Chapter 51
The medallion in Hoku's hand disintegrated into glowing shards that ascended and vanished like parchment consumed in flames.
Within seconds, his palm was empty, and a faint static tingled on his skin where the fragments had been.
He stared at his palm in disbelief.
It was clearly gone, yet his mind could not reconcile itself with what his eyes beheld.
Hoku felt a sudden pang in his chest swell into a bitter mixture of emotions he could not name.
After a moment, his legs abruptly stiffened and his fingers twitched.
The tips of his fingers darkened, and red and bluish veins swelled at his knuckles.
Before matters could progress further, the low groans around him subsided and were replaced by the coarse, dragging sound of aged wood, as though a long-sealed door were being wrenched open beyond his sight.
An acrid mix of charred resin and rust hung in the air.
Hoku scrunched his nose against the faint trace of dry, moldy leather, while fragments of debris swirled about him.
On either side, Mars and Li wore grim expressions.
In such a moment, one might have chosen to avoid the peril so clearly set before them, yet there was an unspoken understanding that to linger would lead to the same end, and any alternate path would merely delay their meeting with it.
As Hoku inwardly anchored himself to this thought, he glanced over to check on Abel and Fleur, who had fallen silent for quite some time.
When he moved around the statue, however, a sudden whoosh struck him back.
Darkness seeped from the corners of his vision, and for a fleeting instant, it felt as though he were being drawn into its stomach.
At once, the pressure around him changed, like the ground itself had grown denser.
A tremor shivered through the soil beneath Hoku's feet, crawling slowly up his legs until it dwelt just behind his ribs.
He felt at once that assessing was useless; his instincts had already prompted that something had fluctuated in the natural balance.
The sensations he still perceived, as well as the suffocating smells, confirmed it.
As the wind continued to billow vigorously, oily spray and grit lashed his face.
Even his coat had spread open and whipped above his lower back, occasionally slapping against his knees.
However, as the extremity grew, the impact struck most keenly in his chest, coiling at the base of his spine before wrenching him sideways.
His heart gave a sudden jolt as he lurched forward, and by reflex, his hand reached out for something solid.
Yet his boots had only sunk into the sodden seabed until his heel halted against a small boulder and finally held.
Before he could fall forward, he buried his stance, digging both heels into the ground and leaning ahead to steady himself.
Yet even so, the effort sent a searing strain through his limbs.
The salt-laden wind lashed against his face, and the surrounding din amplified into a shrill, unending scream that tunneled into his mind.
Sweat gathered in his palms, and before his thoughts could align with his motion, the blade had already fallen from his hand.
He quickly pulled one side of his coat over his mouth and nose to preserve at least a little breath.
His panic eased only slightly, but he became acutely aware of another force behind his sternum, like a deliberate tug at his heart vessels.
The sensation came with a peculiar clarity.
It carried perplexing sorrow, both consuming and persistent, as though something old had stirred from where it had long lain buried in the depths of his heart.
Hoku clenched his jaw before pressing his palms to his ears and bowing his head.
As his hair fell over his face, the noise he tried to stifle swiftly took what little air remained.
His thoughts returned in disarray. Was he destined to pass in such darkness? The thought itself carried bitter irony, a navigator famed for his bearings, that remained nothing.
Perhaps Hoku had already surpassed the end of his luck as well.
Strangely enough, the realization granted him a bit of composure. It meant he had not been entirely lost before now, and he would not permit himself to be when the time came.
In the following instant, countless indistinct murmurs arose behind Hoku's eyes, clustering against one another.
He forced his eyes open as pain blossomed through his chest, but the world remained veiled in a void.
He found his coat caked with mud, and the canopies around him reduced to mounted pillars.
Dust and debris patterned fine cuts into his skin, but the only thing that felt true was the taste of iron on his tongue.
Unlike the previous outbursts, this storm did not subside. However, did it remain in mindless rage; instead, its power coalesced as though it had found direction.
Before long, Hoku's thoughts withdrew once more, shaken by the escalating distrust in his own senses.
