They left before dawn… before even the sky remembered it had color.
No songs. No prayers. Just the creak of leather, the quiet rustle of supplies, and the distant call of a beast too far to fear, yet too close to forget.
Kael moved silently in leather armor stitched from Durmara hide… a mountain-scaled terror that turned arrows to dust and blades to regret. Only Emberlights dared face one.
Kael's father was a rich man. And generous.
The armor was heavy, but comforting… a second skin with stories still sleeping in its seams.
They followed the river upstream, as Segeford insisted it was the surest way not to get lost. A silver tongue cutting through the wilderness… always moving, always speaking in soft ripples and warnings. But the river's song was not gentle today.
Beasts were everywhere.
Before the sun even reached its peak, they had filled most of their storage with valuable spoils…fangs, hides, marrow, and steaming blood. The jungle wasn't a place that welcomed them. It was alive, pulsing, watching.
"Don't carry what you don't need," Segeford warned, voice like carved granite. "Only what's rare. What fetches coin. Leave the rest for the flies."
"Aye, Captain," the group echoed, voices low with exhaustion. Bags opened. Unneeded bones dropped to the earth like offerings.
The air was thick with rot, spice, and something ancient.
And then it struck.
The attack came from a shadow in the ferns… a wild hound, lean and snarling, followed by four more. They leapt for the throat, fast as arrows.
Miya rolled aside, daggers flashing. Edward ducked just in time as Kael drew his short blade and plunged it into the chest of the nearest beast. It yelped… once… and fell silent.
Two more circled.
Segeford moved like a tempest, blade cutting arcs in the air. A hound leapt, but he sidestepped and cleaved its skull mid-air. Another lunged for Kael's back, but Miya was faster. Her thrown blade pierced its eye with a wet crunch.
Then a growl.
A jungle leopard… massive, sleek, and coiled with muscle… dropped from the canopy.
It landed on Miya.
But she did not scream. Her arm curved around its throat, and she stabbed it again and again until it rolled off, gasping, dying.
Liam rushed to her side, helping her to sit. Her arm was gashed, but she waved him off.
"I'm fine," she hissed. "Takes more than a cat to end me."
The group reassembled, bloodied but alive. The clearing was a ruin of dead beasts and torn foliage.
Later, by dusk, they made camp.
Edward cooked near the fire, scent of spices wafting through the air. Warm. Nostalgic. Almost too human for a place like this.
The meat sizzled… beast flesh hunted just hours ago. Edward turned it expertly, adding a godless mix of jungle herbs and inherited instinct.
He wasn't just a cook. He was a chef born of legacy… once the heart of Wayfort Redfern… a fortress of cuisine and hospitality. He had no need for this madness.
But he followed Kael. Because Kael needed him.
Because they were friends.
"Smells fantastic, kid," Miya said, sitting cross-legged near the fire. "Where'd you learn to cook like that?"
Edward smiled. "My father runs an inn in Valemoor."
Miya raised an eyebrow. Silvy chuckled under her breath.
"…An inn," she muttered, not bothering to correct him.
Kael smiled. Edward never bragged… he couldn't. His heart was too genuine to understand pride. He simply *was* who he was: pure, untainted.
That was why Kael kept him close. Not for the food. Not even for the loyalty.
But because in a world where every step felt like a lie, Edward still believed in honesty.
Even if it killed him someday.
Once the food was ready, they ate.
It was the best beast meat Kael had ever tasted. Edward's cooking was nothing short of divine… each bite filled with warmth, spice, and the comfort they all needed after a cold, exhausting day.
They laughed. Shared stories. Even Segeford cracked a smile. In the firelight, everyone's faces flickered with color… golden, crimson, and shadowed. Flames danced in their eyes, glinting off teeth as laughter rose and fell like waves.
The campfire's warmth touched Kael's hands and face, soft and reassuring… like the moon's breath. Winter in Velrya wasn't brutal. Sometimes snow, mostly frost, and air sharp enough to chew through your lungs. But the beasts… warm-blooded creatures from hotter lands… grew sluggish in the season. A small blessing.
When the talking faded, each person returned to their post. Some kept watch. Others, like Kael, crawled into thin blankets and dreams. Before sleep claimed him, he watched Miya and Segeford talking quietly at the edge of the firelight… two shadows in a darker night.
Morning came pale and silver. They moved again… legs heavy, eyes strained, but their purpose clear.
The second day brought only common beasts… quick, weak, and unremarkable, just like the dogs which attacked the group earlier. Segeford never drew his axes, letting the Ashborn and Kindlings hone their skills. The fights ended quickly and they kept moving… by evening, though their limbs ached, the path felt lighter.
By the third day, the air changed. The beasts were no longer common. Their eyes held something more… intelligence, or madness… Kael wasn't sure. Segeford stepped in more often, helping the Ashborn while the Kindlings stayed back. Their meat was tougher, but Edward used fire-magic again, making it taste like heaven wrapped in flame.
Just like that, it had been already six days in that jungle. Kael, Edward and Silvi with addition of two Scholors were feeling low and dull now.
Then came something different.
On the sixth day, they saw it.
A beast the size of a carriage bull stepped from the underbrush…towering, hunched, walking on two legs like a grotesque imitation of a man. Its arms were long and knotted, thick enough to tear down trees. Its hair hung in matted cords. It reeked of rot, dung, and something far older.
