Tojin dashed like a madman through the ruined underbelly of the earth, his limbs a blur of motion, lungs burning, steel skin cracked and flaking like broken armor. Each heartbeat drove him faster.
"Faster," he muttered, voice jagged with desperation.
"Faster." His boots slammed against the rubble-strewn ground, and when a path wasn't there, he made one—crushing through fallen beams, tearing apart stone walls, smashing through collapsed ceilings with his fists. Dust clung to his face like ash, but he didn't falter. His breath came in shallow, ragged pulls. His muscles screamed. His heart screamed louder.
The deeper he went, the narrower the corridors became—no light, no direction. Just the weight of the dead above and the fading life of Thurna behind him. "Don't stop," he whispered again, and slammed through another wall. When his arm cracked at the elbow from the impact, he reset it without pause and kept running. The walls around him blurred, a tunnel of dust and debris. His blood streaked behind him, his vision tunneling, until—
—light.
He exploded from the ground like a cannonball, rubble erupting skyward in a storm of gravel and ash. The surface gasped—townspeople turned from market stalls, children dropped trinkets, horses reared and scattered. A massive crater cracked open in the square, dust swallowing the morning.
Tojin stood in its center, chest heaving, sweat and blood painting him like a dying god. His eyes scanned the stunned crowd. Garlen, the theater actor obsessed with Lynzelle, was among them—mouth agape, gripping his script as it fluttered from his hands.
"I-Is Lynzelle okay?! I saw her go down there earlier!" He exclaimed.
Townspeople shouted over one another, wondering aloud what had happened, who caused the quake, what madness stirred beneath them.
"CLERIC!" Tojin roared, voice tearing from his throat. "I NEED A CLERIC!" He turned, arms wrapped around Thurna's limp frame, eyes frantic. "SHE'S DYING—NOW!"
A woman stepped from the crowd, her robes fluttering with embroidered glyphs of mercy. A healing cleric mage, followed quickly by two more apprentices. They rushed to him, placing glowing hands over Thurna's chest and brow. "We've got her," one of them said gently. "She's strong. We'll keep her here."
Tojin nodded, not trusting himself to speak, but he didn't leave her side until the glow of the cleric's magic stabilized her breathing. His shoulders finally slumped, exhaustion beginning to catch him. But he kept looking—over his shoulder, back at the shattered crater he'd left behind, eyes narrowing as he tried to understand who Gellem really was. Why he had been there.
He had no idea what the hell was going on, all of this was random to him. But now he knows Cainan and Lynzelle were involved.
And as he turned, a man passed him—silent, composed, smoke curling from his lips. Tojin didn't realize who it was. Just a presence. A weight. Their eyes met for the briefest second—steel blue clashing with something older, colder. But Tojin's mind was elsewhere. He looked away. Kept walking.
He never noticed Dante watching him from the smoke.
'Let's see how this ends.'
GRAVEN BORDERLANDS – NIGHT
The sky had darkened to a deep obsidian, a breath away from collapse. Ash fell from above like snow, dry and silent, clinging to armor, skin, and lips. The landscape was still—too still—and before them lay the Graven Borderlands, choked in a low-hanging fog that seemed to drink the light from the stars. It pulsed at the edge of their vision, vast and alive, as if breathing.
Distant bell tolls rolled through the air, faint and sorrowful, as if the sky itself mourned. And beneath it, eerily soft, a harp played. A haunting melody. Too perfect for a place like this. Too beautiful.
"That's… comforting," Astrid whispered, her wings fluttering in slow, cautious beats. "Y'know, if comforting meant soul-harvesting lullaby."
Qorrak narrowed his eyes at the horizon. "Ash for snow. Fog for sky. Music for bait. Yeah this is it, lads."
Lynzelle squinted toward the fog, her voice dry. "Reminds me of Hell. Or close enough to flirt with it."
Cainan didn't speak. His eyes were already scanning the terrain, reading the stillness like a battlefield, not a border.
'It's eery as hell out here. Some areas are more foggy than others. It shouldn't stop us. We're here for a witch, a witch I'll end quickly.'
