Another crimson dawn passed—though in the cursed blood river, time bent like memory and did not announce itself.
Somewhere along the blood-veined bed, beneath a canopy of submerged spirit-lichen and fossilized bone-lotus, my body picked up speed slowed. The current was steadily growing stronger, as if rushing to a lower elevation.
And still the tiny lifeform…did not leave.
It coiled now near my spine, weightless, intertwined like a forgotten nerve. It fed in pulses now—less frequently, more purposefully.
It was learning. And more than that…it was adapting.
My vestigium lattice, once frayed, now shimmered like a nest of phoenix wire. Violet and gold threads ran through every rope of energy. My soul still ached—but it no longer bled. My spiritual core, once cracked…was healing. Reforged. Tempered.
And then, in the abyss of my coma realm, something changed. A ripple through the dream sea.
The ropes around me tightened—and then snapped outward like awakened serpents. A shock ran through my awareness as the once-dormant core at my center surged.
A breakthrough.
Not in strength. In form.
I gasped in the coma realm, though my body in the blood river remained still.
But that gasp stirred the river again.
Somewhere upstream…far upstream the blood river began to thin. Something ancient stirred.
"I feed. I guard. I remember. I evolve," the creature whispered once more from below.
This time… I whispered back.
"Who are you? What are you?"
Just then, there was a gurgle. A bubbling, wet and thick, like stew in a cauldron of marrow and moonlight. The coma realm—my dreamscape—shuddered. Reality twisted. The void unraveled, as if fingers unseen had pinched the edges of my unconscious and peeled it open. The twilight bled away.
In its place…a room.
Wide. Cold. Towering windows of shimmering crystal. Strange vertical lights, pale and soft like captured moonbeams, buzzed overhead.
I stood barefoot on a pristine white carpet—soft, warm beneath my feet. Beast hide? No… too uniform. Too unnatural.
The walls were smooth, the furnishings angular. A low-lying bed dominated the center, draped in crimson silk. A reflective pane—mirror? obsidian glass?—hung across the far wall, showing my flickering vestigium-streaked form. I didn't know what this place was. But it felt assembled—stitched together from fragmented memories not my own. A vision scraped from other another mind, or scavenged from passing humans who'd brushed against this river in death. Then it began.
A slow bubble in the center of the white carpet. A pulsing red froth surged upward, like boiling blood forced through a sieve of bone. I stepped back. It gurgled again, then split. From the sanguine pool, she emerged. First a hand—slender, blood-slick, with inhumanly smooth skin.
Then arms, shoulders, and a head and face. A young girl, or something pretending to be one. No more than sixteen by human standards, but her presence warped everything—ancient, eerie, terrible in its stillness. Her skin gleamed like pale ceramic dipped in red resin, eyes deep pools of garnet, sclera rippling like molten ruby glass.
Hair? Long, soaking wet, a shade between night and arterial crimson, clinging to her narrow frame. She wore no clothes—but her body seemed clothed in the illusion of modesty, her form blurred subtly by the blood vapors rising around her. She smiled—not with innocence. With intent.
"Hello, Ash," she said.
Her voice echoed in my mind, not ears. Too perfect. Too still.
I tensed.
"You're the one…that guarded me," I whispered, unsure if my lips even moved.
"I am," she replied, stepping closer. With each movement, the carpet absorbed her blood, remaining clean.
"And I've been feeding…just a little. To grow. To understand you."
She circled me slowly. I could feel her inspection—not lustful, not violent, but clinical.
Curious.
"Why?" I asked.
She paused behind me. I could feel her breath—or was it qi?—on my neck.
"Because I like you."
No, I realized. That wasn't it.
"You need me."
That made her pause.
She came around to face me again, head tilted, expression curious.
"My name…does not exist. But your kind call me a Blood Phage."
Her eyes flared, veins of blood light cracking the whites for a moment.
"I'm not a parasite. I'm a symbiote."
She smiled, "I am the calamity from the sky, the cause of the great shattering."
"What do you want?" I asked. My vestigium qi sparked faintly—still flickering. Still healing.
She smiled again, and this time it carried a hundred buried hungers beneath the curve of her lips.
"A deal."
She sat cross-legged in the air, floating.
"I remain. I guard. I feed."
"In return…"
She reached into her chest with one delicate hand—and pulled forth a floating drop of blood.
It shimmered. Not red—but black-gold. Swirling with animus-script and ancient DNA spirals I couldn't begin to comprehend.
"I offer you my services" she said. "A blood phage contract."
"If you accept it we will become one."
Her eyes locked onto mine, suddenly cold and vast like the bottom of the river.
"You will become more. And I will become yours."
I felt it—a whisper of possibilities.
My healing would complete. My body would harden.
My blood would carry the sacred traits of the river itself. My vestigium qi might twist, evolve, deepen with phage resonance.
But I would no longer be just Ash of Iron fang.
I would be something else. A Blood-Warded Host.
A new vector of power.
And maybe something darker.
I took a breath—unsteady.
"What's the price?"
Her eyes softened, almost sweet.
"There's always a price. But not today."
Then she leaned forward—so close our foreheads touched.
"I just want a home."
Then quietly… almost too quietly to hear: "…and a name."
The blood light shimmered.
The drop hovered between us—an offer.
Not forced.
Not tricked.
But real.
My choice.
"Okay," I said, stepping forward, gaze steady. "Your name is…Felicity. Felicity Grey."
The blood around her bubbled—frothing in crimson tendrils, her entire form momentarily liquefying in place before snapping back into her shape with a wet "SCCCHLORP!''
She clapped her hands together, hovering mid-air like an eldritch ballerina spun from artery and memory.
"It's otherworldly, Master!" she cried, spinning with glee. Her eyes pulsed with red-gold light, ribbons of sanguine mist coiling around her form. "I love it!"
She swirled upward, orbiting me once like a comet before flopping into my arms throwing us both back into the plush white bed with exaggerated satisfaction, arms splayed, legs kicking lightly.
"I feel like a Felicity Grey. Like a mysterious noble heiress who devours kings by night and reads forbidden tomes by candlelight!"
I blinked. "I'm not really the romantic type"
She grinned. "You will be."
Then, just as quickly, her expression softened it grew somber.
She crawled back toward me, placing the shimmering phage contract in my open palm.
"Now that you've named me, we're linked," she whispered, voice suddenly solemn. "You've acknowledged my will. My self."
Her fingers closed over mine, sealing the blood-contract within a pulse of animus qi.
"I will guard your flesh. I will advance the healing time of your soul wound."
She placed a single finger against my forehead. My coma realm shuddered.
"And when you awaken, Ash…you and I shall become something the Continent has never seen."
Blood spiraled into tendrils. The river surged ahead to the distance. My corporal body began to glow—just faintly—with a new fusion of essence.
The Phage had a name.
And I was no longer alone.