Footsteps on black water.
The sea rippled, though it had no right to. Ash stood on its surface, staring down at an ocean so dark it could have been poured from night itself. A mirror pretending to be a sea.
The reflection stared back.
Same black hair hanging loose, same dark eyes, same clothes. But where Ash breathed, shifted, lived, the other stayed still. It only looked at him, steady and unblinking, with that faint curl of disdain. As if the universe had handed it one job — to be insulted by his existence — and it took that job very seriously.
Ash didn't flinch. He was used to this smug bastard.
The horizon shivered. Three suns reflected in the water, their light distorting across the endless black.
One burned with molten orange, spitting fire that hissed when it touched the sea. Another seethed with stormlight, veins of lightning crawling inside a glass shell. And the last was a wound in the sky, a spiraling black sun that swallowed the others whole.
Ash tilted his head back. Above him, the same three hung there, nailed into the heavens. Shackled suns. Eternal. Ugly.
He had seen them before. Too many times. They didn't scare him anymore. They just annoyed him.
The silence pressed in, heavy and smug, the kind that felt thicker than sound itself.
Then came the voice. His voice, except not.
The reflection's lips moved. The words crawled through the water like a sermon carved in rusted iron:
[SOUL RECORD]
Name: Ashley Burns
Origin: Middle Realm
Race: Human
Soul Type: [Fire], [Lightning], [Dark]
Soul Stage: 1st
Vessel Tier: 5th
Soul Pool: 89% (3000 / 3000)
Soulroots: [4]
Soulbounds: [0]
Soul Skills: [7]
Vessel Traits: [0]
The litany dragged through his skull like chains across stone. Same words, same order, same hollow voice. He could recite it from memory, and some days he wished he couldn't.
No glowing panel. No divine script. Just him, a reflection that hated him, and an ocean pretending it was endless.
Ash exhaled, fingers dragging through his hair. His reflection didn't follow. Of course it didn't.
'What was I expecting? Trumpets? A miracle? No, just the same prison. At least my soulcores are still in one piece,' he thought.
His eyes lifted to the spiraling black sun. For one breath, it shifted, like the sky itself was alive and breathing. Ash shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, the water was gone.
He was back in the ruin of a building. Splintered furniture, cobwebs choking every corner. Whoever had lived here hadn't left — they'd fled. The place stank of absence.
Max stood at the center, fingers dancing across his band. His gaze flicked to Ash, then back down as words scrolled across the display.
[Still making that face? Good. Means your soul space isn't in shambles.]
Ash gave a nod. Max smiled, tapped again.
[Then we move. Quickly. Can't leave Kael alone out there. Last thing we need is him finishing up and bringing his mess back here.]
They stepped outside. The air was stale and heavy. The figures still stood where they always had, but Ash noticed it. The one near the building. Before, it had leaned forward, like it meant to walk. Now its head was turned, locked toward the same direction as all the others.
Every single frozen figure was staring. Even the ones caught mid-step leaned toward the same invisible call.
Max's band lit up again.
[Noise from the open pit mine. They're reacting. If they wake, even breathing too loud will draw them. We go opposite. Deeper into the town.]
He pointed to the east, toward the hollow heart of the ruins. Ash followed.
The farther they went, the worse it became. The figures didn't thin out. They multiplied, stretching like a silent army across the streets. A thousand frozen bodies, and if they woke all at once, it wouldn't be a fight. it would be drowning.
Max's face tightened. His hands typed.
[You're holding up better than I thought. You always hated things like this. Crawlers. Beasts. Anything that shouldn't exist. And yet here you are, calm as stone. You sure you're alright?]
Ash opened his mouth, closed it, and sighed.
Max's eyes slid to his hand. Narrowed. Then a frown. He typed again.
[Where's your band, Ash? Don't play dumb. You know how important it is. I told you not to take it off.]
Ash scratched at his head, guilty, then bent to grab a stick from the ground. He didn't get a chance to write.
The world tore open.
An explosion split the distance. A roar followed, deep enough to rattle his ribs. Not the kind of roar that promised trouble. No, the kind that guaranteed it.