Then they saw him.
A cultist, kneeling at the fog's edge—alone—his form bent in prayer, hands bloody, robes soaked dark grey and dripping. All around him were dead Hunters, some half-charred, others with expressions frozen in twisted agony. Swords had broken. Glyphs melted, and dried blood on the ground.
The kneeling man wept blood.
"Elsha… Elsha…" He whispered, fingers twitching in a prayer-etch. "They weren't worthy. None of them. I made sure. I made sure. Only the leaders… only they can slay you. Only they deserve to understand love through ruin."
His voice trembled, and his face was something between beautiful and horrifying—pale skin cracked with crimson threads of dried blood, lips chapped and flaking, leaves embedded in the whites of his eyes like tiny sigils of worship. A crown of thorned ash twisted into his matted hair. His robes rippled with symbols—some stitched, some carved into the fabric with bone.
Then he pulled something from inside his sleeve—a lantern made of bone ash, burning with a cold gray flame. It hissed quietly, like it was whispering to the fog.
"You don't deserve to enter," he rasped, staring at them. "The leaders are still in there… have been for months, trying to find their way through the maze of fog..but they will find her. They will kill her. They will become—"
SLASH.
A red arc sprayed through the air.
His head dropped before the sentence could finish, his body dropping to the ground after as blood leaked from his exposed neck.
Lynzelle stood there, silent, scythe gleaming with residual heat. Her face was unreadable. Her hand trembled—just slightly. The harp's song seemed to shift in key, slightly more discordant now.
Cainan turned his head toward her. He saw it.
That look in her eyes.
Memories she hadn't spoken. Places no sane mind should have visited.
She was shaking—internally.
Cainan reached out, wrapped his hand around hers.
'I gotta calm her down!'
Lynzelle's breath caught. The tremble stopped. The scythe stilled.
"Lock in," Cainan ordered, louder now, addressing the group. "Everyone. Stay linked. If that cult got lost in there for months, we're not taking chances. No telling what that fog hides."
One by one, they stepped closer.
Qorrak linked his massive hand with Cainan's shoulder.
Astrid landed on Qorrak's back, her wing flicks syncing to the rhythm.
Lynzelle moved to Cainan's other side, fingers lacing with his tightly.
The fog greeted them like a tomb swallowing light.
Just before they entered, Lynzelle whispered to him, her voice low and unguarded. "…Thank you."
'I keep feeling like a burden on him with the way I'm letting my fear take over. It's embarrassing in my end…I hate for him to keep checking on me and making sure I'm okay. Though, I like that he does it…but I can't help but feel like a burden or a nuisance. I gotta be stronger. But it's hard.'
Cainan's voice was hard. Grounded. "Gotta have you focused.. I don't need you running off again."
A slight smirk tugged at Lynzelle's lips, hiding her slight anxiety. "Or you'll chase me down?"
"Without hesitation.
She chuckled quietly. "Soooo romantic, husband."
Then they stepped into the fog.
…
The world had changed.
Air became velvet. Shapes disappeared. Even the harp was louder now, its melody strange and echoing, as if it were being played inside their minds.
Their steps were heavy, muffled. Every sound was distorted.
Qorrak muttered, "So this cult. They're not just worshipping her like a god… they're waiting to kill her? To become her?"
"Delusion given religion," Cainan answered. "They think love requires ruin. That killing her proves it. They're a lot like the witches in a way."
"Aww, it's so poetic," Lynzelle murmured bitterly with a smile. "And also very very bad!" She added. "Because their cultists and stuff, yeah bad people."
Astrid chuckled at her, "Good save."
Astrid floated close, getting back on track, "But I think they see her as… the final heartbreak. If they kill her, maybe they think they become immune to love. Or maybe they think she'll love them for it."
Qorrak scoffed. "Sounds like a cult born from loneliness."
They kept walking.
Deeper into the fog.
Deeper into the sound.
The harp grew louder.
