"Bloom."
Slow.
Ancient.
A single word that seemed to turn their very surroundings, dark.
Bwash!
In an instant, the ground charted.
It convulsed, as if veins beneath its surface had burst.
Bwash!
It was a blossom...
Flowers?
No.
The crimson moist floor had shimmered, each droplet of blood blossoming into glassy petals.
The blood soaked soil had birthed dozens of crimson lotuses.
It was incredulous scene.
A pair of... beings, standing in a darkness clouded with the mist of blood, with the rise of petals conforming below.
The bleeding forest had flourished into a bloody garden.
Bwash!
The sound enveloped the space, as the petals rose and rose.
All around they covered where the masked man stood rooted.
Bwash!
Another bloom opened, its petals whispering steam into the air.
Drenn's head tilted slightly at the scene.
The medallion on his neck seemed to shine darker, deeper.
Bwash!
His ember gaze landed on the silhouette of the... boy standing opposite him.
Was that empty grey stare also running to him?
As the ground spurted bundles, Drenn's voice came quiet, almost reverent:
"If you are not going to talk," he murmured.
"Then allow the bed of crimson to take you."
His hand rose slightly... before the petals pulsed like hearts.
Bwash!
Once.
Bwash!
Twice.
The glassy sheen across their edges brightened...
Then they turned.
Not toward the boy... but the space around in which he stood.
You see...it was strange.
The air in which the boy stood wavered, bent by an unseen gravity.
Even the light seemed confused, bending and struggling to decide if he was there.
Bwash!
It was just like how the streams of blood chasing his visage, seemed to bend and curve... seemingly struggling to find him.
Bwash!
But that didn't matter.
From their centres, threads of red to began to unwind from the lotuses anther' ; they drew taut around the air.
Then it happened....
Bwash!
The soil cracked.
Bwash!
The air thinned.
Even the mist seemed to retreat, collapsing inward as though the forest was being wrung dry.
Bwash!
A leech.
They leeched on their very surroundings.
Bwash!
The haze in the air seemed to distort, as the colour drained from bark and root alike...
Somehow the smell of iron spread thicker than breath.
The boy did not move, for there was nowhere to go, the ground had been littered with the rise of petals.
But something beneath his skin did...
A tremor.
A shake.
It was as if the blood within his system was reminiscing on the percussion of a lost song.
Bwash!
Veins bulged faintly beneath the meat of his wrists... but then flattened, as though their rhythm was being strangled.
Any remaining colour in his face, fled.
Bwash!
Drink.
Drink.
The air bent as the blooms pulsed.
Each vibration twisted the forest.
Bwash!
However, the area around the boy's frame remained still, undisturbed...
Not calm.
Forgotten.
As if the world had skipped a line while writing its surroundings demise.
Ironic, considering the rumblings beneath his skin.
"A storm sealed in glass," Drenn hummed.
Was he wrong?
Bwash!
The world outside the boy bent and quieted.
Inside, his veins thrashed.
Each bloom's pulse echoed in his skin, like something hungry calling something hollow.
The petals drank: air, colour, breath.
Everything was drawn toward their bleeding roots.
Yet the space around the boy stayed untouched.
Bwash!
The world refused to touch him, but the weight of it still pressed through his ribs, begging to be let in.
Bwash!
His pulse faltered, caught between motion and stillness.
His lungs fought for rhythm... but his eyes still remained the same.
Empty.
Bwash!
The petals quivered, veins of red light racing through them like burned skin.
They were full...
Full of essence.
Squelch.
Drenn moved forward, his feet pressing through the puddles of blood still remaining; most of its juice had been drunk, alongside the essence the bark dripped... but it continued to roll down, endless, even though the petals had taken their last gulps.
His hand opened slow.
Crk.
The medallion flickered once.
"Gluttonous things," he muttered, eyes tracing the field of red glass.
The seemed to shimmer at the call.
"It seems even beauty forgets restraint."
His fingers twitched.
Crk.
The boy's mannerisms seemed hypnotised, he simply stared as a war enveloped him inside.
The medallion flickered again, brighter, darker.
Drenn's gaze lingered on the boy, the space around him, odd.
"A rat will multiply if not exterminated," he spoke out.
