The torrential rain poured relentlessly, its icy waters mingling with the dark blood still dripping from Gaël's makeshift weapon. The night sky was as black as ink, suffocated by the ominous presence of the shattered moon, now a void of darkness, pierced only by the distant, unwavering glow of the celestial sword embedded within it. A cold, merciless radiance, like the silent gaze of an unseen judge upon the world below.
'If only that cursed moon would vanish!'
Before him, the creature let out a guttural, strangled sound, monstrous, distorted, far from the noble bellow of the stag it had once been. It was no longer a beast of the forest but an aberration gnawed away by darkness. Its festering eyes gleamed with a sickly light, a kaleidoscope of twisted colors, as if a mad painter had spilled every hue onto a canvas already condemned. Razor-sharp fangs, where only flat teeth should have been, glistened under the rain, eager to sink into the nearest flesh.
'Another one that wants my hide, huh? Well, this time, you're welcome, ugly!'
Gaël tightened his grip on the spiked club, his fingers whitening from the strain. The weapon was crude, torn from the ruins of a decaying building. But tonight, it would suffice. His clothes, soaked and tattered, clung to his lean yet sinewy frame. His bare arms, streaked with mud and dried blood, were like a parchment where every scar told the story of an ill-fated encounter.
"Come on!" he shouted, his voice ringing out as a challenge to the heavens. "Come and taste my club once more, damned creature!"
The beast tensed, ready to pounce. Its antlers, once a symbol of majesty, had twisted into serpentine branches, writhing to form a menacing spear. The grotesquely muscular limbs coiled like springs, and with a splash of water, it lunged.
Gaël took a deep breath, his heart pounding against his ribs. A familiar shadow slithered into him, insidious, black as the deepest night. The darkness of the moon. It flooded his lungs, his veins, and most of all, his right arm, which became covered in obsidian scales, so black they seemed to devour the surrounding light. An inhuman force surged through his muscles.
He pivoted on his heels, using the momentum of his body to unleash all his power in a single, devastating blow. The spiked club crashed against the creature's skull with great force. The impact thundered like a bolt of lightning, hurling both adversaries backward. The beast slammed into a tree, its skull grotesquely misshapen from the force of the strike. Slowly, it slid down to the ground, motionless.
Gasping for breath, Gaël straightened up. The scales vanished in a swirl of shadow, and he pressed a trembling hand to his chest. Beneath his skin, a searing pain emanated from the organ that beat within him like a frantic war drum. This black stain... it was consuming him, bit by bit. Outwardly, only his blackened right ring finger betrayed his affliction. He cast a glance at his glove, the only piece of leather he still possessed in decent condition. He made sure it covered his right hand properly.
"Did you get it?" A voice broke the silence behind him. A slender boy stood there, his eyes gleaming with a mix of hope and concern. His light brown, slightly wavy hair was always messy, as if he never bothered to fix it.
His young face lit up with bright blue-green eyes, full of mischief, like he was enjoying a joke only he understood.
Gaël managed a weary smile. "Shredded it to pieces," he replied, his voice laced with irony. He glanced briefly at the beast slumped against the tree, its broken fangs and twisted snout frozen in a grotesque grimace.
Then, he let out a long sigh. The rain continued to fall, indifferent. Such was the usual weather in this region, even before the Great Fracture.
_ _ _
The Great Fracture had struck many decades earlier, long before Gaël was born, an apocalypse that had shaken the world like no cataclysm before it.
Its trigger was a celestial sword, plunging from the cosmos, impaled into a grotesque black monstrosity. It could have passed millions of miles away, unnoticed by any mortal eye. But no. It had chosen the moon as its target.
The sword pierced it from end to end, burying itself deep into the heart of the celestial body. Did it kill the darkness instantly ? No one ever found the answer, but the impact was cataclysmic.
The sky ignited.
The moon, once a symbol of eternity and dreams, became a mutilated star, oozing a black, viscous substance that spread through space like a celestial cancer. Lunar fragments rained upon the Earth, unleashing earthquakes of unfathomable magnitude and triggering colossal tsunamis. Within days, the great empires of the East and West, locked in their struggle for global supremacy, were erased from the surface of the world, swallowed by the waves and ashes. Their once-mighty armies vanished without a trace.
Civilization faltered.
Humanity, ensnared by its own insignificance, shattered into a thousand pieces.
Asia, resilient, endured. Hardened by millennia of traditions, its lands resisted the catastrophe better than most. The devastated kingdoms forged an unprecedented coalition, giving birth to the Sun Empire, the most unified nation the world had ever known.
