A few hours later…
The town they were in had long since disappeared beyond the horizon.
Only broken roads, and crumbling towers remained… stretching endlessly under the dull gray sky.
Nature had begun reclaiming what humanity left behind. Trees split apart old roads, roots and green consumed old vehicles, and vines crept over buildings that looked as though they had been standing empty for centuries.
It was strangely beautiful.
The group of awakened and one "unawakened" boy walked through it without much urgency.
Well… most of them.
Commander Bram marched in front of them with enough confidence to shake the world.
His spear rested lazily on his shoulders.
"So then I looked the Hollow dead in the eyes and said 'Listen here you troglodyte! Would you kindly walk away from my hiding spot!'"
Lyra didn't even bother turning her head to look at him.
"Commander you were pissing your pants scared shitless."
Bram's hand pressed into his chest with a shocked expression.
"I most certainly did not!"
"You absolutely did."
"I peed myself with dignity!"
Finn scratched the back of his head and cleared his throat.
"Ahem… actually commander, when it walked away you drunkenly started crying aswell."
Bram at this point looked personally betrayed.
"Finn… after everything we've been through?"
Darius chuckled and chimed in:
"It's okay commander, I brought extra clothes just in case you decide to try drinking a strange substance from a plant again."
Laughter erupted from the other two, as Bram stared at all three of them wiping a fake tear from his eye.
"I can't believe the people closest to me would spread such horrific lies…"
Vira quietly watched from the back of the group, conversations like this had been going on for the past few hours and he couldn't deny that the banter made him laugh on the inside.
He was just uncomfortable with showing it on the outside.
Finn slowed his pace until he was walking beside Vira.
"You've been awfully quiet newcomer."
Vira instinctively looked down.
"Sorry."
Finn stared at him for a moment before chuckling.
"Why're you apologizing?"
Vira's face colored to a hue of pink out of embarrassment.
"I-I don't know…"
Silence settled between them for a few moments, before Finn broke it again.
"It's okay to not feel comfortable with us yet, it's your first expedition after all right?"
Vira nodded.
"It is."
Finn shoved his hands in his pockets before continuing:
"My first expedition I threw up after seeing a Nullborn up close… most horrific thing I'd ever seen."
Vira looked over in surprise, he couldn't conjure an image in his head of Finn being fearful,
He just didn't seem like the kind of person.
"Really?"
One of Finn's hands left his pocket as he waved it.
"No."
Vira's face frowned with confusion, he couldn't tell if this was an attempt at a joke.
"It was the second one."
Vira blinked as Finn's face remained completely serious.
For some reason a tiny laugh escaped him, not at how "good" the joke was. But simply at how stupid it was.
His laugh was quiet, but it was apparent… and genuine.
Finn glanced sideways at him.
"There you go."
Vira immediately looked embarrassed.
"S-sorry!"
Finn sighed.
"You're doing it again… loosen up man!"
"…Sorry."
Another sigh escaped Finn's lips.
In front of them, Bram suddenly spun around and pointed toward the dunes to their left.
"Hold."
The word came out differently than anything he had said all evening. No theatrics, no grin, just flat and immediate.
Everyone stopped in their tracks.
Vira's eyes followed the direction of Bram's spear toward a figure half-buried in the ash at the base of a crumbling building.
At first he thought it was debris, broken concrete or twisted metal but the shape was too complicated for that.
It was an animal… or it used to be.
The creature was huge, roughly the size of a horse, with four legs folded beneath it in a way that suggested it simply just stopped mid-step and collapsed.
It's fur, or what remained of it had peeled away in large patches.
Beneath it the flesh was dark… not bruised dark but like someone had taken black ink and drowned the creature in it.
Veins of black spread from its torso outward like roots drinking from soil, going from its legs, to its torso, and then finally its jaw.
Its eyes were still open… pure white.
Nobody moved toward it.
Finn's hand drifted toward his side, Lyra's eyes swept the surrounding ruins quietly, Darius just stared at it with his arms folded and jaw tight.
Bram lowered his spear slowly.
"Corrupted…"
Vira looked between the creature and the group.
"What does that mean?"
Bram didn't answer immediately.
He crouched a few feet from the creature, studying it without touching it. His voice lost the performance entirely when he finally spoke.
"Sometimes out here in The Remnants, a Concepts principle will bleed into reality… depending on the Concept depends on what that principle does to our world."
Bram dryly let out a chuckle.
"Unfortunately for this big guy… the Blight got to it."
Vira's mind was reeling trying to understand all of this information.
"The Blight…?"
Bram stood back up and replied:
"The Concept of Corruption. When that 'bleed' touches a living thing long enough… this is what happens."
Vira stared at the black veins spreading across the animal's flesh. The pattern was similar to the black veins on his torso.
That thought made his stomach turn, his eyes drifted beneath his shirt without meaning to.
His fingers almost instinctively reached towards his abdomen before he forced his hand away.
'No… Sherane said I'm a Void awakened, that has nothing to do with corruption I think…'
"Is it dangerous?"
Darius spoke before Bram could.
"It's dead, its soul is no longer here… there's nothing we or it can do now."
Vira looked over at him.
Darius hadn't moved from where he stood, arms still folded, eyes still on the corrupted creature.
Glancing at Vira he continued:
"But wherever the bleed happened isn't far, I think we can all agree to keep moving."
Vira held his gaze for a second before nodding slowly.
The group didn't hesitate to get out of there as quick as possible, none of them wanted to encounter the force that claimed that creatures being.
Finn drifted back towards Vira as they walked away from the settlement.
"You doing alright?"
Vira realized he'd been holding his breath… he exhaled carefully.
"Yeah… I-I think so."
Finn glanced at the corpse once more and then looked away, looking at it too long was its own kind of risk.
"Corrupted aren't common, which is probably the only good thing about them. When you start seeing them regularly in an area it means there's a bleed nearby."
Vira stared deep into the cracked ground beneath him.
"I still don't… understand what any of these things really mean."
The weight of that settled over the group quietly.
Finn nudged Vira's shoulder and replied:
"You will when you awaken, that's when things get serious."