They walked with hands locked in silence, ash still drifting down through the canopy of choking mist like weightless fragments of bone. The world around them had collapsed into white fog and gray void, and yet, sound moved here with purpose—like something alive was pushing it forward.
The harp played on, slow and hypnotic. A funeral rhythm mistaken for beauty. Its notes curled between the group like vines, tugging memories and stirring echoes. The fog was thick and veined with glowing threads—like veins pulsing softly with pale light. As they pushed forward, Lynzelle's grip would tighten around Cainan's hand without a word, and he didn't pull away. The tension in her body bled through her palm into his, sharp and brief, but he endured it like a grounding tether. She didn't let go. Neither did he.
Then the fog shifted.
The first vision came without warning, like a curtain pulled back on a stage of memories not their own.
The world around them stilled—brightened. It became vibrant, colors bleeding out of the fog like spilled paint across cloth. In this sudden vivid light, they saw her: Elsha, born in a bed of pine-stitched wool, her infant cries muted but fierce. Candlelight bathed her mother's face, and her father—a guardsman in stone-leather armor—held her up like she was something holy. The child was kissed on the brow by everyone in the room. It was not grand, but it was pure. Love, in its simplest and truest form, radiated around her.
Their feet dragged through the fog as the vision pulled forward—smoothly, like time itself had softened.
Elsha as a child, no older than ten, was crouched by the side of a dying goat. Her fingers moved softly, glowing faintly with radiant white healing light. The goat stirred, then stood. She laughed—that laugh, real and young and alive. Villagers with rag-wrapped limbs and hunched backs came to her as if she were a blessing. She healed them too. Sometimes just with touch. Sometimes with a kiss to the cheek. There was nothing she couldn't heal. Her joy came not from pride, but from care. And in between moments, she would tend her sheep—smiling as they followed her like children of their own.
Then, she was older.
Walking arm in arm with a dark-haired man. Her husband-to-be. They were happy, laughing through the woodlands, throwing apples at each other, stealing kisses beneath trees. A baron's son—his clothes silk but eyes hollow—watched from a distance, unblinking. He never smiled. He simply watched. Always near. Always separate.
Then the vision shifted.
A low table in a dim house. A woman named Yuniper stepped into the frame, her voice like oil and honey. Even in the vision, Cainan reacted—his shoulders squared, jaw clenched.
'Yuniper…that's her voice…! Elsha knew her?!'
Yuniper pleaded towards Elsha. "Please… please, my daughter… Espen needs you…"
Elsha tried. She tried, harder than she ever had. Sweat beaded on her brow as her hands glowed, hovered, pressed against Espen's cold skin. But the child would not stir. The light would not take.
Elsha's voice cracked, but no sound came. She shook her head. Her magic failed. Yuniper stared, silent.
The vision pulled forward.
Elsha's wedding was radiant. Bells rang through the mountain sky of Thálgrimr, the Ironbone Kingdom. Her husband wore his guardsman's insignia proud, even as he knelt. They wed by an ancestral altar nailed to the cliffs, surrounded by smiling kin wearing bone-inscribed armlets. They cheered. Even the mountains seemed to smile.
But at the edge of the crowd—again—the baron's son watched, face unmoved. Jealous. Eyes hard.
Then, the lake.
Moonlight shimmered across its still surface. Elsha lay atop her husband, breathless and flushed, their bare bodies entangled beneath the willows. His hands traced her ribs. Her fingers clawed into his back. She whispered his name, voice trembling, and he kissed her lips like they were something fragile. The lovemaking was not frenzied—but slow, deliberate. As if they believed time would pause if they held each other tightly enough. When they finished, they lay in silence, hand in hand, hearts steady.
Then the turn.
Rumors. Whispers. Accusations.
The ones she healed had worsened. Some even died. The baron's son whispered lies. Saying she was a healer in disguise of a witch. The town turned on her.
Elsha ran. Her husband, her oath-sworn, helped her escape—cloaking her, guiding her through hidden paths beneath the cliffside. They kissed one final time. She vanished into the woods.
Then came the fire.
He was dragged elsewhere. Stripped. Beaten. Branded heretic.
He was burned.