The ocean depths became fertile ground for abominations born from the moon's corruption, creating forbidden, impassable zones. The Atlantic and the Pacific divided the world, rendering the Americas unreachable from other continents. Africa, the cradle of mankind, became little more than lands of shadow and desolation, where monstrous beings prowled the wastelands, tearing through the survivors without mercy.
Old Europe, once proud and refined, splintered into city-states, each struggling for its own survival. Allies one day, enemies the next, these cities became nothing more than a patchwork of ruins and paranoia. As for Oceania and the rest of the world… no one truly knew what had become of its people. Had they perished, or had they simply been forgotten?
In the sky, no satellites remained. Space had become a silent graveyard, corrupted by the black aura of the disfigured moon. Every celestial body seemed infected, stripped of its purpose. The transmissions had gone silent, and even the sun and stars themselves seemed dimmer, as if afraid of what they had witnessed.
The laws of nature had been altered. Unexplainable phenomena emerged: howling winds without source, boiling oceans at dawn, black lightning rending the sky without storm or rain. Even time seemed to waver, surging forward in erratic bursts or freezing in eerie stillness. Monstrous beings arose, some twisted versions of local wildlife and flora, others spawned directly from the lunar corruption, making nature far more savage and lethal than ever before.
And always, amidst this apocalypse, the sword remained, thrust into the monstrous shadow of the moon. The survivors named it Excalibur, in honor of the legendary weapon of long ago. But it was not a symbol of hope for everyone.
For Gaël, it was a sentence, a cruel reminder that even the stars could fall.
_ _ _
Gaël approached the beast that had once been a stag. Now, it was nothing more than a grotesque monstrosity, an aberration born from the darkness that slowly devoured the Kernéval forest.
Before him, the creature's still-warm carcass lay sprawled, its twisted antlers and fur stained with shadow.
He crouched, his fingers trembling slightly as he ran them over the beast's sticky pelt. In his darkest nightmares, he saw visions of himself suffering the same transformation, his bones snapping, his skin hardening, his mind unraveling into madness… becoming a creature like this, a beast lost forever.
'No. Not me… I won't become this.' He clenched his teeth.
He was stained, yes, but not yet corrupted. Not like those poor souls who had turned into monsters. But that didn't mean he was safe. He was merely on borrowed time, as Draven and Loern often said, those two loudmouthed fools who were neither stained nor blessed.
He didn't own much, not since birth. Just the skin on his back and a hunting knife passed down from his father. He drew it now, ready to carve his prize, a tribute for the strange visitor he had met the night before in the alleys of Kernéval.
Kernéval was a small city-state in the western part of Old Europe, ranking last in size and influence among the city-states of the Gaëlic people. Yet, nestled on the edge of steep cliffs, it continued to expand, thanks to the power of its blessed stones. In fact, Gaël had been named after this resilient people, most likely because his father had lacked inspiration at the time of his mother's labor.
His schoolteachers often spoke of the megaliths that made the city famous, ancient stones imbued with the blessed light of the Lumen, standing like silent sentinels since the apocalypse. There were also whispers of a celestial sword fragment that had fallen into the stone circle, forever altering their nature. The Lumen had shielded the region from storms and violent tides, saving much of the local population and allowing them to rebuild after the Great Fracture.
But that blessing had its limits.
Here, in these dark woods, it held no influence.
Gaël shook his head, clearing away the stray thoughts.
He had a trophy to deliver. Now wasn't the time to get lost in local legends.
"You were right, Kaëlan… This night is cursed. There are more Infested than usual."
"Am I ever wrong?" came the amused reply.
Gaël rolled his eyes but refrained from answering. He knew from experience that if he agreed now, Kaëlan would never let him forget it.
"Do you remember what's worth the most? The antlers, the eyes, or its Umbra shard?" Gaël asked, leaning over the fallen beast.
"Hmm… I'd say the eyes. But just to be sure, let's take everything. My bag is still pretty empty! Unless, of course, there's nothing left but pulp, oh mighty brute who shreds everything !"
A smug grin spread across Kaëlan's face, but he barely had time to add more before Gaël cut him off, crouching down.
"Less talking, more helping !"
Kaëlan burst into laughter, a bright, carefree sound, almost too light for the situation. He raised his hands in mock surrender.
"Oh, my apologies! But you know, sometimes talking to an Infested can make its flesh more tender!"
Gaël ignored him. He was used to this side of his friend, Kaëlan liked to play the fool after a scare, as if to chase away the fear. But deep down, Gaël knew this humor masked a sharp mind.
He drew a long knife from the sheath strapped across his chest, the only heirloom left from his late father, and set to work skinning the creature.
The blade's cut echoed in the stillness, blending with the whispers of the wind and the murmurs of the trees.