The world twisted and bent like a snake and then snapped back with a sickening jolt. Kael's breath caught as he flew forward, the edges of his vision blurring with black and gray.
There was no ground, no sky—just an endless void that was eating his senses. It was like reality had frayed and left behind only chaos.
Then it stopped.
Kael hit the ground with bone-crushing force and the air was knocked from his lungs. He gasped and the taste of iron filled his mouth. When his vision cleared he was lying in the middle of a desert.
The air felt cold and wrong and pricked his skin like needles. Above him the sky looked a mess of dark clouds that bled crimson lightning. The horizon stretched out in every direction, dotted with jagged ruins and skeletal trees.
The land was alive in its decay and whispered faint, incoherent murmurs that crept into his ears and wrapped around his brain.
Kael sat up and every muscle in his body screamed. His heart pounded in his chest as he realized 'this wasn't Earth'. This was something else.
"The Nexus," he whispered. His voice was lost in the silence around him.
'How? Why am I here?'
---
Kael stood up and brushed the ash-like dust from his clothes. The ground beneath him was cracked and blackened with Blight feeling the cracks. He looked down at his hands, shaking.
'Focus, damn it. Focus.'
A cold wind howled and brought with it the faint stench of rot. Kael pulled his academy combat wear around his shoulders and squinted at the horizon. He could see movement in the distance—shadows moving unnaturally, too fluid to be human.
Ravagers.
The memory of the Ravagers from the Void Breach came flooding back to him but these felt different. There was malice in the air, a hunger that was eating at the edges of his mind.
He turned the other way and scanned his surroundings for shelter. The jagged ruins ahead were the only option.
They stuck out of the ground as though they were teeths broken, their surfaces slick with some dark, gooey substance. Kael hesitated but forced his legs to move. Staying out in the open wasn't an option.
---
The ruins offered no comfort.
The walls were cracked and crumbling with strange markings that glowed faintly under the crimson lightning above. Kael stepped carefully, his boots crunching on the brittle ground.
The silence inside the ruins was crushing.
Every sound he made—his breathing, his footsteps—felt loud, like the place was laughing at him for trying to be quiet. Shadows moved on the walls, even when there was no light to cast them.
Kael stopped. A soft sound reached his ears—something wet and slithery. It was coming from deeper in the ruins, echoing low but unmistakable.
He clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. 'It's just the wind,' he told himself. 'Nothing more.' But his instincts were screaming otherwise.
As he moved deeper into the ruins the stench of decay grew stronger and almost choked him. His boots splashed into something sticky and he looked down to see a trail of dark fluid leading further into the shadows.
It glowed faintly, a sickly mix of red and black.
'Blood,' he thought and his stomach turned. But it wasn't just blood—it was thick and tar-like and pulsed faintly as if it was alive. Kael stepped back, his mind racing.
Whatever had left that trail wasn't human.
---
His thoughts were interrupted by a guttural growl that sent his blood running cold. It came from behind him, low and wet, like something gargling its last breath. Kael spun around, his eyes scanning the dim corridor.
There was nothing there.
But he knew better than to trust his eyes. The air had changed, bringing with it a hunting tension that made every hair on his body stand on end. He backed away slowly, his eyes fixed on the corridor. His foot hit something and he almost fell.
He turned to see what it was and stopped.
A body. Or what was left of it.
It was a man—or had been. His torso was open, his ribs sticking out like broken branches. His face was contorted in a scream, his eyes wide and unseeing. But it wasn't the blood that made Kael's stomach turn—it was the way the flesh moved, as if something was under it.
Before Kael could move the corpse jerked violently and its head snapped towards him with a sickening crack.
The dead eyes locked onto his and a gurgling hiss came from its ruined throat.
Kael backed up, his heart racing. The corpse was crawling towards him, its broken limbs moving fast.
"Fuck this," Kael whispered, his voice shaking.
He turned and ran.
---
The ruins seemed to twist around him as he fled, the corridors getting narrower and darker. The growls and hisses followed him, getting louder with every step.
Kael didn't dare look back, his focus on finding an exit.
He gasped for air as he burst into an open courtyard. The air was colder here, cutting into skin like knives. He stopped, his eyes scanning.
The courtyard was empty except for a single tree in the center. Its branches were bare, claw-like and reaching for the sky. Underneath it lay a man, slumped against the trunk, his head bowed.
Kael approached slowly, his instincts telling him to retreat. But something about the figure was drawing him in, a sick fascination he couldn't ignore.
"Hey," he called out, his voice hoarse. "Are you… alive?"
The man didn't respond. Kael stepped closer, his hand hovering in the air ready to summon Ather'valis. When he was close enough to see the man's face, his blood turned to ice.
The man's eyes were gone, replaced by gaping, bloody sockets. His mouth hung open in a silent scream, and his chest had been torn open, his ribs spread apart like a mimicry of wings.
Kael staggered back, bile rising in his throat. The man's body was covered in strange, glowing markings—the same ones that adorned the ruins. They pulsed faintly, in time with the tree's movements.
Because the tree was moving.
Its branches creaked and twisted, reaching down toward the corpse. The roots beneath it shifted, pulling at the ground. And then Kael saw them—other bodies, half-buried in the dirt, their faces frozen in agony.
Kael took a step back, his legs trembling. He turned to run, but the ground under him cracked, and he fell to his knees.
A cold wind swept through the courtyard, carrying faint sound of whispers. They grew louder, more insistent, until they became a deafening roar in his mind.
And then he saw it.
A figure standing at the edge of the courtyard, shrouded in shadow. It didn't move, didn't speak, but its presence was suffocating. Kael's heart pounded as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
The figure stepped forward, and Kael's breath caught in his throat. It was tall and thin, its body draped in tattered rags. Its face was obscured, but its eyes—if they could even be called that—glowed with a low green light.
Kael scrambled to his feet. But he couldn't move. His body refused to obey.
The figure raised a hand, and Kael felt a sudden, crushing weight on his chest. He gasped, falling to his knees as the air was forced from his lungs. The whispers grew louder, echoing in his mind like a thousand voices screaming in unison.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
Kael looked up, his vision swimming. The figure was gone, and the courtyard was silent again. But the air was different now—heavier.
He turned his head and froze.
There, in the snow, was a single red stain. It spread slowly, seeping into the ground like ink on paper.
"There's blood on the snow."