Darkness spread out around Sky. Besides the sensation of solid ground beneath his feet, he could feel nothing, see nothing, and for a moment, smell nothing. Then his nose was struck with a putrid smell like that of rotten flesh mixed with the nauseating stench of an overflowing sewer. His stomach churned. He barely held himself back from barfing.
What a stench.
It reminded him of the burial pits in Tirria. No. It was far worse.
Sky pressed his arm over his nose, inhaling his own scent as a means to stump out the nauseating one pressing into him.
His wasn't much better, but he was used to it. And that granted him a brief window to focus on the more important thing. The silence.
Humans were raunchy creatures. When in an unknown place they were bound to make some noise, be it from their footsteps or their words by calling out for others. Sky, though, erred on the side of caution and chose not to make a sound as there was no saying what was lurking in the shadows. And he would have thought the same about the others, if only they didn't number to more than a hundred.
There was no way over a hundred people behaved in the same manner in a certain circumstance, no matter how similar their situations were.
It was an easy conclusion to come to. He was alone wherever he was.
Sky tightened his grip on his sword.
Being alone put him in quite the predicament. There was no one who would act as a scapegoat and take the first action given the situation. Which meant that he would have to do so himself. One misstep could cost his life. He had to be extra careful.
Sky swallowed gently and turned to his sword, placing its blade on his palm as his heartbeat fired into a gallop. He clicked his tongue as the cold, blunt steel made contact with his skin. To kill anything with such a crude blade would require intense force behind every strike; there would be a lot of hacking and sawing, just like he had witnessed on the podium, and very little piercing, if any. And that would result in a rather messy end product.
But the Otherworld was not a place of beauty. A Branded would never be sent to such a place, so Sky didn't have to worry about things getting messy.
He started with his palm.
Sky clenched his jaw and pulled his sword across his skin. A sharp, stinging pain shot through his nerves as his palm tore open and blood rushed out like a fountain.
He had cut too deep.
Sky bit his lower lip, annoyed at himself. Then he rubbed his thumb and index finger on the open wound, smearing them with his blood.
He snapped.
Orgone flowed from his Soul Core, each strand that made up its force layered with complex messages all coming together to create the spellform Sky intended to cast. Sparks flew when they arrived at his fingers, and his blood jolted alive.
There was warmth, and then there was fire.
Sky winced at his fingers as they burnt, his blood acting as a fuel for the red flames that stood atop them, swaying gently like the fire of a candle.
The culmination of the throbbing pain on his palm, and the stinging of his fingers made it hard for him to concentrate. But he took as deep a breath of the nasty air he could to calm himself, and relaxed after a second of suppressed coughs.
Sky then turned his attention towards his scenery, relieved that his head was still on his neck. If there had been any monsters present, he would have been dead already after his cough.
The first thing that caught his attention was a severed arm in a puddle of filthy water just before his feet. It had yellow pus pouring out of it despite being as white as snow, signifying that it had been a while since it had lost its luster.
But that wasn't all.
He moved his fingers forward so his flames brightened a bit more distance, and there were more arms lying around, each one the same as the last. There were no heads, torsos, guts, or even legs. Just arms. And they were all right arms.
Sky's brows pulled in, nauseated though curious at the sight.
He then turned away from the arms and glanced around himself.
He was flanked on both sides by brick walls, pressing him into a narrow path. And despite his flames not being bright enough to disperse all the darkness, he could sense that the path remained that way for quite the distance.
Sighing, Sky rubbed his palm on the wall. They were as cold as ice. He clicked his tongue.
"If I don't leave here soon, I'll end up freezing to death."
Sky turned back to the severed arms and the darkness calling him. Then he took another risky deep breath, tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, and stepped forward.
Nothing happened the further he went down the path. There were no monsters that jumped out of the darkness to rip him to shreds. No traps that took him by surprise. And bit by bit, Sky slowly began to feel at ease.
But he immediately shook that feeling out of his body and soul.
He always had to be on guard. The moment he relaxed would be when he lost his life.
If there was one thing that had been ingrained into him, it was that the Otherworld was not a friendly place, but one where the Branded were sent to die. A slaughterhouse. Only a fool would relax.
After a long trek, just when his flames were on the verge of dying out, Sky arrived at a junction where the rotten arms and the nauseating stench finally came to an end.
But in their places came something even more troublesome.
A wall rose before him, blocking his way forward. And to his sides were two paths, left and right, each no different from the other at a glance.
Sky hesitated, pressing his lips together into a slight grimace as he glanced between the two paths.
The fact that there were two of them meant that one was better than the other, or riskier than the other. To figure out which was which was not something Sky could do at a glance, but that didn't mean he just picked one randomly and waltzed into it without a moment's thought.
In situations like these, patience was a virtue. A mistake was risky.
Sky licked his broken lips, his throat parched. He glanced at his blood, and for half a second it looked rather appetizing to him. But he pushed away his thirst quickly.
Drinking his own blood would cripple him at best.
He flicked his flames off, rubbed his fingers on his blood once more, and snapped another fire to being.
Having replenished his light source, Sky took a moment to consider the path he would take.
Left was bad. That was Sky's first thought as he glanced at the path. It had come naturally to him, like it was common sense, not something that could be argued against.