Alive.
A crowd watched. Some wept. Others cheered. His screams echoed even into the cliffs. Elsha, hidden in shadow, watched—but did not run to him. She had only healing. No blades. No wrath. Only helplessness.
And she ran again.
Then, Yuniper returned.
Soft voice. Gentle tone. Sweet as rot.
"Do you see how it is when you feel you don't belong?"
Elsha realized then—Yuniper had done it. The sicknesses, the deaths, the rumors. All seeded. All cultivated.
The vengeance was born from grief. Yuniper, still grieving her daughter Espen, had corrupted the healing Elsha gave, made it a poison. All because Elsha couldn't save Espen.
Yuniper's voice curled again, softer now.
"My Espen… I still love her. I always will. My son too… imprisoned, poor boy. He told me about your family. About that god-ling sleeping in your bloodline. A divine healing larvae, still growing. You were gifted a fraction of a god's grace, and still you failed me. That wasn't fair. What's the point of hope..if not even a deity can heal my baby? Or maybe you..or your deity is making sure she can't be healed.."
Yuniper reached out a hand.
"You can clear your name, Elsha. Avenge your husband. Let me show you how."
But Elsha wanted her dead.
Then—
The field.
Elsha sobbing, dragging a too-heavy sword behind her. Her hands bled from the hilt. Yuniper stood poised, wrapped in ribbons of black magic. Every strike Elsha threw was deflected. Every cry she made was a wound opened wider.
"You'll never defeat me like this," Yuniper said, calm, unthreatened.
Her hand stretched again. "Become one with Her. Fill your hollow heart. Let her give you what you lack." Yuniper continued.
Elsha, broken, sobbing, desperate, took it. But she promised to kill Yuniper with the power she gets. She grabbed her hand.
And the light shattered.
The fog rushed back in like a crashing wave. The visions collapsed into strands of ash drifting in the air again. The harp's melody returned, but quieter now—more distant.
Their feet crunched softly on dead leaves and brittle dirt.
No one spoke at first. Then—
Cainan turned to Astrid. His voice was low. Tense. "So when the god larvae broke free from the Laevmara Tree…because of the pain from the people that cried out to it…not all the godlings were killed during the raids from the Veltrac Covenant, were they?"
Astrid nodded. "Some were missed. They were… accounted for later. Traced by bloodlines. Especially when people started manifesting abilities that went beyond Soulbrand magic. Power with no glyphs. No sigils. Just… inherited divinity."
Cainan's hands clenched.
His voice trembled—not from fear, but cold, silent rage.
"Yuniper…"
He stared into the fog.
"I haven't forgotten what she did to Espen. Her own daughter. Made her a champion of the Witch Queen. Not just bloodletting. Not just a fucking offering. A little girl now turned into a beast of grief and cruelty."
His teeth grit.
"If I ever see her again, I'll kill her. But I wanna know why…? When she cared about Espen, to the point where she..became a witch? What made her turn into one? Did she think sacrificing Espen was the only way to really save her?"
Lynzelle replied, "That's not saving. That's condemning. Most likely, she was promised sweet nothings by the Witch Queen, to save her daughter and she took the bait right around the time Elsha was becoming a martyr. It lines up too perfectly.."
"Tch. I still don't like it. If I can get information out of Elsha.."
Qorrak interrupted, "That's close to impossible, kid."
"No it's not! Don't talk like that…please."
"Cainan…"
"Sorry. Fate kicks my ass a lot and I try to keep myself from talking like that to myself. Back at the capital I have my own journal where I rewrite positive shit over and over to change my mindset. I don't even think it's working. But just thinking about what happened with Espen sets me off. But it's worth a try with Elsha. If we can wound her and break her enough to get information, then seal her within the Radiance Chamber, it'll be good for me."
"But you always have to have a contingency plan."
"If she ends up dying, we'll make sure we use the pendant correctly. My main priority is to still get Espen summonses."
"Just remember we're in this together, kid. We're not gonna die because you can't come up with an idea."
"…Pfft."
They kept walking.
The harp played on.