Segeford stepped forward. "Do not engage. You're no match for it."
He drew both axes from his back. The steel gleamed like it remembered blood.
The beast screamed… a wild, guttural sound… and lunged.
Segeford didn't flinch. He took the blow head-on, parried with a roar of steel, and twisted… driving a cleave deep into the creature's shoulder until the bone cracked. The beast shrieked and reared back… and Segeford vanished from view.
A heartbeat later, he reappeared… right behind the creature.
Then came the swing.
CRRRRRRRR....
One stroke.
The top half of the monster slid off the bottom. It hit the ground with a thud that shook the trees.
No one spoke. They just stared.
The real beast in that fight hadn't been the one with claws.
It was Segeford.
"That's my man," Miya muttered, smirking.
"Cough, cough…" one of the Ashborn fake-coughed behind her, teasing.
Miya's face flushed slightly, then turned serious again.
"Keep moving," Segeford said, not turning back.
They moved. No one touched the corpse. The stench alone kept them away… something beyond foul. Something that had felt dead long before it actually died.
After that, the jungle went silent.
No more beasts.
No more sounds.
By noon on the seventh day, the group was nearly broken… feet blistered, eyes hollow, bodies worn from constant strain. Kael was about to suggest turning back when Silvy's voice broke the silence.
"…That looks unnatural."
Ahead stood a massive stone structure, half-swallowed by the jungle. It pierced the canopy like a monument to something long forgotten… tens of feet high, twice as wide, darkened by moss and time.
Segeford stepped forward, brushing his palm against the weathered stone.
"We've arrived," he said quietly. "This is the ruin."
A collective breath escaped them.
They lit the torches brought from Valemoor, one by one. Flames flickered to life. Segeford led them through a narrow entrance, the stone path sloping downward like the throat of something ancient.
Then came the sound… fluttering wings, high-pitched shrieks slicing the dark.
"Bats," Miya said. "Ignore them."
They did.
The air thickened… bat droppings, mold, and time itself. Covering their noses, they descended into a vast chamber. The torchlight barely reached the walls.
The air grew heavier the deeper they descended. The jungle's scent faded behind them, replaced by the clinging damp of old stone, ancient mold, and the faint metallic sting of dried blood.
Their torches flickered weakly in the dark, barely enough to chase away the shadows ahead. The corridor opened into a vast subterranean chamber… so large it was impossible to see its edges. Their light stretched only a dozen feet in every direction before being swallowed by thick darkness.
"Light the chamber," Segeford ordered.
None of them spoke. Even footsteps softened here, as if the stone itself drank in sound.
They lit up their remaining torches but they were no where near to lit up the entire chamber.
Twelve massive pillars rose from the floor in symmetrical rows…towering high into the unseen ceiling. Winding around each column were carvings, not decorative, but deliberate: spiraling glyphs and scenes worn smooth by time. Battles. Rituals. Shapes bowed before a towering, many-winged being with no face…only a void where its features should have been. They started putting torches on pillars.
The stone was slick beneath their boots, cracked and uneven, suggesting age far older than anything they'd encountered before.
"Be carefull.. There might be beasts waiting for us…", Segeford warned.
They advanced slowly, keeping to a tight formation, torches held out in all directions. But the light only revealed what was immediately before them. Beyond that, the chamber remained unknowable… like they were walking on the surface of a forgotten moon.
And then they saw it.
The altar, positioned at the center of the hall, emerged from the darkness as they approached… five wide steps rising to a stone platform. Unlike the rest of the chamber, the area around the altar was oddly free of debris. No dust. No bones. No insects. The space felt... untouched. Preserved. As though even time was afraid to rest here.
The altar itself was cut from a single monolithic slab… dark, glassy stone that gleamed dully in the firelight. It looked both ancient and unnatural. A cold intelligence clung to its edges. The kind that didn't sleep.
Behind it, half-shrouded in shadow, loomed a colossal wall relief…a winged being stretching from the base of the wall all the way up beyond the visible height. Its wings wrapped around the curve of the wall, enclosing the space like a predator's cage. Where its face should have been, two hollow eye sockets yawned wide, filled with a mineral that shimmered… not brightly, but wrongly. Light bent oddly through it, like the eyes were swallowing the flame.
Silvy moved closer, her eyes scanning the base of the altar. She crouched, running her fingers over the shallow grooves in the stone. "There's an inscription," she murmured, mostly to herself.
The others gathered close.
Her voice echoed in the silence. "Arazeel."
The temperature dropped.
Not gradually. Instantly.
As if the ruin had exhaled all warmth in one breath.
Silence fell… crippling, deafening.
They felt just one thing…
Despair.
Kael unable to look at altar turned, shivering.
Then he saw Segeford… still, pale, sweat running down his face. It was humidite in the chamber but Segeford looked shocked at that moment.
He wasn't looking at the carving.
He was staring into the shadows behind the monument.
"Everyone…" Segeford whispered. "Drop nothing. Take what's in your hands. Move. Slowly. Toward the entrance."
His eyes were wide. Not with rage but with caution. With fear.
Then… like thunder cracking in the dark…
ARRRRRRRRRR…
The roar shattered Their bones.
It came from the darkness… close and far at once.
They all could feel what that scream felt like…..
Death.