At the edge of the bog, survivors ran towards the light, A thicket of mangrove trees with spiraling roots, from which dozens of glowing will o wisps floated. In the frantic rush, only one among the survivors did not run toward that light.
The child remained.
Rather than flee, he turned back, shouting and helping those who had fallen, back to their feet. He pulled with all his might, assisting anyone he could, ushering the dazed and the damned toward the only escape he knew, refusing to leave while others still cried for help.
Spirits wailed in jealousy, reaching out for him. He ducked and dodged as best he could, resolute, tears mixing with sweat and bog slime. Across a small bog pond, the child spotted her, a hunched woman, her graying hair slicked with mud as she ran alongside a group of other fleeing souls. She stumbled, knees buckling, halting her clumsy stride, and a young man, fit and desperate, shoved her out of the way without a second glance. She fell into the muck with a strangled cry.
The child did not think. He ran.
Her hands were scrabbling against the wet, viscous earth as it pulled her down, inch by inch, like it was swallowing her whole. He grabbed her by the arms, pulling desperately, but with little strength to help herself, she barely budged. The bog fought him, greedy and uncompromising, dragging her deeper with every second.
"W-what are you doing!" she choked through tears, grime slicking her cheeks.
He said nothing, only tightened his grip, planting his feet as firmly as he could, pulling until his shoulders screamed with pain. But it wasn't enough. She sank further, the mud sloshing up to her neck, suffocating and absolute. She gasped and coughed, turning her eyes to him, wild with desperation. "Just go!" she rasped, voice breaking. "Leave child! Don't die for me!"
He shook his head, fingers aching against her arms. "No..." he whispered, half to her, half to himself.
Suddenly, a hand rested on his shoulder, gentle, almost reassuring. Relief surged through him, flooding his veins with warmth.
But what he saw when he turned to meet the beings gaze chilled his blood to ice.
Its hand remained on his shoulder, firm and growing firmer, a spirit, unnaturally tall and gaunt, its fingers like bone splinters carved by famine and decay. Eyes like shards of blown glass peered down at him, hollow and unblinking. Its head tilted slightly, mouth creaking open, stretching wider and wider until it seemed to crack at the edges. When it spoke, its mouth stretched impossibly wide, the whisper of its breath like dead branches chafing against each other.
The hand tightened.
"You have no right!" it hissed, voice coiling like smoke. "She belongs to us!"
The child tried to pull away, but the spirit's grip was iron. Another hand wrapped around his wrist, and another around his neck, translucent and shaking with malice. "She cannot leave!" another voice rasped. Shadows swirled around them, wailing and protesting, causing more spirits to emerge from the mire, fingers reaching, eyes hollow and empty.
"No!" the child cried, clutching the woman's arm even tighter, straining to breath as a hand tightened around his neck.
"NO?!?" The spirits wailed, yanking him backward, clawing, desperate, but he refused to let go. For every pull against him, he pulled back, using their own strength to drag the woman free from the bog's grasp, inch by inch.
"That's right!" he shouted, voice cracking, tears streaking mud and blood down his cheeks. The spirits clawed at him, translucent hands grasping his limbs with a force that felt like it might tear him apart. Shadows spilled from their mouths, whispering curses and wails of the forgotten, but the boy held fast, his grip ironclad, holding tight despite the agony ripping through his flesh. "I said-" He strained, the hand on his neck slipping.
"I won't leave her!"
A howl of fury swept through the mist, spirits shrieking as he tore the woman free from the mud with one final heave. She collapsed into his arms, gasping and sobbing.
But the spirits did not relent.
They turned to him, wisps of shadow leaking from their hollow eyes. "He had no right!" they whispered. "A CURSE UPON YOU, BOY!"
Cold hands wrapped around his legs, his arms, his throat. He screamed, thrashing, fingers slipping through the woman's grasp as the spirits began to drag him down. The mire was up to his waist, then his chest, slick and heavy. He clawed at the surface, vision swimming with panic. "L-Let me go!" he shrieked. "God please! Save me my lord!"
