The crimson forest was still—but not peaceful. The air had thickened further, a pulse of discomfort, like the ground itself was holding its breath.
Erasmus stood in the center, the world around him nothing more than a backdrop to his quiet, calculating movements. The others were still asleep, lying vulnerable beneath the twisted, gnarled trees. He had ordered them to rest, to recover, but it was never truly for their benefit.
His hand moved, just slightly—an almost imperceptible flick of his wrist.
At that gesture, the Ebonmoths, now fully realized, began to stir. Thousands of them, black wings flowing with ethereal ink, responded to his silent command, moving like an unholy swarm drawn from some forgotten corner of his own mind. They didn't move aimlessly. No—they flew as one, a collective intelligence guided by a single directive: consume.
Slowly, methodically, they descended upon the sleepers.
Mira's brow twitched as they landed on her head, their delicate wings brushing against her skin. Brin shifted in his sleep, unaware of the shadows of memory crawling inside his mind. Sir Calden lay still, oblivious as the moths perched on his temple. Rei was far too lost in his delusions to stir as the moths took their place upon him, flickering like ink blotting his dreams.
And then they came to Riven.
Erasmus paused for a breath, feeling a cold satisfaction settle in his chest.
Erasmus extended his hand again, pointing with precision as if conducting an unseen orchestra. The Ebonmoths swarmed to the heads of the sleeping figures—their wings black, their bodies like flickering shadows of ink—and began their silent feast. The moths descended upon his companions without hesitation, burrowing deep into the sleeping minds, consuming memories of their origins, their combat skills, their experiences.
He wanted the skills. The tools they carried within their minds. He wanted their knowledge—the things that had kept them alive and able to survive within the Trial. Erasmus was no fool. He had already guessed, in the quiet of his calculations, that these people came from somewhere. Somewhere with more answers than the endless, shifting maze they had been trapped in.
But he couldn't rely on them to help him reach it.
The others had their strengths, their roles—but they were fundamentally flawed. Their skills were raw, fragmented, and often mediocre. They acted on instinct, on hope, on belief. But these were not the tools that would carry him to the next level. These were tools that were constantly being erased by the Trial itself.
They didn't know what they were up against. They hadn't seen the Trial's full extent. They hadn't calculated the consequences of failing to break free.
Erasmus had. That's why he couldn't afford to trust them.
Instead, he needed their skills—their experiences. The muscle memory that had kept them alive, their subtle movements honed by conflict, their fighting instincts that had been carved out of necessity. That knowledge was invaluable. It was power. And power, when accumulated, would lead him to where he needed to go.
For Erasmus, the idea of relying on the others, with their paltry abilities and half-baked survival instincts, was laughable. He would not play the same game as them. They could stumble through the trial on their own. He, on the other hand, would craft his own path.
And so, he took.
He took their combat skills—not just the memory of battles they'd fought, but the reflexes they had honed. He took their ways of thinking, their techniques, the small, decisive gestures that made them lethal. In a single gesture, with an unbroken hand, he stole all of that, as if peeling layers from their consciousness, leaving behind just the raw, cold essence of what had kept them alive.
It was not greed for greed's sake. It was necessity. Erasmus could not afford to be without their expertise.
The moths feasted on the memories of Sir Calden's years of training, on Riven's reflexes in battle, on Brin's scattered but desperate instinct to survive. They devoured fragments of Mira's strategies, Rei's quick thinking under pressure, and even the simplest tricks—the ones that had kept them alive, kept them moving forward in a place designed to break them.
And through it all, Erasmus remained steady, watching the others—the tools of his plan—unaware as their memories were rewritten, as their minds were emptied.
As they slept, he watched them, silently culling from them what he could not afford to be without.
The cost of this greed was clear. He could feel it even as he reached deeper, pulling more and more from their minds.
Pain. A creeping agony, deep within his skull. It bloomed slowly at first, like a seed growing in dark soil, then exploded outward—a thudding, cracking sensation, as if his very mind were being stretched, twisted under the weight of what he was taking. His breath quickened.
But he didn't stop. He couldn't.
Not yet.
The flood of memories, combat techniques, and survival instincts—their value was undeniable. Erasmus had carefully calculated that he would take just enough—enough to make him better. To give him the edge he needed. The edge that none of the others could provide.
As the moths pulled the last fragments of their skills from the others' minds, a weight pressed down upon him, an unbearable pressure. The backlash was inevitable. His head pulsed with each stolen memory, each piece of knowledge that was never meant to be his.
Blood trickled down from his eyes, streaking across his face as his mind warred against itself, tearing under the strain. He faltered. His vision blurred. The world tilted.
But even as the world around him cracked, even as the moths finished their feast, Erasmus did not stop. He continued to draw from them, taking out all the pieces, even the ones that would not increase his survival chance by more than a fraction of a percent. He needed all the help he could get.
Until it became too much.
A scream—silent, but deafening in its intensity—ripped through his mind. And then, just as swiftly as the flood had come, the rush began to pull back. The moths were recalled, shrinking from the minds they had just consumed.
But the cost was already paid.
Erasmus fell to his knees, the blood now spilling freely from his eyes, his nose, his mouth—staining the stone beneath him. His body shook with the aftermath, with the reality of what he had done.
In a final, instinctive motion, he pointed towards himself, palms facing the ground.
The moths obeyed. They poured back inside of him, like ink being absorbed by an unending void, like smoke vanishing into the blackness of his being.
But even as the last of them withdrew, something was different.
He was different.
For a brief, maddening second, everything went silent. Then, with the weight of a thousand crushed thoughts, Erasmus collapsed, the stone floor meeting his body with a sickening thud.
He didn't worry about the others. They wouldn't awaken to see him fall. But in that moment of weakness, he relied on something else.
The Ebonmoths. They would guard him.
They would keep him safe while his mind bled and his body shut down, waiting to rise again.