The moon bled silver over the ruins, its light pale and cold, like the gaze of a corpse. The air was too still. No wind. No rustle. No animal cry. The forest was holding its breath.
I kept my hood low, more for the watching eyes than for the cold. The trees here were old—older than the empire, older than men—and their roots twisted like the bones of giants. I had heard stories about these woods. Everyone had. Tales of hunters who entered and returned with white hair and empty eyes. Of merchants who wandered in and were found years later, whispering to the dirt as if it would whisper back.
They were wrong about one thing.
The dirt does whisper.
It whispered to me.
Beneath my boots, the soil pulsed faintly, like a slow heartbeat. The sound was almost too soft to hear, but I felt it in my bones. My steps left no mark. That was the first sign this place was not meant for the living.
Once, I might have turned back.
Once, I might have cared about living.
But that was before. Before the fire. Before the screaming. Before they took my family and ground them into ash. Before I learned what it meant to be born without a name that mattered.
Now I had only one reason left to keep breathing: to kill the god that keeps this empire alive.
A low sound broke the silence.
Not a growl. Not a human voice. Something between the two.
I turned my head slowly, hand resting on the hilt of my blade. From the shadows between two trees, a figure crawled into the moonlight. It moved wrong—limbs too long, joints bending in ways they shouldn't.
It was shaped like a man.
It wore a man's skin.
But its eyes… its eyes were pits of black water, and something inside them rippled, watching me.
Its jaw unhinged, splitting wider than it should, and words spilled out, broken and wet.
"Turn… back…"
I didn't move. Didn't speak.
It tilted its head, and something inside its throat laughed. Not the creature's laugh—no, someone else's. Something deeper.
My fingers tightened around the hilt. "No."
The thing's face split into a smile that wasn't a smile. And then it moved—fast, too fast for something that should barely be alive.
The heartbeat in the soil quickened.
So did mine.