He could almost believe the gusts were trying to communicate, their pressure converging into a rhythm that wavered between coherent speech and his own turbulent thoughts.
He was more perplexed when he realized his right leg, held stiff by the pressure, had begun to tremble uncontrollably.
He forced himself to twitch a toe, then strain his ankle into a shallow turn.
Each minute motion, though discomforting, wore away the invisible mass bearing down on him.
Just as a shred of composure settled back into place, languid silver strands crept into view at the corner of his vision, drifting like fine lace riveted in a slow current.
He did not understand what they were, but evidently the chaos had subsided enough for him to see.
He blinked away tears that blurred his sight and deciphered fragments of images in the corners of his vision, print conjured by his mind.
Though the long, slanted letters didn't align with any script he could recognize, they partially resembled, the markings that were along the rim of the Medallion.
Apart from that subtle connection, he found himself concerned by their peculiar composition and how each line appeared deliberate, as if this place itself possessed its own written system.
If such a language truly existed, he reasoned, he should have heard mention of it somewhere.
If it were known at all, he thought.
Just as the notion settled, the characters began to deform.
Their edges sank inward, lines thickening until the surface gleamed like fresh ink slowly congealing.
As these black marks smeared the rim of his vision, dripping down in slow, sickly rivulets, Hoku's pupils dilated until they nearly swallowed the color of his irises.
Indeed, the storm showed no sign of abating.
Except…what he had assumed was nothing more than an illusion that arose from fear, changed as the lines before him began to stir in rhythm with a distant moan.
One that soon multiplied into overlapping voices, disordered and low.
He forced his eyes open and noticed a resonance among them.
It was the voice of an aged, but not quite old woman.
For a moment, he could not focus on the words, reeling in stupor. He kept his hands clamped over his ears, though it was pointless.
Then, her voice altered into the very chaos engulfing him, and from within it, he finally heard;
"...She sat and watched a flower, refusing to touch it. 'Let it be,' 'Let it be.' She had waited until the petals fell like coins. I found her beside another creature like her, so much like her yet different inside. She taught me names, and I learned to speak. The garden grew and grew, hiding a thing within its growth. Under her watch, nothing ended. Nothing died. And where nothing died, hunger took root and became hell.
"There should have been one flower plucked to let the rest flourish. But the child I chose would not allow it. The forest grew hungrier by the day, and in turn, I grew desperate. It was then that I understood… how my love had never been returned, and only witnessed."
The voice spoke with a woe so akin to the response in Hoku's heart that it seemed to draw the air from his lungs.
But as her words went on, that sorrow began to unravel into something nearly indescribable.
"I thought it was my doing, and maybe hers too. In any case, it became overwhelming. It ate at my organs and drank my blood. I learned what patience becomes when one cannot let go.
"Even as I waited for her, begged her so desperately, she took only what was hers. She chose to stay rather than show mercy. She sat there, weaving a crown of the first, only dead ones. She betrayed..."
Hoku flinched. Even through his muddled senses, her anguish was the easiest to discern.
"She betrayed me! She betrayed me!" It repeated this over and over, until the words themselves seemed to lose coherence.
Only then did he inwardly perceive a different suspicion, 'Is she imposing her emotions upon me?'
That meant the present moment had nothing to do with Lunhard; it was something else entirely.
He chastised himself for his ignorance, for being unable to piece together the truth.
The voice returned, no longer singular but fraying at the edges like an old rope, and from the void another illusion seemed to emerge.
This time, the lines appeared as just coagulated ink.
Though her voice was steeped in despair, it carried no trace of supplication. It sounded instead like the confession of one burdened by sin or scarred by trauma.
'Oh…because this isn't a plea,' Hoku observed. 'Even the words tell that it is a descent into madness—'
"Because of that child, I have become a thing among things. I am a monster living among monsters. If she does not abandon hell, then neither shall the world."
"Hell…" He inwardly said a second time.
As the woman's voice waned, Hoku abruptly realized his feet had been carrying him onward of their own accord.
