The air thickened with mist as she wandered, her bare feet pressing into moss slick with dew and old blood. Though the necromancers had fled, their presence lingered—an oily residue that clung to the bark and hung in the air like smoke from a corpse fire.
She moved without knowing why. No destination, no memory, only a pull—like a thread stitched into her sternum, tugging her forward with slow insistence. Her skin burned faintly where the blood had pulsed strongest. The trees around her grew denser, their trunks knotted with faces that were not bark, but petrified expressions of anguish—open mouths, frozen screams.
The forest was not merely haunted. It remembered.
Somewhere, distantly, bells chimed—three low, resonant notes. They did not echo, yet the sound rang within her ribs like a threat.
She stumbled.
Her vision blurred. The world tilted.
In the clearing ahead, a structure emerged—half-overgrown, stone buried beneath ivy and root. It might once have been a shrine, or a tomb. Now it was simply old. Forgotten. But something inside it still breathed.
She approached it, drawn as if by gravity.
Inside, it was cool and damp, the air laced with copper and dust. Her steps echoed. No spirits followed here. Only silence.
At the center lay a pool—circular, ringed with carved runes in a language she did not understand. It was dry.
She leaned over it.
And saw herself.
Not her reflection.
But another her—a woman of blood and shadow, robed in crimson threads that drifted like smoke, her face marked with warpaint and tears. Her eyes were hollow, not empty but filled with infinite sorrow. The woman raised a hand toward the surface of the dry pool—and mirrored her perfectly.
Then spoke.
"You are her. You are not her. Not yet."
Her voice was hers—but not quite. It echoed with centuries, layered over with too many tongues.
"What am I?" she whispered.
The apparition only tilted her head.
Then, behind her, the world caught fire.
A wall of golden flame erupted at the entrance of the shrine. The heat seared the moss from the stones and split bark from trunks. She turned, shielding her eyes.
A figure stepped through the fire—untouched. Clad in white and gold, wearing a helm shaped like a sunburst, the figure bore a staff crackling with firelight. In his other hand, a gem pulsed—a ruby the size of a heart, bound in a cage of blackened silver.
The Power Gem.
"By order of the Church of Pure Flame," the man intoned, his voice hollow within the helm, "you are condemned."
She blinked. "Why?"
He raised the staff.
"You exist."
The fire lashed toward her.
She threw up her arms, instinct screaming. The fire struck her—not with heat, but with memory.
Images exploded behind her eyes:
—A throne of screaming bone.
—A dagger plunged into a god's throat.
—A red tide swallowing a city whole.
She screamed.
Not from pain.
From knowing.
The fire receded. Her skin smoked—but not burnt. Her veins pulsed with red light, more intense now, glowing through her skin like cracks in stone.
The priest stepped back.
"Heretic... abomination…"
"I don't know what I am," she said softly, rising to her feet.
"But I will."
She raised her hand.
The pool at her feet filled with blood.
Not poured. Not conjured. It simply was.
The blood rose around her, lifted her. She hovered above the shrine floor, wrapped in crimson light. The power burned in her—not flame, not necromancy. Something older. Something raw.
The priest turned to flee.
Too late.
The blood lashed out—sharp as blades, fluid as wind. It struck the gem in his hand, and the Power Gem shattered.
The fire collapsed.
The man fell to his knees, gasping, the helm cracking open. Beneath it, his face was not human.
Eyes black as pitch. Horns, filed short to hide beneath the helm. Skin that shimmered like heat haze.
A demon.
He hissed at her.
"The Church will come. The White Flame does not forgive."
"I'm not asking it to," she said.
Then she walked past him, out of the shrine, into the smoking forest.
Behind her, the spirits waited.
They did not howl. They did not flee.
They bowed.