Cainan thought, 'Not gonna die because I can't come up with an idea? Tch. I really don't have an idea. I have a goal, but not a clear direction. I want to wound Elsha and ask about Yuniper, but with my strength it's possible if I go too far and end up killing her. And it's possible I won't use the Radiance Chamber at the right time. And I haven't come up with what we would do if that happens. Man. I feel bad for going off like that, knowing that annoying Qorrak was right. I'm the head of my own squad of Bloodhunters in Kalazeth, supposed to be a leader, supposed to be on top of things. Why out of all times, do I feel genuinely contradicted? Confused? No backup plans for anything. Lady Selvaria told me to always have a plan for every plan, even a failed one. I forgot all about it. I was so focused on what I wanted to happen.'
They moved with a hushed rhythm over the unseen path, swallowed by the ever-churning fog. A ghostly, pale light bathed the mist, and the quiet, lingering echo of harp strings curled through the air like breath on a cold glass.
The group pressed forward in a solemn line, cloaked in silence but tethered by a mutual sense of heaviness. The ground was soft, damp, as if the fog carried memory instead of water. With each step, the world around them seemed to grow more dreamlike—less a place and more a feeling, steeped in remembrance.
Lynzelle's grip on Cainan's hand tightened intermittently, small unconscious pulses of tension. She didn't say anything, and neither did he. The pressure wasn't unwelcome—it grounded him, reminded him of the present, even as the world around them swelled with the past.
Up above them, the fog took form again. Not just shapes, but events—burning bright against the blank sky. Floating, glowing white objects moved overhead, enormous and hauntingly elegant—transparent, as if formed of spun moonlight, each one holding scenes captured in glass. A massive white cradle swayed in mid-air, the coos of a newborn heard in an echo from nowhere.
Next, a broad sheepfold with soft lambs running between a girl's legs—Elsha, young, golden-haired, her hands glowing with healing light as she knelt beside a sick elder. More objects came, blooming into view like lanterns rising: a carved bench where she first held hands with her lover; a field of reeds and laughter where they once danced; a wooden house half-lost in snowfall, where stolen kisses warmed the heart.
And following them in silence, gliding just above the ground, were the glowing specters of Elsha and her husband. Their white forms shimmered in contrast to the pale ash that continued to fall around them like slow-motion snow. She wore a simple dress that moved like water, and he was in a tunic of the old country, his sleeves rolled up like he'd just come from tending fields. Together, hand in hand, they danced.
The harp music swelled and grew more intricate. Their dance became something majestic, ethereal. Their feet never touched the ground, their bodies pirouetted with a grace that defied gravity. The husband twirled her gently, the folds of her gown spreading like a flower in bloom. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all, and the two turned beneath a curtain of falling white light. There was no smile on Elsha's face—only a haunting sorrow, a finality that clung to her expression like the veil of a widow. As the music played on, they drew lower, descending gently as if gliding on invisible strings. Their feet touched the earth softly. He brushed her cheek. She closed her eyes. They kissed.
And then, together, they faded—like smoke carried away by the wind.
The fog receded slightly.
The group stepped into a wide open field, ringed by curling mist, the night sky above them a dome of motionless stars. The land was unnaturally quiet, the air unnaturally still. Ash still fell in slow, drifting flakes, layering over the soil like petals from a dying world. The moment felt suspended in time.
They released each other's hands as they came to a halt. All but Lynzelle—she still held onto Cainan's fingers, as if the fog hadn't ended. Neither spoke of it.
In the center of the clearing stood a structure not of wood or stone, but of sound itself. A vast harp towered toward the heavens, forged of light and memory. Its frame was white-gold, radiant and alive, the strings like rays of sun refracted through mist. And seated at the top, her figure bathed in impossible light, was Elsha.
She played with calm beauty. Her long blonde hair draped past her waist like woven sunlight. Her eyes, golden, glimmered from her face—yet beneath them, black veins marred the purity of her beauty, tracing like tears down her skin. She wore a glowing white wedding gown that shimmered like ice under moonlight, and across her brow was a delicate crown of flower petals frozen in eternal bloom.
