Alphael's eyes darted across the scene, desperate, frantic. If this really was The Binding, then every scrap of detail might decide whether he lived or died.
The first thing he noticed was the sky.
It was no longer summer. No longer day. A cold night stretched above him, vast and infinite. The wind carried a bite sharp enough to cut through his bones. A swollen moon glared down, brighter than any he had ever seen, bathing the world in pale silver. Stars hung clear and sharp in the void.
Stars? But I can see them perfectly. So then, no light pollution? Where… the hell am I?
His gaze dropped to the horizon. Mountains rose like jagged titans, their peaks lost in drifting clouds. Closer, a smaller range cut the earth, but even that dwarfed anything he had known back home.
Then he saw the ground.
The grass—lush, thick, impossibly vibrant—was blue. Each blade shimmered faintly, veins of light running through it as they swayed with the breeze.
A stunned laugh escaped his lips.
"Blue grass… I gotta show Mom at dinner."
He fumbled out his phone, snapped a photo, and spun to share the miracle with anyone nearby—
—but the grass was no longer blue.
It was crimson. Soaked in spreading pools of blood.
Only then did Alphael hear it—the world's true voice. A roar of terror, a cacophony of screams, thousands upon thousands shrieking, begging, breaking. Above the chaos came a sound worse still: bones snapping, grinding like brittle twigs crushed between colossal jaws.
Alphael froze.
Shadows moved across the plain. Four of them. Enormous shapes.
Crows—or things that resembled them. Each the size of a house. Black wings spread wide, blotting out the stars as they dipped low. People vanished in their beaks by the dozens, scooped up like grain beneath a farmer's sickle.
The air reeked of iron. Flesh tearing. Bones splintering. Screams dissolving into silence.
Alphael's mind failed him. His body did not. His legs carried him forward, shoving him into the stampede.
"I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die!"
The words thundered inside his skull, drowning out thought.
The grass beneath their trampling feet pulsed with light, each crushed blade glowing azure before fading back to blue. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. The only direction was away.
Alphael stuck with a pack of survivors, running wherever the tide surged. Their path led to a forest—trees towering overhead, their leaves the same deep blue as the grass below. The canopy swayed, whispering like a tide of shadows.
"A forest," he gasped. "I can hide there."
They tore into the undergrowth. Branches clawed at skin. Shrubs tangled their legs. Panic pressed them onward.
Then a man at the front stumbled. His foot caught in a vine, and he fell.
In desperation, he reached for a tree trunk and brushed against a mushroom the size of a lantern.
It bloomed in an instant.
A spore cloud erupted, swallowing his face. He gagged, vomited blood and bile. His screams turned wet as his hands raked across his cheeks, tearing furrows through skin and flesh with inhuman frenzy.
Alphael slowed, horrified. His stomach heaved.
"I—should've—"
The man collapsed. Silent. Still.
Alphael's throat convulsed. He clamped his hand over his mouth, choking back bile.
"I should've helped. I should've done something. Crap. Crap."
But the forest allowed no mourning.
A shadow fell. The canopy split apart.
One of the colossal crows descended like a falling star. Its wings scythed through trees as though they were paper. The ground trembled with its impact. Its bulk loomed impossibly close—body black as night, muscles rippling beneath feathered flesh.
It spread its wings. The span dwarfed even its monstrous body, blotting out the moon. At their tips, talons flexed like hands, gouging the earth, propping it up in a grotesque manor mimicking the appearance of a quadruped.
Then Alphael saw its face.
A pale, bony mask stretched across its beak and brow. Jagged ridges crowned its skull. Not carved. Not worn. Bone, fused into flesh and feather. A face of death, grown from within.
His breath caught.
"Are those masks?"
The crow's chest swelled. It shrieked. The sound ripped the world apart. Alphael's teeth rattled, his vision blurred. The forest shook beneath the howl of hunger.
The monster lunged.
It snatched a fleeing survivor, swallowed them whole. Screams were cut short, muffled as the man's body slid down its throat. The beast rumbled, savouring, before raising its gaze.
Its abyssal eyes fixed on Alphael.
"Me? It's looking at me? Why!?"
His legs trembled. Locked in place. Proof of prey.
"No! Get the hell away from me!" His voice cracked.
The crow shrieked, talons digging deep, dragging its bulk toward him with terrifying speed.
Alphael stumbled back—straight into a middle-aged man. Fear lit the stranger's eyes.
"Help me!" Alphael pleaded.
For a moment, it seemed the man might. Instead, Alphael felt two hands shove his chest. His body lurched sideways—toward the monster.
The man turned and ran. Alphael heard the words, faint beneath the stampede of his pulse:
"It's better you than me."
Alphael's world snapped. His body moved without thought. He surged forward, grabbed the fleeing man by the collar, and hurled him back.
The tables turned.
The crow seized the man in its beak. The stranger screamed, cursed Alphael, struggled in vain. The monster's jaws closed, shearing through flesh and bone. An arm tumbled through the air, landing at Alphael's feet.
He stared. His chest heaved.
"No… I just…"
His teeth clenched.
"He did it to me first. Right? He did it to me first. I didn't mean to…"
The survivors around him gaped. A boy had murdered a grown man. Madness.
The crow's talons lifted again. They descended toward Alphael's trembling body.
Inches from his end.
The world flared.
Blinding light split the night. The forest was day for a heartbeat. The crow shrieked, its wings thrashing as it reeled back. Trees splintered, branches fell. With a frantic beat, it tore itself free, fleeing into the darkness.
Silence followed.
The survivors collapsed, gasping, staring. Then, slowly, all eyes turned to Alphael. The boy who had condemned a man. The murderer.
Before the weight of their stares could crush him, another sound cut through the forest.
Footsteps. Many. Steady.
The undergrowth rustled. Lantern light flickered between the trees. A line of figures emerged—men and women clad in uniform garb, weapons in hand, faces grim beneath the glow.
A woman cried out:
"Are you here to help us?!"
The others seized her plea, voices rising—begging, pleading, demanding salvation.
Hope flared in Alphael's chest. Warriors. Survivors from earlier Bindings, maybe. People who knew this world. People who could save him.
His legs sagged. Breath left him in a shudder.
After everything, after horror, betrayal, and bloodshed he was saved.