Two months.
Two cursed, flesh-tearing months had passed since Rey chose to head west—toward the Third Realm.
No trails, no maps, no mercy.
The monster he rode had died within the first week—ambushed by a clawed serpent that slithered through stone. Rey escaped, barely, dragging his half-broken body across bone-littered valleys and plague-filled forests.
He ate what he could. Sometimes roots. Sometimes insects. And sometimes... rotting monsters already half-eaten by other beasts.
He vomited often. He bled more.
But he lived.
The spider-thread skin had started to harden—becoming a second shell. It wasn't perfect, and the monster organs inside him still writhed unnaturally. But the thread held, stitched to his skin like cursed armor. His hands shook when cold. His left eye had lost most of its vision.
But his mind?
Sharper than ever.
And now, after all that—after the storms, the rot, the poison skies—he stood at the entrance to the Third Realm.
A canyon, wide and deep, split the land like a scar. On the other side: colossal gates made from bones of monsters and men. Black fire danced above the arch, while stone pillars bore symbols he couldn't read—but felt deep in his soul.
The gate welcomed only the broken.
Rey took a breath. His body protested, his spine cracking slightly. The smell of death hung in the air, but it no longer fazed him.
He stepped forward.
But just before reaching the bridge that led to the gates, he paused.
In the reflection of a blood puddle at his feet, he saw himself—not the boy who once lived on Earth, not the prisoner Vladis tortured, but this version of him.
Threaded. Twisted. Alive.
"I'm no longer human," he whispered.
Then he smiled bitterly.
"But I'm still Rey."
And he walked across the bridge, into the Third Realm.
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