When he turned, hoping to see what he had walked past, he became aware at once of a subtle drip—drip—drip of the liquid falling from a sequence of repulsive characters, fading into the murk.
Hoku guessed, then, that he must have begun moving the instant the 'illusions' took hold.
Each time her voice concluded, another vision rose ahead, drawing him deeper into a ghostly decay.
But, even after he was aware, his body still moved.
Hoku's arms hung loosely at his sides.
Perhaps he was being imperatively lured onward, and the only reason he did not stop now was that he had been startled awake by the deteriorating voices.
He felt as though he were narrating another's mind; he could not tell if it was her grief that compelled him, or his own dread.
He vaguely remembered the colossal statue that should have rested before him, yet he had not so much as brushed against a surface.
Just as this crossed Hoku's mind, his shoulder struck something pliant and cool.
Concern passed over his features as he made a short assessment with his touch, gauging how much space he had, and perhaps, what it was.
Other than recalling the feeling of soft wax before it hardens, with a firmness beneath, the sensation was, regrettably, beyond words, leaving him with no choice but to make a reluctant decision.
Upon squeezing his arms inward and burying his hands in his pockets, Hoku's fingers grazed against something at the bottom of each.
He remembered, almost belatedly, that one hand had closed around the locket while the other met the compass.
When at last he had drawn himself inside, the voice fell silent.
His heart began to beat faster.
What was this—why did it gradually constrict more?
Hoku's sensations gradually began to dissolve into a slow and sodden dark.
Though he attempted to retreat, after only a few strides the space sloshed uncomfortably around his skin, and no entrance seemed to remain.
The voice returned from afar, muffled, but distinct enough to press upon the walls, as though from the other side.
Each syllable carried such sinister malice that a terror unlike any he'd encountered before, welled up within him.
"You will rot in the dead ground. No worm will gnaw your flesh, no flower will dwell over your grave. You will remain the same, pitiful things, witnessing death until your minds unravel, and then I shall devour you from within."
Suddenly, a laughter steeped in madness echoed amidst her words.
By the end, her voices collected again as she said, "Just as I am in this very moment."
Hoku's eyes opened wide.
In that instant, he became aware of the thing enclosing him; a damp, squirming space that pressed from every side, as if he were standing within the throat of some immense creature.
Instinctively, he threw his shoulder against the wall.
It yielded like soaked flesh, then hardened abruptly, and caught upon his sleeve.
He wrenched himself free with a deep groan, locking his fingers tightly around the compass.
The pressure grew more dreadful by the second.
The foul stench invading his nostrils forced him to choke back bile as he strained his way through the narrowing passage.
His body wavered weakly when his thoughts could no longer quell the truth around him, nor the transparent malice that sought to smother him whole.
Hoku slowly drew in a slow breath and pressed his cheek against the moist wall, restraining a nauseated tremor.
If he stayed here, would this thing not hollow him out, just as it had said it would? Then… wasn't it already impossible to escape? Even if he turned back, he would still be devoured, surely.
His mind faltered for an instant.
'But every time I've been cornered, I've still found a way, haven't I?' Hoku drew in a shallow breath.
'I can only hope that wasn't all by chance… or else my luck should have run dry long ago.'
Hoku steadied his breathing, though it felt less like acquiring resolve and more like gathering an inexplicable buoyancy in himself.
Without realizing it, his hand relaxed. The locket slipped from between his fingers, leaving the compass alone in his palm.
A moment later, a low rumble stirred from within the walls, reverberating softly by his ear.
Without warning, his body lurched forward, and he was hurled out, landing heavily upon solid ground.
As Hoku collided with the floor, his chest began to heave desperately.
Sweat plastered his skin as each of his limbs shook from every joint to every tendon.
As Hoku slowly collected himself, he realized he was placing most of his weight on his right arm, yet he was sitting upright, as if he had just woken from a nightmare, lying flat on his back.
It truly felt that way, like waking up from a terrible dream.
And the moment he lifted his head to look around, his semblance of ease fled.
Before him stretched a waste of unfamiliar shadows, amid which he stood utterly alone.
To be continued…