Derek's POV
Morning came without warmth.
The forest was still wrapped in night's residue, a grey half-light that made distance unreliable. Shapes bled into one another. Trees stood like watchtowers from some ancient siege. Frost clung to leaves, glittering faintly, as if the land itself had not yet decided to wake.
Fifteen Templars dead.
Two left.
Numbers repeated in my head like a prayer. Loss had become arithmetic. If I kept counting, maybe the world would stay orderly.
The commander rode beside me in silence. His helm hid his face, but something about him felt… off. The air around him carried a sour smell, like rot disguised beneath incense.
"We could cut through the forest," he said finally. "Shorter route."
I nodded. The decision felt wrong the moment I accepted it.
The forest swallowed us.
At first it was quiet. Too quiet. Birds chirped in uneven patterns, as if rehearsing something they didn't understand. The light filtered down in broken beams, turning dust into floating constellations.
Then—
A scream.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Something closer to recognition.
I turned just in time to see one of my men lifted off the ground. A troll's hand closed around his skull. Bone collapsed like wet pottery. The sound wasn't loud—it was thick. Final.
"Formation!" someone shouted.
My blood surged. Training took over. I raised my axe and charged.
That was when the world ended.
A pressure struck my chest—not impact, not blunt force. Something slid through me. Through armor. Through ribs. Through everything I thought defined "inside" and "outside".
I looked down.
The commander's arm was inside my body.
Not metaphorically.
His fist had replaced my heart.
I didn't feel pain at first. Just a spreading warmth. Like sinking into bathwater. Then the heat sharpened, became needles, became fire. My legs buckled. My axe fell from my fingers without sound.
I tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
The commander's face was… wrong. Skin sloughing off in strips. Black fluid leaking from his eyes and mouth like ink from a broken pen. He looked less like a man and more like something pretending to remember one.
Around us, the forest was changing.
The troll's body convulsed, fungal growths tearing through its flesh. The chimera nearby twitched, sprouting black-veined tendrils from its spine. Everything was… rotting sideways. Not dying—reformatting.
My heartbeat stuttered.
I couldn't feel my hands.
The world tilted, then doubled, then tripled. Sound arrived late, delayed, like badly synced audio.
My thoughts scattered.
Poison? Curse? Infection? Where is—
I couldn't finish the sentence.
My vision blurred into oil-smears of green and gold. The forest no longer felt like a place—it felt like a concept losing coherence.
I tasted iron.
Breathing became optional. Then difficult. Then impossible.
The commander withdrew his arm. My chest collapsed inward, hollow. Air rushed through me the wrong way.
I tried to understand.
Tried to make sense of the creatures. Of the black fluid. Of the way reality itself felt… edited.
But nothing aligned.
The only thing I could still hold onto was confusion.
Pure, clean confusion.
What the—
And then Derek stopped existing.
Luna's POV
Regina was screaming.
Not from pain.
From unmaking.
Her body was dissolving into golden liquid, skin breaking apart into luminous fragments that slid off her like melting glass. Light poured from her pores. Not healing. Not magic.
Something worse.
I grabbed her.
The moment my hands touched her, they burned.
Not fire—purification. My skin blistered instantly, nerves screaming as the golden substance crawled across me, eating through cloth, through flesh, through sensation itself.
"Regina! Stay with me!" I shouted, my voice breaking into static.
Her eyes—those impossible violet-blue eyes—were wide, unfocused. She looked at me like she was trying to remember how to be a person.
"I can't feel my legs," she whispered.
Then her legs weren't there.
They dissolved into light, dripping like molten gold onto the carriage floor, burning holes through the wood, through reality.
I tore through the nun's bag with shaking hands. Bottles shattered. Scrolls burned on contact with the air. I found the vial—the one with the golden fluid—and didn't even think.
I smashed it open and poured everything into Regina's mouth.
The effect was instant.
She screamed.
Not louder—deeper.
Her body began collapsing inward, light consuming light, her form losing definition, edges blurring, skin unraveling into radiant dust.
"No no no no no—"
I pressed my hands against her face, trying to hold it together, trying to force her to remain a shape. My palms sizzled. Flesh burned. I didn't let go.
"Stay! Don't disappear! Please—just stay!"
The forest watched.
Not animals.
Witnesses.
The troll and chimera stood motionless now, eyes dripping black fluid, fungal growths pulsing gently, like they were observing a ritual they already understood.
Regina's lips moved.
I leaned in.
Her voice was barely there.
"I think… this is what they wanted."
Then she smiled.
Not sad.
Not scared.
Just… gentle.
Her face dissolved.
Her skull followed.
Her existence folded into a pool of gold, red, and black liquid that ate through the floor and steamed into nothing.
I was holding empty air.
My hands were burned raw, nerves exposed, skin half gone.
But I didn't feel it.
I just stared at the space where she had been.
Breathing.
Screaming without sound.
The forest exhaled.
And something in the shadows blinked—slow, deliberate, satisfied.