He knew where that conclusion stemmed from. It was from those hazy memories of his. And despite being unable to tap into the exact reason why left was inherently bad, he couldn't stop himself from believing it. Culture, he supposed, was the only thing that could leave such a deep mark on him, or anyone at all.
Perhaps he should follow that line of reasoning. Culture was culture for a reason. Who was he to go against it?
Sky's mind took a sudden turn towards the culture surrounding the Branded, and how it was responsible for his current sitch. He winced.
Culture wasn't always right. Be it in a life he had memories of, or in his current one, there was always a possibility that it could be wrong.
Sky turned to the path to his right and gulped. He stared at it for quite some time, until he began to feel a need to sit down and reflect on what decision he should take. Then his flames began to flicker as they edged towards dying again.
His fingers and palm were hurting so badly at this point. The more time he took, the more the pain became unbearable. And he was losing blood. He had to make his decision.
He took one last glance between the left and the right path, and an eerie feeling he hadn't noticed before slammed into him. Unnease coursed through his body, nudging him into a shiver and a decision.
He chose years of history.
As soon as he turned into the path to his right, his Divine Voice sounded in his ears.
*You have chosen the Path of the Lamb*
*The Path of the Goat is now out of your reach*
Sky froze for a split second. Then he sharply turned around. Where a path had once existed was now a tall, imposing wall.
His heart slammed into his chest as he quivered slightly.
Yes, he had made his choice, and he didn't regret it—at least not yet—but he had been planning deep down to turn around and try the other path in the case that he had chosen wrong. The Otherworld, however, wasn't so kind to him to give him the chance to change his decisions as many times as he would have liked.
Relax. Sky told himself, taking a deep breath. There was nothing he could do now. The only way was forward. He turned back to the darkness before him.
Sky took the first step, and suddenly his scenery brightened. There was a whoosh from the walls to his side, and he looked up to see sconces hanging from them, going on for the length of the path, and all bearing blue flames.
Sky gazed at the flames for a few seconds more, a pensive expression on his face as he watched them flicker.
Did that mean good or bad? he wondered.
Regardless of his thoughts, he put off his own flames and took that time to take care of the wound he had inflicted upon himself, tearing off a piece of his cloth and wrapping it over his palm.
Just like every other Gift required their elements to be physically present to be used, Sky's also required blood to function. But since his blood affinity was still in the lowest of grades in sorcery, that meant he had no choice but to inflict damage upon himself to use his magic.
But he didn't mind. Blood magic was versatile. And that was why the sanctuary feared whoever awakened it. Unluckily for them, though, a Gift wasn't something that was made known to all right from birth in the same manner as a Branded was. Even when awakened, it was a secret that could only be revealed by the awakened themself. Sky had managed to escape the hawkish gazes of the sanctuary because of that. And he would make certain that it came back to haunt them.
He reached for his sword where he had placed it on the wall and continued onward.
There were no arms or filthy puddles on Sky's current path, but he still didn't let himself relax. The title given to the path he was on made certain he was too tense for that.
A lamb was an animal that always appeared in tales of sacrifices. Since he had taken the Path of the Lamb, then he was not delusional to think that he might as well be on the path of his death.
A goat wasn't any better, but that didn't matter at this point in time.
It didn't take long before Sky arrived at another dead end; but this time there were no paths flanking both sides. Instead, a chest rested before the wall at the end of the path, quiet and out of place.
Sky strengthened his hold on his sword and walked up to the chest, studying it. It was square and wooden, reinforced with pitch black metalwork and secured by a glowing, reddish lock. Sky stared at it cautiously, afraid to reach for it and waiting for something to happen.
The chest didn't delay.
An ominous sensation poured from the chest, sending chills down Sky's spine as his Divine Voice sprung to life.
*You have encountered a Dire Chest*
*Trick or Treat? Which is it? Will you eat or be eaten? Which is it?*
Sky flinched and took a step back.
He had not noticed before, but now he realized that he had been sweating and his hands were clammy.
He gulped, his throat even more dry than it had been a second ago. Then he glanced around, seeking a way away from the chest, as the unease creeping over the nape of his neck didn't subside. But there was no other path besides the one he had come in from, and he was aware that even that was a dead end.
Sky turned back to the chest, heart pounding.
Was he to answer its question? With what answer exactly?
Sky shook his head, trying to calm himself. Just like with the paths, he had to take his time. He couldn't rush—
*Trick or Treat?! Which is it?! Will you eat or be eaten?! Which is it?!*
Sky gasped, jerking backwards as the words resounded once more in his ears, this time with a lot more urgency and ferocity.
His brows furrowed and his joints stiffened.
He had to answer.
But with what?
Trick or Treat? Which was the better option between the two?
Sky's chest hurt and his head ached.
A trick couldn't mean something good. His memories corroborated that. And if such was the case, then, perhaps a treat was the best choice to make.
"Treat," he replied, his pulse racing.
A deafening silence fell over the space for a second. Then it broke with a feral cackle that shook the walls on every side.
*Trick! Hahahaha!!!!*
Sky groaned and clutched his hair as the shrill voice and laughter turned grating in his head, like stones being grinded against each other.
He was only barely getting himself back when the Dire Chest flipped open with a clink, and black smoke poured out of it. The blue flames on the walls quaked as the air turned erratic, and Sky's bones stiffened. He twitched and held his blade with both his hands, gazing intensely into the black smoke before him. But the more he looked, the more afraid he became. And then the smoke took shape.