The night sky draped down like a blood-soaked shroud.
Rain drizzled onto the decaying earth, each droplet tapping against the rocks like the dying heartbeat of a cursed soul.
After leaving the village, none of the three spoke a word.
The villagers' harsh accusations still hissed in their ears like wounds that refused to heal.
Lioren, battered and bruised, was supported step by step by Liora, but his eyes no longer saw the present.
They seemed fixed on some inner reality—where unanswered questions had begun to bloom and rot at the same time.
Talion walked ahead, his tattered cloak fluttering in the wind, hand clutching an old leather pouch—retrieved from the hidden cellar beneath the burnt ruins of Lioren's family home.
They stopped at the foot of a rocky slope, where a small, pitch-black cave yawned like the gaping mouth of a monster.
Inside, it was cold, damp, and reeked of dried blood mixed with ash.
It seemed someone had once lived here.
Collapsed stone shelves, old scorch marks on the ground, and a wall covered in strange symbols—scratched into the stone by human fingernails.
They decided to spend the night there.
---
The fire crackled, but none of them felt warm.
Talion sat silently, then slowly opened the leather pouch.
Inside were five ancient books, wrapped in torn cloth and bound with tarnished silver cords.
Each bore an elemental symbol engraved deep into the spine:
Fire: the cover scorched, smoke clinging to the hand that touched it
Ice: so cold it burned the skin, droplets of water seeping from the edges
Earth: heavy as stone, with deep cracks as if crushed under immense pressure
Lightning: flickered with faint sparks every time it opened
And lastly, a journal—simple, small, tightly bound by a rusted chain
Lioren stared at the final one.
The blood in his veins seemed to freeze.
He didn't need to ask. He already knew.
> "That… was my father's," he whispered like a soul awakened from a thousand-year slumber.
Talion handed him the book, the old man's eyes already knowing every lie the book was about to unravel.
---
Lioren opened it.
The first page bore a scrawled line written in dried blood:
> "Day 102 since I began experimenting on my son."
He trembled.
The next page had no words—only a drawing, sketched in charcoal and blood:
a summoning circle, with four spears piercing the heart of a child.
The following entries returned to regular handwriting—but the contents were anything but normal:
> "The first element burned my son's organs upon entry, so I had to create new ones."
"The other two laughed wildly when entering his body. I'm beginning to worry about the boy's future mental state."
"The fourth element refused to bond. Lioren screamed all night. I nearly lost it. But in the end… it relented."
"The Gate opened once. I heard the calling. My wife wanted to stop. She didn't understand… he's no longer human."
Another bloodstained page read:
> "I manipulated my son's mind to burn her corpse. Both to erase the evidence, and to test the Fire element's response to emotional ignition."
Lioren stopped reading.
His hands clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms.
---
Lioren withdrew from the firelight, sitting in the darkest corner of the cave—where the shadows embraced him like a twisted mother.
In his mind, whispers echoed—he couldn't tell whose voice they were.
It sounded like his father's.
Like his own.
Like something tapping its claws against the inside of his skull.
Liora approached, but said nothing.
Her eyes wavered.
Talion, meanwhile, never took his eyes off the pile of books.
Outside the cave, thunder boomed, and a bolt of lightning slashed across the sky like a wound splitting fate in two.
Lioren, overwhelmed, began muttering to himself—then collapsed unconscious.
Talion:
"I heard his father went missing on a hunting trip in the woods. What if… he ran away? And all of this—left so openly—it's like he wanted Lioren to find it."
Liora:
"I think we need to read those four books."