The sound bled out across the ruins, echoing long after it should have faded. For the first time since the crash, Max's actual voice — not the typing, his real mouth —broke the air.
"Dammit, that idiot. I told him not to transform, it waste energy."
He rubbed his temple like the headache was old and personal.
"Does no one listen to me today?"
Ash stared at him, because sure, priorities.
"If you're talking does that mean—"
The answer came from the ground, not Max. Cracking. Splintering. The kind of sound ice makes when it breaks underfoot, only this ice screamed.
The frozen figures twitched. Not all at once, but in jagged, painful movements. Limbs snapped loose from stillness, like puppets jerking under the hands of some sadist. One's neck twisted too far, bone breaking before the head finally rolled forward. Another bent backward until its spine popped in half, then shambled upright anyway.
Max slapped Ash's shoulder. His hand lingered for exactly zero seconds before he was sprinting ahead.
"Run!"
Ash blinked.
"Run? Shouldn't we go back for Kael? You literally just said he'd burn out fast if he stayed in that form. And if he's transformed, doesn't that mean he's fighting someone way above his weight?"
Max didn't look back. His voice carried between breaths.
"Stop worrying. Ty hasn't fulfilled his Soulroot Fates. He can't die yet. I'm one hundred percent sure he's fine."
The figures cracked louder, snapping free of their stillness. One hurled itself at Max, from its smooth face, jaws breaking open wider than they had any right to. Max didn't so much as flinch.
Because he knew.
Ash blurred forward, fist slamming into the thing's chest. The creature flew sideways into a wall, its body crumbling with the sound of stone breaking. But it didn't stay down. None of them ever did.
Ash fell in step beside Max, smashing aside anything too close, their bodies folding and cracking like broken statues, and still crawling after them, shards of limbs clawing along the ground to keep pace. Behind them, the town came alive in the worst possible sense.
What had been a tableau of frozen horrors now writhed. Every street poured with things dragging themselves forward, bone shards poking through skin like splinters, mouths tearing wider than faces should allow. They moved in jerks and snaps, like marionettes being forced through human motions by someone who had never seen a human before. It wasn't running. It wasn't walking. It was worse.
If they caught up, it wouldn't be a swarm. It would be an avalanche.
Max's voice cut through the chaos.
"Look! Over there!"
Ash turned.
It loomed through the haze: a castle — or something that had tried very hard to look like one. Towers clawed at the sky, their stonework blackened, pitted, jagged as if built from the bones of the earth itself. Spires jutted at wrong angles, windows like empty sockets staring down. It was hard to see from where he is but it looks like the whole thing looked stitched together from the dreams of an architect who hated people.
It was massive. Too massive. The kind of structure that didn't just get overlooked on a scan. It had to be hidden. Something had kept it invisible. until now.
Ash's stomach sank. Either that was salvation, or it was where salvation went to die.
The roar came again, closer. Not the guttural scream from before. This one was heavier, like mountains grinding together.
Both of them turned.
Max's face drained, rare enough to make Ash blink.
"There's the big one."
The thing thundered into view, broad-shouldered and fast, each step a quake. It looked like the smaller frozen ones had been melted down, mashed together, then sculpted by someone who hated symmetry. Its torso split open with a mouth that stretched from throat to gut, grinding stone teeth snapping wetly against each other as if it were chewing on the air.
Ash didn't look back again. Why would he? He already knew how this story went for him. Death wasn't waiting, not for him. The problem was Max. Max wasn't built with the same guarantees, and Ash wasn't about to test what losing him would feel like.
The giant's roar thundered behind them, stone grinding against stone. The smaller ones scrambled over each other, a sea of snapping jaws and broken limbs pulling themselves forward in ways no living thing should.
Ahead, the castle loomed closer, swallowing the horizon with jagged towers and a promise of shelter — or something worse.
Ash grit his teeth. Either way, he'd get his brother inside. Even if the world wanted to break apart around them, Max wasn't dying here. Not while Ash was still standing.
And as the ground shook harder with each step of the thing chasing them, one thought burned through Ash's skull.
If that castle wasn't safety… then it had better be a better kind of hell.