Eryndor felt his heartbeat hammer against his ribs. The air had changed—not just in temperature, but in something deeper. The way sound carried. The way the shadows stretched.
The way something breathed.
Selene's fingers tightened around her sword's hilt. Her knuckles had gone white. "Eryndor…"
He swallowed. "I hear it."
Aedric was silent, but his entire body was tense. His right hand hovered near the dagger strapped to his belt, his left curled into a fist.
Then the shadows moved.
Not like wind through the trees. Not like shifting light.
But like something alive.
A figure emerged from the blackened forest—a towering silhouette with limbs that were wrong. Its joints bent the way no human's should. Its body was stretched, skin taut over too-long bones.
But its face—
Its face was human.
Or at least, it had been once.
Eryndor's breath caught. The features were sunken, half-erased, as if time had worn them down like stone in a river. The eyes—where they should have been—were only deep, hollow sockets. Yet he felt it looking at him.
Selene took a step back, her breath shaky. "What in the hells is that?"
Aedric exhaled slowly. "A remnant."
The creature twitched. Its head tilted—bone creaking, skin stretching. And then it spoke.
Or rather, something spoke through it.
"You are not welcome."
The voice wasn't its own. It was layered, shifting—like a dozen mouths speaking at once, some slow, some fast, some whispering directly into their skulls.
Eryndor's stomach twisted. He felt pulled toward it, as if invisible strings were latching onto his chest, dragging him forward.
The tether.
It was reacting to this thing.
Selene gritted her teeth. "We should leave."
Eryndor didn't move.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because he couldn't.
His legs refused to respond. His hands trembled at his sides. It wasn't fear—at least, not just fear. It was something deeper. Something that knew him.
Aedric suddenly grabbed his arm. "Don't listen to it."
The creature's lips curled into something almost like a smile.
"Too late."
Pain exploded in Eryndor's skull.
A scream tore from his throat as his vision blurred, his body locking in place. The world around him—the trees, Selene, Aedric—melted away, dissolving into pure blackness.
And then, for the first time, he heard the real voice.
The one that had been waiting inside him all along.
"Do you see now?"
The words weren't spoken. They slithered through his thoughts, curling around his mind like a predator wrapping around its prey.
Eryndor gasped, trying to force his body to move, to fight, to breathe.
A flash—images seared into his mind.
A tower stretching beyond the clouds. A door made of bone. A name, whispered in a language he had never learned but somehow understood.
And then—
A hand reaching for him.
He slammed back into his body like he had been dropped from a great height.
The remnant was gone.
Selene was shaking him, her face pale with panic. "Eryndor! Eryndor!"
Aedric was behind her, his expression unreadable, but there was something in his eyes—something like recognition.
Eryndor inhaled sharply, his hands gripping the damp earth beneath him. The pain had faded, but the presence hadn't.
It was still there.
Watching.
Waiting.
And it had only just begun.