"Just like how corruption spreads faster than any root. Than any medium. Than any power."
His hand lowered, fingers spreading out towards the soil.
"This shall all be justified."
His ember gaze darkened.
"The forest will weep, but in its tears... it will be reborn."
The air thinned.
The petals swirled.
"So devour."
Bwash!
"Burst."
BWASSSHSSSSHHHHSSHH!!!!!!
The world split.
Their surroundings was erased in a single instant of red light.
SSSHHHHHH!!!!
Trees were uplifted in the rage.
Blood scattered all around, filling the sky in pungent red.
The ground was hollowed inward, scooped clean as if the forest's veins had been torn out.
SHHHHH!!!
The echo still reverberated.
The lotuses were gone.
Above, crimson rain fell. Not drops, but threads... descending in long lines that stitched the ground's gaps.
Erased.
All of it.
All around them.
The smell was unbearable, and each droplet raining down hissed as it met the barren soil.
The forest was weeping its own remains.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
The shake roamed not just around them, but it must have ran through the whole of the Veil.
Constant.
Waning.
...It was quiet for a moment.
Then?
Dust.
It hung like a ghost.
A shadow that covered across the aftermath. Thick and heavy, the haze rolled over swallowing shapes.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
The forest... or what remained of it, shuddered under the thin light, its red veins turned to ash.
Somewhere in the cloud of smoke, a figure knelt.
Motionless.
Hair clung wet to his skin.
Blood.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
His own? Or the world's?
It trailed down his jaw, streaking his face.
He seemed to be still there.
But he wasn't.
His hand held the hilt of a blade.
A memento.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
Whilst his other hand pressed down into the ground.
Stability.
All around, the area had collapsed inward, a vast basin.
Yet beneath his feet.
Beneath where he knelt...
The soil had not sunk.
The ground, flat, pale, untouched.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
It sat there, amongst that basin like a curse.
Drip. Drip.
A soft sound crept in through the pattering rain.
The sound of blood trickling from the boy's ears.
From the boy's nose.
It truly was unclear if his body was weakening? Or if the showering rain had dressed him in an outfit of weakness.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
Silence followed; long enough that even the wind forgot to move.
Then, a step.
Thud.
Slow. Weighted.
The sound of it echoed strangely.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
It was as if the ground itself hesitated to carry its suddenness.
Thud.
Drenn emerged through the haze. His garments of red deepened under the pattering rain, as he allowed the drops to spilter across his white mask.
His mask tilted slightly as he stepped.
Plup! Plup! Plup!
Steam rose faintly from its edges.
"Still alive," he muttered.
It was like he knew.
There was no anger.
His dainty fingers brushed the medallion at his throat.
Plup. Plup. Plup.
The rain seemed to slow.
The boy's head tilted. A line of red tracing from his ear, sliding down his neck.
Could he hear?
"Enough."
Drenn's voice carried, steady, hoarse, carved with finality.
"The girl must be taken. The ritual awaits."
Crk. Crk.
A rusted noise flowed, as if his joints had clicked into place.
His gaze bordered on the edges of black.
Crk. Crk.
His hand moved slow...reaching for the weapon at his side.
Frrrkkhh!
The sound of its release tore through the silence like a black hole.
It emerged wrong; its form was too long, its edges slick with a colour that wasn't quite black. Rot clung to its edges and seams, dripping in threads that hissed when it touched the ground.
Hiss.
"Sing for me, Yorant."
Once the name left his tongue, the blade seemed to shake... as if answering the call.
Frrrkkhh!
So much so that even the blood rain seemed to recoil at its touch.
Crk! Crk!
Taller. Taller.
The man's figure seemed to stretch upwards as his spine clicked.
His frame widened in the mist, his shadow stretching unnaturally.
Insidious.
The boy opposite rose slowly.
His own sword, Mael's Fang, angled downwards; blood running across its surface, dressing it in red.
The crimson colour still dripped from his ears, his nose.
It hadn't appeared to have been just the rain.
Still... those eyes reached something beyond the realm of focus.
Plup. Plup. Plup.
A barren field.
A rain of blood.
The veil between them shivered.
Then silence...
The kind that comes before the world breaks.