Cainan's chains unspooled from his arms with a metallic hiss, the links aglow in a deep, wrathful red, curling around his fists like serpents hungry for blood.
'This is it..'
Lynzelle's scythe flared to life in a low, humming burn, the edge glinting with unnatural shadows.
Qorrak spun his staff in a lazy circle, wind coiling up it in serpentine strands, his fur flicking from the breeze his magic conjured.
Astrid simply floated forward, her hands clasped, eyes shimmering with quiet intrigue.
Cainan's voice broke the silence.
"Elsha."
She paused.
The harp silenced beneath her hands. Slowly, with an air of fading divinity, she rose to her feet, barefoot atop the strings. Her golden eyes traced them all—seeing through them. When she spoke, her voice was soft but immense, like hearing a whisper in a cathedral.
"Love is the beginning of all ruin. We chase it, we cling to it. We lose it. And when we lose it, we turn to things we never thought we would. The soul isn't built to handle the void that follows—so we fill it. With wrath. With vengeance. With monsters that promise they can make us whole again if we let them take a piece of us."
She stepped to the edge of the harp's frame, hair cascading in silken waves down her back.
"When my husband died, I didn't weep like a woman—I screamed like a beast. I screamed until my throat bled. I knew only healing magic. I couldn't fight, couldn't protect him. Couldn't undo the flames that devoured him because he dared to love me. So I ran. And I kept running… until I stopped being human."
Her gaze moved to the sky, then slowly back to them.
"I never even raised my blade to Yuniper again. What would've been the point? She was too far above me. A Monarch of the Witch Queen. I was only a name whispered with hate—Elsha the False Healer, Elsha the Witch."
Her voice cracked.
"I was foolish. I let madness cradle me like a child, convinced myself there was no other way to feel peace. I let the Queen of Darkness reshape me. I fed on innocence. I slaughtered Thalgrimr's people. I killed the baron. And his son. And I thought revenge would fill the hole in me."
She looked at Cainan.
"But it didn't."
A tear slid from her eye, leaving a black line in its wake.
"My healing magic—now reversed—rots flesh instead of mending it. It twists bone. It spreads decay like kisses. I've become the inverse of what I was born to be. A lie. A ruin. And you…"
She looked at his chains.
"You're the one who will unmake me. I can feel it. You've touched power—but more than that, you've touched love. And you're terrified to lose it. The horns on her head—she's the thing you're afraid to lose most."
Cainan didn't answer.
But Lynzelle turned her eyes toward him—slowly.
'He has feelings..for me?'
A glowing white grimoire appeared before Elsha. It pulsed with veins of black corruption, like rot beneath crystal. The book opened in silence. A single page turned. From its parchment, a grey hand with black veins reached out—impossibly long fingers stretching until they clutched Elsha's throat.
Her eyes turned black, wide with pain and peace at once. And her voice became a tremble of agony and release.
"They burned him here. In this very place. They dragged him from the city like an animal. Stripped him. Beat him. Lit him like a pyre before my eyes."
Her voice shattered.
"I'll die here too."
She hovered now, just above the harp. The grimoire pulsed behind her, casting veins of black light across her wedding dress. Her hands unfurled like petals from a wilting flower, her body bathed in radiant sorrow.
Then the harp began to play again—on its own.
The strings moved without fingers.
The fog thickened, the ash fell harder.
And Cainan's chains rose higher. Without looking, he said to Qorrak and Astrid and Lynzelle, "Sorry for not being able to make up my mind about our plan. A lot of ifs, ands, and buts, and but no plan for failure if it does happen. It seems she just wants to fight me, all of you need to leave so—."
Qorrak said, "Ah, stop with all that apologizing, it doesn't suit you. We're not leaving, you should know that, brat."
Astrid smiled, "Of course we're not! We have missions to accomplish, we're not quitters here. And you know I'm not gonna run from an opportunity of violence."
Lynzelle was lost in thought.
They all prepared themselves, and charged forward with a battle cry, ready to take on Elsha.