The words tore from him in desperation, a prayer from instinct, not faith. But his prayers again went unanswered.
"M-mommy!" He finally cried, bursting into tears.
The spirits paused.
The child blinked, gasping for breath, his hands still buried in the mud. He tugged, and his body slipped free of their grasp with unnatural ease. The spirits hissed, retreating into the mist, their whispers fading into the gloom.
He pulled himself free of the mud, his own small form relatively easy to manage, then collapsed. Panting, chest heaving, he watching his hands as if they'd just cast a powerful spell. "It... worked," he whispered, a faint smile breaking through his mud-streaked face.
But then he felt it, the tremor.
The spirits hadn't run from his prayer.
They had run from something far worse.
Half-submerged trees and splattering banks of mire flung through the air as the serpent surged through the bog with terrifying momentum. Hatred and unsatable hunger wove through every weave of its wretched body.
Rising smooth from the swamp like a serpentine soldier at attention, Níðhöggr licked its lips, unlatched its jaw, and released an army of whipping tongues, cutting the humid bog air like knives through gelatin.
Then, they stopped.
The beast twitched, head tilting to the side, jaw going limp.
Its maw hung open as if to shriek, but no sound escaped.
Instead, a paradoxical dark light bisected it, splitting its belly in absolute silence, a rending slash so potent it severed not just flesh, but sound itself.
From the wound, Aric stepped forth.
Alive.
The sacred, blasphemous blade Paradise Lost in hand.
The weapon seemed forged in contradiction. Its long spiraling blade was woven in a perfect union of angelbone and demonsteel, fire with shadow, purity and sacrilege. Celestial sigils warred with heretical runes across its length as the blade itself seemed to shift through various forms.
The child's eyes widened. "S-sir Knight!" he cried in gratitude.
Hope and fatigue crashed together as the boy dropped to his knees, mud splattering around him. His lungs heaved with every breath, relief flooding his veins as he beheld the splendid silhouette emerging from the serpent's bisected corpse, illuminated by the light of salvation.
"You're... back!" he gasped, voice trembling with disbelief and salvation.
But when Aric turned, the child's breath hitched. His savior's once green eyed gaze was now a bottomless black, churning with shadows that writhed and twisted behind the void of his eyes. The boy's stomach clenched as Aric stepped forward, pulsating veins of black and gold flared up his arms, legs, and neck like molten scars across flesh.
The horror struck him like a blow. He flinched back, palms splashing into the mud, eyes wide and unblinking. "N-no..." he stuttered. Aric began to walk towards him, sound still caught in a vacuum of oppressive silence.
"S-stay away!" the boy cried, covering his face, as the splendid light illuminating Aric sank a deep sanguine red and black.
Aric bared his tightly grit teeth, growling low in pained frenzy. His breaths were shallow, body shaking. Across his vision, several glowing warnings pulsed:
[WARNING:]
YOUR MIND HAS SHATTERED.
[Debuff Applied: Fractured Sanity]
[WARNING:]
OCCULTIC INSANITY CONSUMES YOU.
Debuff Applied: Eldritch Overload]
[WARNING:]
GOD IS DEAD.
Debuff Applied: Conviction Crisis]
Aric ignored the blaring screens, unable to comprehend them. His vision was a haze of impossible shapes and new colors, an inhuman world seen through human eyes. Only Níðhöggr's snarl could cut through the fog. A beast whose eyes saw what he did, whose agony rivaled his own…
It anchored him.
Snapping his head away from the child, Aric turned toward the sound, locking eyes with the serpent. Not as a man.
But as something else.
No tactics. No strategy.
Only fury.
Paradise Lost blazed in his grip, as Aric growled. Slouched low, arms limp like a marionette severed from its strings, he bared his teeth… and leapt.
And the serpent answered in kind.