Doom'sPOV
The presence was a pressure against his senses, a silent, intelligent weight from the dark wall of the Whisper Wood. It watched. It analyzed. It did not feel like the mindless hunger of the wraiths or the zealous fire of the Judicator. This was something older, patient, and deeply woven into the corrupt tapestry of the forest. It was a spectator, and its gaze was an intrusion on his dominion.
The child in the barrel was a negligible resource, a final, pathetic morsel amidst the feast of ashes. But the presence changed the calculation. This was no longer just about sustenance. It was a test.
'They watch,' Ainar's voice slithered into his mind, cold and sharp. 'A test of mettle. A performance for the shadows. Do not make it clean. Do not make it quick. Mark it painful. Mark it slow. Let the watcher see the price of your attention. If it is human, they will break. They will reveal themselves with a gasp, a cry, a twitch of pity. If it is not… then we know what kind of audience we entertain.'
Doom's obsidian gaze remained fixed on the treeline for a long moment, searching for a flicker of movement, a shift in the oppressive gloom. He found nothing. Only the feeling of being seen.
Decision made.
He turned from the woods, his focus turning inward, narrowing to the immediate, grisly task. He outstretched his right hand, fingers curling. The air beside him shimmered, a localized distortion that crackled with violet static. With a sound like a shard of reality breaking, the Ossuary Blade phased into existence, its weight slamming into his palm with a familiar, hungry finality. Kael's skull pommel felt like ice against his skin.
He took the two steps to the rain barrel. The child within had fallen silent, a tiny, terrified animal knowing the end had come. Doom didn't rip the lid off. He placed his left hand on it, the silver tracery on his skin gleaming dully, and pushed. The wooden lid splintered inwards with a dry crack. The boy was huddled inside, knees to his chest, face buried. He couldn't have been more than eight. He flinched violently as light and the scent of blood and ozone flooded his hiding place. He looked up. His eyes, wide and blue, were pools of pure, uncomprehending terror. They reflected the scarred giant, the hooded cloak that failed to conceal the monstrous sigil, and the skull-pommeled sword.
Doom didn't speak. Words were for bargaining, for threats, for lies. There was no bargain to be made. He simply reached into the barrel. The boy shrank back, a tiny, choked whimper escaping his lips. Doom's hand closed not around his throat, but around his thin arm. The grip was like iron, unbreakable but not yet crushing. He pulled the boy out. The child was light, impossibly so, a bundle of trembling bones and ragged clothes. He held him aloft for a moment, letting the watcher see the prize. Then, with a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he threw the boy to the churned, ashen earth. The child landed with a soft thud, crying out as the impact jarred his small frame. He scrambled backwards, his movements clumsy with fear, his eyes locked on Doom.
'Now,' Ainar whispered, her voice a silken command. 'Not the heart. The limb. Let the fear mature.'
Doom took a single step forward. The Ossuary Blade moved in a short, brutal arc. It was not a chop, but a precise, downward stab. The obsidian point punched through the boy's right thigh, pinning him to the ground like a butterfly. The child's scream was a high, piercing thing that shredded the silence. It was not a sound of pain alone, but of utter, world-shattering betrayal. He clawed at the earth, his small hands digging furrows in the mud, his body arching against the transfixing blade. The harvest began. The crimson veins within the Ossuary Blade pulsed to life, but faintly, as if disdaining the meager offering. A visible trickle of vitality, a pale, shimmering energy, was siphoned from the writhing form. The boy's skin lost its color, tightening over his cheeks. His struggles grew weaker, his screams devolving into ragged, wet gasps.
Doom's focus was not on the dying child. His head was tilted, his obsidian-star eyes fixed on the tree line. He was a listening device, a sensor tuned to a single frequency. He filtered out the child's whimpers, the hum of the blade, the whisper of the wind. He searched for any change in the pressure, any flicker of reaction from the watcher.
There was nothing.
No cry of outrage. No rustle of leaves from a hurried departure. No surge of hostile intent. Only the same patient, analytical observation. The spectator was not human. And it was not disturbed by the slow, agonizing consumption of a child. The harvest concluded. The boy gave one final, shuddering gasp, and then his body desiccated, collapsing in on itself into a small, forlorn pile of grey ash. His clothes, now empty, settled atop it. The Ossuary Blade withdrew, the trickle of energy absorbed.
