The whispers were no longer faint
As Roger, Aria, and Kai stepped cautiously through the outskirts of the spectral village, they could hear them clearly now—low, broken voices muttering in languages that almost made sense. A child humming a lullaby in reverse. A man praying with no words. Something slithering syllables that sounded like hunger. The fog moved with awareness, sliding between their legs like a curious creature, brushing against their clothing as though tasting them.
"Don't answer them," Aria warned softly. Her Mistborn Boots kept her footsteps soundless, though the mist noticed her all the same. It curled in tighter when she moved. "The echoes here aren't like before."
The houses lining the path were crooked, some leaning into each other like conspirators caught mid-whisper. Pale handprints stained the wood around each door, and shattered lanterns swung in slow, unnatural arcs despite the still air. The path beneath their feet was uneven—cobbled from calcified bone and fossilized root, each step sending up faint groans from beneath the earth.
"This place feels wrong," Kai muttered. He held one hand firmly to his bracer, the other brushing the smooth surface of his micro rune cube. "There's no energy signature. No ambient pulse. It's like... it's like the floor is feeding off us."
Roger stopped at the threshold of a larger building, a structure shaped like a desecrated chapel. It looked like a church crossed with a slaughterhouse—its steeple torn down and replaced with a black iron spike wreathed in rusted chains. A thick wooden door creaked open of its own accord.
"We split up," Roger said, voice steady. "Briefly. Aria, check the back alleys. Kai, take the schoolhouse. I'll check this thing."
Kai opened his mouth to object, but Aria gave a short nod, already vanishing into the mist. "Call if anything moves."
One by one, they disappeared into the fog.
---
Inside the defiled chapel, Roger stepped slowly between warped pews carved with ancient runes he couldn't read. Each step echoed oddly, like the stone was hollow beneath him. The silence pressed in—thick, sticky, nearly tangible.
He gripped the temporal orb in one hand, the other flexing in the oversized durability gauntlet. His frame had already bulked into its enhanced form—twice as large and nearly five times as resistant to impact. It made his steps heavier, but somehow the floor creaked less with each one.
When he reached the pulpit, he saw it.
An old man stood behind the altar. Or what had once been a man. His face was stitched with black thread, each seam leaking threads of darkness. His eyes glowed faintly, bleeding light that pulsed in time with the fog. He stood unmoving, arms outstretched like a scarecrow.
Roger raised his voice. "Who are you?"
The figure grinned. "A voice. A body. A vessel. You bring the offering."
The shadows surged. The chapel groaned. The altar cracked in half. Black mist burst from the floor like geysers, each one lined with rows of serrated teeth. Roger lunged backward, activating the temporal orb. Time bent, twisting the mist into stillness for a breath before it surged forward again, more furious than before.
---
Kai stepped into the broken schoolhouse with trepidation. The desks were overturned, the walls etched with chalked runes mixed with blood. A lullaby looped from a broken speaker, off-key and slowed—like a childhood memory dragged underwater.
He passed a desk that still held a child's satchel.
Then something reached from beneath it and grabbed his ankle.
Kai screamed and activated his bracer, surging backward while tossing a temporal rune from his cube. The pulse froze the creature in place mid-lunge—revealing a child-sized figure made of smoke and twisted bone. Its head was upside down, its mouth opening where its belly should be.
"Learning," it said, voice glitching. "Teach us... pain."
Kai didn't hesitate. He launched a fire rune directly into its core, setting it alight. The thing screamed—not in agony, but in delight.
A second and third emerged from the shadows, mimicking his runes with crude, unstable symbols etched into their limbs. They copied his movements imperfectly, but each attempt grew closer.
He began weaving space-bending runes across the ceiling to destabilize their coordinates, using the cube to chain spatial disruption, fire amplification, and gravity shifts in unpredictable combinations. But for every new configuration he tried, they adapted. One creature even mirrored his rune formation mid-cast, its bony fingers glowing with unstable magic.
Sweat beaded on Kai's brow. He swapped in stored runes and layered time-slow fields with overlapping flame rings. The schoolhouse shook as heat surged, the smell of scorched bone choking the air.
---
Aria flowed through the alleys like mist herself, her Mistborn Boots cloaking her presence. Every window she passed showed her reflection—but each was wrong. One wept blood. One reached out. One simply stared with lifeless eyes.
She ignored them and pressed on.
The alley opened into a courtyard, where a woman stood, pale and unmoving, holding a baby with no face.
"You must hide," the woman whispered, voice breaking like glass. "He watches now. He... learns."
The faceless child opened its mouth. Instead of a cry, a metallic screech rang out—a sound that vibrated in Aria's bones.
The woman lunged.
Aria's mist blade struck before she felt fear. The incorporeal steel sliced cleanly through the woman's chest, but there was no blood—only a rush of cold air and a sound like leaves whispering secrets.
Three more figures stepped forward from the shadows—each a twisted variation of Aria. One carried a bloodied blade, one cloaked in mist, and one bore no face at all.
"Echoes," she whispered. "They're using us to hunt ourselves."
She switched the blade to its incorporeal form and vanished into the fog, beginning the silent slaughter.
As she danced between opponents, her boots carrying her in silent blurs, she felt their skills adapt. The cloaked one began using mist offensively, obscuring Aria's own strikes. The faceless one mimicked her footwork perfectly. She grew more ruthless, each movement deliberate and sharp. Her blade hummed through bone and shade, refusing to let terror root in her chest.
---
They regrouped at the village square, breath ragged, skin pale.
Roger's armor was scorched in patches, revealing blistered skin. Kai limped, blood seeping from a gash on his calf. Aria had a smear of black ichor across her face, and her hands trembled.
"This place... it learns," Kai whispered. "Every move we made—it mirrored it. It's adjusting in real time."
"It's watching through them," Aria said, voice hoarse. "The villagers. They're not just illusions. They're puppets. Eyes. Sensors."
Roger glanced up at the iron spike atop the chapel. "We need to find the center. The controller. It's not finished with us yet."
Then, from somewhere deeper in the village, a sound echoed.
A bell.
Once.
Twice.
Then thirteen times.
The village shuddered. Doors slammed. Windows shattered. The mist surged toward them like a tide.
The Whispering Threshold had opened.