepened.
Just a stare.
END OF CHAPTER 9 : THE FIRST GLANCE
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