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HARVEST: [CIVILIANCHILD]
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BIO-TITHERIUMEXTRACTION: [MINIMAL LIFE-FORCE]
YIELD: NEGLIGIBLE (0.5%)
BIO-TITHERIUM RESERVES: 22.5%
NOTE: INSUFFICIENT FOR NOTICEABLE REGENERATION.
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The result was as insignificant as predicted. The test, however, was a success. He knew the nature of his audience. Something from the Wood. Something that did not flinch. 'Fascinating,' Ainar murmured, her voice laced with a newfound respect for the watcher. 'It has a strong stomach. Or no stomach at all. No matter. The show is over. Now, you rest. Sit. Eat. You are a weapon, my son, andeven the finest steel grows brittle without maintenance. You need true rest, not just stolen essence.'
The gnawing fatigue, held at bay by fury and focus, returned with a vengeance. The purified flesh trauma on his ribs ached with a deep, persistent throb. Doom walked to the relatively intact side of the lead wagon and sat with his back against a splintered wheel, the Ossuary Blade resting across his lap. He pulled a strip of dried meat from a scavenged pack and began to eat, his movements mechanical. The food was tasteless, but it was fuel. As he ate, he turned his attention inward. The searing brand left by Faith's optimized light was a problem. His natural void-knitting was sluggish, the purified energy actively fighting the process. He focused on the Void Sigil, feeling the deep, cold well of power within. He willed a trickle of it, a mere 5%, to flow towards the wound.
[VOIDENERGY: 35% -> 30%]
It was like pouring ice water on a burn. A hiss of steam, real this time, rose from the injured flesh as void energy met the lingering purification. The throbbing ache intensified for a moment, a battle fought on a cellular level, before receding. The silver tracery around the wound seemed to pulse, reinforcing the new tissue. It was not a full healing, but the resistance was lessened. The healing suppression was now a manageable irritant.
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VOID HERALD STATUS UPDATE
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HP: 65% -> 67% (SLOW REGENERATION RESUMING)
PURIFIED FLESH TRAUMA: HEALING SUPPRESSION REDUCED TO 10%.
VOID ENERGY: 30%
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```
He finished eating. The silence, for the first time since he had landed on this world, was absolute. No screams. No clashing steel. No crackling energy. Just the wind sighing through the ashes and the distant, maddening whisper of the Wood.
And in the silence, the memories came.
Not as a flood, but as cold, sharp shards.
The warehouse. The taste of blood. Kael's wet, bubbling breaths. The cold kiss of the knife in his gut. The desperate, guttural prayer torn from his ruined throat. Then, the fire. The agony of being unmade. The chained god's ecstatic grin. The feel of the Ossuary Blade, his father's remains, forming in his grip. The slaughter of Aegis. Kael's final, triumphant smile. The Ashen Gulf collapsing. Stoneheart unmade. The False Titan shattered. The Judicator's light. The Warlord's essence. The Behemoth' rage. The healer's… interruption.
He was an orphan. Kael was gone, consumed, transformed into the very weapon he now held. Ainar was a ghost, a voice in the dark, a memory of a mother he never truly knew, now his spectral guide. He had no home. No past that wasn't written in blood. No future that wasn't dedicated to a chained god's freedom. A profound emptiness opened within him, vaster and colder than the void that powered his sigil. It was not self-pity. It was a simple, stark realization of his absolute solitude. He was Doom. Only Doom.
His hand, which had been resting on his knee, moved. His fingers, calloused and scarred, curled around the grip of the Ossuary Blade. His thumb brushed against the cool, unyielding bone of the skull pommel. Kael's skull.
"You saw it," he rasped, his voice low, meant for the blade alone. It was not a question. It was an acknowledgment. "The end. You saw me break. And you saw me get back up." He traced the line of the jawbone, the serrated teeth. "You forged this. You forged me. For this." He looked out over the field of ash, his kingdom of ruin. "Is this what you wanted? Is this the legacy?"
There was no answer from the blade. Only its constant, low hum of hunger. But in the silence, it was answer enough.
'He is with you, my blade,' Ainar's voice was soft, a phantom caress, a mother's comfort woven from shadow and memory. 'In every scar, in every lesson, in the weight of this sword. And I am with you. We are your family. Forged in blood and bound by chains. You are not alone. You are the culmination of all that we are.' Doom's grip tightened on the hilt. The emptiness was still there, a chilling void. But it was no longer just empty. It was occupied. By the ghost of a warlord and the whisper of a sorceress. By the hunger of a god and the weight of a promise.
