Fog wrapped around Azerath's boots like cold fingers as he descended the broken stone steps of what used to be home. Above him, the Blue Moon hung fat and pale, turning everything beneath it into a fever dream. Shadows stretched too long, all of them pointing the same direction.
Toward the Sin Bridge.
He'd heard stories about it his whole life—the bridge that shouldn't exist, that only appeared when the world was breaking open. Now here it was, arcing across the sky like the spine of some dead god, its surface rippling with light that looked almost liquid. Almost alive.
Come.
The word slipped into his head like it had always been there, waiting. Not a voice, exactly. More like a memory that wasn't his, something passed down through blood and bone.
Azerath stepped into the empty street.
The wind cut through, carrying the faint sound of bells—the kind that rang when things from the Depth pushed through into the world. But the streets were silent. No one else seemed to hear them.
Just him.
He passed a streetlamp, its light flickering blue, bending toward him like it was being pulled. He stopped.
Light didn't do that. Shouldn't do that.
The Blue Moon's doing. The barrier between worlds was thin tonight. Thinner than it had ever been.
Everything tonight is a threshold, he thought. Everything means something.
His father used to say, "When the world starts acting strange, don't look at the world—look at yourself first."
Azerath's hands curled into fists.
Father…
The grief was a cold blade in his chest, sharp and constant. He carried it the way you carry a scar—proof that something was taken from you, and you survived it anyway.
The Sin Bridge woke up.
The sky rippled like fabric torn from the inside. Azerath looked up as the bridge brightened, black lightning crawling along its length. Symbols appeared—curved, ancient, wrong—and he understood them.
Not all of them. Not clearly.
But enough.
"Sin-tongue," he whispered.
Words he'd never learned. A language he shouldn't know.
The forbidden speech of Depth Sovereigns.
He pressed his fingers to his temple. His second pupils—the mark of what he'd consumed, what he'd become—flickered beneath the skin. The essence he'd devoured was still settling inside him, rewriting pieces of who he used to be.
Hallowshade POV — The Watchers
Behind shuttered windows, people watched.
They didn't speak. Barely breathed.
"He's walking toward it."
"Is he insane?"
"Only Depth-born can even see the bridge. Humans can't…"
They were wrong.
Azerath wasn't Depth-born.
But he wasn't entirely human anymore, either.
And the bridge had chosen him.
The city's central square should have been alive with noise and lamplight. Tonight it was silent as a tomb, drowned in fog.
The air tasted like metal. Every breath came out white.
Azerath stood beneath the Sin Bridge.
It hummed—low, ancient, judging.
A strand of shadow uncoiled from above, forming steps.
He reached out and touched it.
Cold lanced through his palm—not pain, but the eerie sensation of touching someone else's memory, something that had never been yours.
A whisper curled into his mind:
"Speak your Sin."
Azerath's jaw clenched.
He thought of his family. Gone.His home. Destroyed.The Assembly. Liars, all of them.The world. Blind and complicit.
His sin was wrath.
But it wasn't wild. It was sharp. Controlled. A blade waiting for the right throat.
He exhaled slowly.
"Wrath."
The bridge shuddered.
Not in rejection.
In recognition.
The entire structure pulsed once, deep and resonant, like a heartbeat.
Shadows wove themselves into solid steps beneath his feet.
Behind him, the city fell away into absolute silence.
Azerath stepped onto the Sin Bridge.
The First Ascent
Every step broke the rules.
Gravity loosened its grip. Sound stretched thin. Light folded in on itself. Time moved like water, slow and strange.
The sky darkened. The clouds vanished. Stars wheeled overhead in patterns that made no sense, spiraling like they were alive.
Azerath felt like he was walking through the memory of the universe itself.
He looked back.
Below him, Hallowshade looked unreal—like a painting locked behind glass. He could see the manor. The bodies. Everything he'd lost.
But he didn't stop.
Cold wind pulled at his hair, and moonlight clung to him like frost.
Something walked beside him.
Not visible. Not solid.
But there.
A presence that matched him step for step.
Azerath didn't turn his head.
"State your intent," he said, voice low.
The answer came soft, smooth as silk dragged over stone.
"To observe."
"Observe what?"
"Your becoming."
Azerath's hand drifted toward the dagger hidden at his belt.
"If you get in my way—"
"We do not stand. We watch."
The voice faded.
The presence remained.
Azerath exhaled through his nose and kept walking.
The Bridge's End
The Sin Bridge ended at a doorway carved from black stone, covered in spiraling runes that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them. It was old. Older than the world he knew.
Azerath pressed his hand against it.
The stone pulsed beneath his palm like a heartbeat.
Shadows peeled away, and an opening formed—revealing a staircase that spiraled down into blue-lit darkness.
Azerath breathed in deep.
His family's last message, carved into the manor wall, echoed in his head:"Azerath… run."
He stepped onto the first stair.
"I'm done running."
The door closed behind him with a sound like finality.
The bridge vanished.
The Blue Moon dimmed.
Only his footsteps remained, descending into a Depth that had waited a thousand years for someone exactly like him.
And the Depth whispered:
"Welcome home, Child of Sin."