After silence he wakes up in a wondrous sacred line
The sound of birds flying in the sky, their shape was strange, different in color and shape. Their color was crimson red, and their feathers were long and fluttering. They had a long beak that had some fangs in it.
It seems that I have confirmed that I am no longer on Earth, a world before Mebdour, Newth said in calm words that instilled fear in his heart.
Newth rose from the ground with difficulty, every movement tearing through his body as if his bones still carried the weight of an unshakable frost. He swayed, unsteady, until a small pool of water nearby caught his eye. Something in its shimmering surface pulled him closer.
What he saw left him frozen.
His reflection bare, stripped of every trace of clothing. As though the earth itself had spat him out like this, naked, emptied of everything that tied him to the moment before.
His mouth fell open, and inside his mind a voice shouted in disbelief:
"Impossible…! Where are my clothes? By all reason, what is happening here? Is this some kind of cruel joke, or a nightmare refusing to end?"
He tore his gaze away from the pool, only to return to it again, staring as though at a stranger. The body reflected there no longer felt like his own. For an instant, it seemed like he was looking at a strange version of himself freshly made, unfamiliar to the world.
He wrapped his arms around himself, not merely to ward off the cold, but against something deeper… the creeping sense that this moment was not simply about lost clothes, but the beginning of something far greater, something for which he had no name yet.
The council hall resembled an ancient temple built for power. Its ceiling vanished into shadow, and its walls were draped with banners that bore the emblems of kingdoms and empires. At its center stretched a long table of dark wood, polished to a mirror-like sheen, reflecting the dim glow of the chandeliers above. Around it sat rulers with grim faces, leaders of armies, guardians of faith, and architects of nations. Each carried the weight of history, of ambition, of blood.
Their voices circled around one subject: the curse. The strange sin that had descended upon the world with the arrival of Lehna. It was no plague to be contained, no sickness to be treated. It was something deeper, more merciless, something that devoured spirit before flesh and left behind hollow shells that wandered like ghosts among the living.
One ruler, heavy and jeweled, leaned forward. His voice was confident, but his eyes gleamed with greed.
"The people remain within our grasp. The majority still obey our policies. The churches bless our rule, and together we hold the greatest armies, the deepest coffers, the keenest minds. This council represents unmatched power. If obstacles rise, they will be crushed."
But another replied, his words low, cutting through the chamber like a hidden blade.
"Obstacles neglected turn into disasters, and disasters devour even the strongest throne."
Beyond those walls, the streets were heavy with dread. Armored convoys rumbled across the avenues like iron beasts. Soldiers moved door to door, forcing their way inside, dragging families into lines beneath the cold eyes of authority. Every man, woman, and child feared the same discovery: the invisible mark of the curse, the sign that life as they knew it was already over.
The sky itself betrayed them. A crimson fog seeped across the land, slow and suffocating. It was not the mist of dawn nor the haze of rain, but something thicker, as if blood itself had risen into the air. Old whispers claimed it was the final omen, the shroud that marked the last step of the afflicted before they vanished into the realm of ghosts.
Far below, in the forgotten tunnels of an underground station, a stranger walked. His brown hair was tied back, his hat casting shadows across his face. A long coat hung from his shoulders, gray trousers worn by endless travel. His eyes, sharp and weary, missed nothing, as though trained by years of living in a world of traps.
Then came the cries. Soldiers dragging a ragged man across the platform, his thin body trembling as he resisted. His voice broke into desperate fragments.
"Curse you, I have children. Hungry children waiting for me. Do not take me. If I die, they die as well."
The soldiers gave him no mercy. Their answer was steady, mechanical.
"You bear the mark of the ghosts. You are dangerous. The law is clear."
They pulled him away. His screams faded, swallowed by the endless dark of the tunnels. The stranger did not move, but the weight of the scene pressed against him.
At his feet lay a crumpled paper. He bent down, lifted it, and brushed away the ash. It was an old poster, the image of a soldier decorated and praised for service to the government, a hollow smile painted across his face.
The stranger gazed at it for a long while, then tore it apart. The fragments rose in the stagnant air, carried away like dead birds into the smoke of the dying train.
Elsewhere, in a dim room lit only by the flicker of an oil lamp, Neuth sat hunched over a wide map of the continent. His eyes traced the borders again and again, lips whispering broken thoughts. Each path seemed like both escape and trap. Beyond Acrothia there had to be a way out, a place untouched by the spreading curse.
Hours slipped away, until he felt time itself melting through his fingers like ice pressed against flame. Finally, as the city outside sank deeper beneath the red fog, his resolve hardened. He would not remain to see its end. He would flee, even alone, even without hope, so long as he escaped before becoming just another shadow wandering with the dead.
That night, while huts and palaces alike were smothered by fear, Acrothia's heart slowed, beating toward its inevitable death. And Neuth stepped into the darkness, not knowing if the road before him would lead to salvation or ruin.
In the suffocating silence of night, within the narrow confines of his dwelling, Neuth sat alone before the map stretched across the wall. The candle before him trembled, its wax dripping slowly like pale tears upon the table. Yet his mind no longer clung to borders or escape routes. His thoughts were shackled to something burning beneath his skin.
On his left shoulder, hidden beneath the worn fabric of his cloak, lay an old tattoo. It was no ordinary mark, but a pattern of interlocking circles etched with symbols whose meaning he had long forgotten. For years it had been nothing but a memory of a past he wished to bury. Tonight, however, it awoke.
The skin around the tattoo began to shiver, as if something alive stirred beneath it. Thin black veins seeped outward from the mark, spreading slowly like hardened smoke across his arm. They pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, each throb sending them further along his flesh, weaving themselves like a web of corruption.
Neuth gritted his teeth, pressing his hand against his shoulder, trying to still the sensation. But the heat within the mark shifted into a sharp sting, then into a freezing chill, as though shards of ice had entered his bloodstream. His face tightened, and a tremor coursed through him.
A memory surfaced, unbidden words once spoken by a ragged soothsayer he had met in his youth: "One day, the mark upon you will awaken. What was once a silent ornament will become a curse that runs through your veins."
Back then, he had laughed. Now, there was no laughter in him, only the creeping weight of dread.
The black veins crawled up his neck, reaching his jaw, faintly visible in the reflection of the windowpane. They resembled the twisted roots of a poisoned tree, carving paths through his body from the inside out. He tried to pull the fabric away from his shoulder, but his hand shook uncontrollably, as though the mark itself had claimed dominion over his strength.
In that moment, Neuth understood.
He was no longer merely a fugitive fleeing Acrothia.
He had become a vessel a bearer of the very calamity that plagued the world. The red mist that stalked the continent might not be approaching him from the outside. Perhaps it was already blooming within his blood.
Newth, overwhelmed by astonishment and pain, collapsed and temporarily lost consciousness.
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