He had his mission. He had his power. He had his "family."
He sat in the silence, back against the broken wagon, his father's skull in his lap, his mother's voice in his mind, and waited for his strength to return. The woods or the road awaited. The hunt was not over. It had only just begun.
---
Morwenna'sPOV
From her perch high in the blighted branches, Morwenna watched, her blood-red eyes absorbing every detail. The Void Herald's scavenging had been mundane, almost disappointing. But this… this was a performance. She observed, utterly still, as he executed the child. There was no rage in the act, no frenzy. It was a clinical, almost dismissive application of violence. A final piece of housekeeping. But her attention wasn't on the child's pathetic whimpers or the brief, flaring terror. It was locked on the weapon.
The blade.
When he summoned it, the air itself had flinched. It was not a thing of this world, not truly. Its form was brutal, a slab of matte-black bone and hatred given shape, crowned with a leering skull. But it was the function that stole her breath. As the point pierced the boy's thigh, the reaction was instantaneous. The crimson veins within the dark bone ignited, and she saw it, a visible, shimmering strand of the child's very life-force, his terror and his fleeting existence, being siphoned out of him and into the blade. It wasn't just killing. It was consumption. Unmaking. The body didn't just die, it desiccated, collapsing into inert ash as if every spark of what made it alive was being harvested.
A shiver of pure, undiluted fascination ran through her. This was no mere enchanted weapon. This was a tool of a higher, darker order. A key that unlocked life and turned it into power. The potential was staggering. The Herald, seemingly bored by the act, sat to eat and tend his wounds, dismissing the watcher in the woods now that his test was concluded. But Morwenna was far from done. She tightened her taloned grip on the injured Whisper Terror, her voice a low, melodic croak directly into its shadow-stuff mind. "The blade, little whisper. Tell me of the blade. What did you feel when it touched you?"
The Terror shuddered, its form fraying at the memory. "C-cold, Named One. A hunger that is not hunger. It did not cut, it… devoured. My essence, my strength, the very shadow I am woven from… it was torn from me. Flowed into the metal. My underlings… they were not slain. They were unmade. It drank them, and they were gone. Only ash remained."
"Did it speak? Did the Herald command it?" Morwenna pressed, her mind racing, categorizing. A weapon that actively harvested and converted energy. Was it sentient? Was it a symbiote?
"No words," the Terror whispered. "Only a hum. A… satisfied hum."
That was the crucial piece. The connection was profound. The blade was not just a tool; it was an extension of his power, a channel for his nature. To understand the Herald, one had to understand the blade. And to possess such a weapon, or even the secret of its making…
An idea began to form in the dark, elegant labyrinth of her mind. It was audacious. Blasphemous, even. Maybe the Queen herself, would demand this Herald be captured, dissected, his secrets peeled from his flesh for the good of the Wood. That was the obvious path. The obedient path.
But Morwenna was not merely obedient. She was ambitious.
This Herald was a power unto himself, a sovereign of ruin. He did not belong to the Church, to the Guild, to any kingdom she knew. He was an outsider, a force of entropy. And such forces could be… redirected. Allies were made through mutual benefit, not just through subjugation. Her gaze shifted from the terrifying, fascinating blade to the pathetic creature trembling in her grasp. The Whisper Terror was a liability now, wounded, tainted with the Herald's void-echo. It had served its purpose as a guide. Its continued existence was irrelevant. Worse, it was a loose end.
But what if its end served a greater purpose?
The idea crystallized, sharp and clear as an obsidian shard.
She would not confront the Herald. Not yet. To approach him as an enemy, it wouldn't be beneficial, it would be folly. To approach him as a supplicant would be weakness. She would approach him as a benefactor. A fellow power acknowledging another. She would give him a gift. Not gold, not trinkets. He clearly had no use for such things. She would give him what he clearly valued above all else: fuel. A gesture of understanding. A demonstration that she comprehended his nature without fear or revulsion. She looked down at the Whisper Terror. It was scared, essence bleeding, its purpose fulfilled. It was, in its current state, worthless to the Queen and a drain on the Wood.
But to the Herald, with his hungry blade… it was a meal. A token.
A piece offering.
The strategy was elegant. She would not push him. She would not ask for anything. She would simply present the offering and withdraw. She would show him that in this blighted land, there was one who saw his power not as a threat to be destroyed, but as a phenomenon to be acknowledged. It would plant a seed. A seed of curiosity, of potential alliance.