The first Weeper clawed out of the trees like it had been vomiting itself up from the soil. Its arms dragged behind for a moment, then snapped forward with bone-cracking urgency. Too many joints. Too many seams. The black stitching across its mouth pulsed, fresh and wet, even though he'd torn them open earlier. They'd grown back. Hungrier.
Yren watched without blinking. "Left knee fails when it pushes forward," she muttered. "Hit that first."
The creature's sobs broke into jagged shrieks. It hit him like a thrown corpse. Rusted claws opened his chest in crooked lines. He felt warmth bleed down his ribs before he even realised he was hit. He struck back, the dark blade flashing upward—straight into the creature's midsection, where a second mouth had opened. It closed around his wrist, rows of tiny teeth raking flesh.
Yren barked behind him. "Other knee, you idiot."
The mouth split wider, tearing free from its threads with a sound like skin peeling off stone. Its breath hit his face—thick, wet, and stinking of spoiled blood and something sweet like syrup rotting in a wound. The drool that landed on his arm started eating through his sleeve immediately. Pain crawled up his tendons, slow and acidic.
Then something inside his bones shifted.
The golden spiral pulsed. The glow was blinding, cutting through the haze of his body like a blade through ice. The pain faded away, moved to the edge of his awareness. He could see everything now—the shake of the Weeper's left knee before it moved, the twitch in its shoulder. Every detail burnt sharp.
He acted.
The knife found its mark. Tendon and bone split as he cut through the leg. Before the thing collapsed fully, he drove the blade up through the bottom of its jaw, angling toward the thing's brain. Black blood blasted from its nose. He didn't stop. He carved through its back, flesh and sinew tearing, until the knife hit something thick and pulsing inside its shoulders.
The core.
The blade sank in, and his arm lit with heat.
Tendrils of gold arced from his veins and buried themselves into the dying Weeper's body. The thing screamed once—then caved inward. He felt something tear loose in himself. Not physical. Something deeper. He didn't know what it was, only that it had gone.
The silence that followed was wrong.
The colours had faded. Snow looked drained of white. The trees sagged. Even Yren's scars looked dead. Her face had lost its usual fury.
She said, "You gave something up just now. What did it take?"
He didn't have time to answer. The forest screamed.
More Weepers crashed out from every direction. A tide of twitching limbs and sunken eyes. The shrieks weren't individual anymore—they'd woven together into a single warbling dirge that made his teeth ache. One towered above the others, dragging something. It was human once. Still barely alive.
A Drav'nari corpse. Burnt beyond recognition. Robes shredded. But the faint light of a sigil still blinked across its chest—the same kind as Yren's.
She whispered, "So that's what happened to the others."
The biggest Weeper unstiched its throat and vomited black bile. The liquid struck the snow and peeled it away. Beneath the ice, the earth had spiralled scars carved into it, twisting in patterns no hand could have etched.
Yren stepped forward. Her sword came free with a long scrape of metal. "That's a Priest. You don't fight that. You run."
The Priest began to unfold. Bones extended in the wrong order. Vertebrae pushed against the skin in a jagged S-curve. It stood twice his height now. The body it had dragged lay twitching, nerves still firing despite the half-dissolved lungs.
Yren swore. Her blade swept low and struck the Priest in the leg. The cut sprayed blood that hissed when it landed on the snow. The creature didn't flinch. It grinned and touched the wound. Then it licked its own fingers.
The sigil on its chest flared, not like light, but like muscle spasming. The gash sealed itself, strings of meat knitting over torn flesh.
Yren backed up. "It's weaving."
More Weepers circled, sobbing in a rhythm. The air thickened—cloying with the stench of rot and metal. His Ghost Sigil answered the tension, flaring hot. His veins lit again. That numb calm returned. He saw the Priest's heart, black and bulbous, pulsing behind translucent ribs.
But the cost would be real. He could feel the pull already. Something else was going to leave him if he used the sigil again.
No time.
Yren cleaved through two of the smaller ones. "The core," she snapped. "Hit it now."
The Priest vanished.
One blink. That was all it took.
Its hand wrapped around Yren's throat, lifting her like a child's doll. Blood ran down her neck in thin threads. She kicked once. The Priest smiled.
He reached for the sigil.
His arm ignited.
Time folded.
He saw himself—once here, once not. One version charged the Priest, blade drawn. The other stood inside a shattered temple, watching from across the veil of smoke.
Reality snapped. The knife was buried in the Priest's chest.
The blood that came out didn't just burn his skin. It ate at his mind. He saw Serah's face. Then half of it tore away. Gone. The memory unravelled mid-thought.
The Priest convulsed. Its core exploded, taking half the others with it. A wave of flesh and bile hit the trees. The snow boiled.
Then silence.
Until the clapping started.
Three figures waited at the edge of the forest. Their bodies were wrapped in bandages that crawled with moving ink. Words formed and dissolved on their wrappings, reshaping themselves. One raised its head. A single eye gleamed beneath.
Yren's voice cracked. "Bone Speakers."
They didn't move, but the forest reacted. The very air changed. Not heat. Not cold. Something in the words. The script moved across them like rot eating paper. The Ghost Sigil in his arm twitched. It recognised them.
Yren stepped back. "Stay behind me."
He didn't.
The fear was gone. The sigil had taken it. There was no panic left to feel.
He blinked. Everything sharpened. The last red drained from the world.
He felt it—the heartbeat in the inked one's chest, the shift of a branch behind the second, the absence of breath in the third.
Then the tall one bent forward. Its spine bent like wet cloth. No bones should move like that.
It didn't attack. It spoke.
One word.
"Vreth-Khraoon."
The earth screamed.
Snow flared outward in perfect rings. Trees flaked like old paint. Roots bled. Yren dropped, her hands clapped over her ears, blood leaking through her fingers. The word hit his chest like a hammer.
But it passed through. Like he wasn't solid anymore.
He moved.
The second Speaker raised an arm. Bone and tendon extended. Runes appeared. Glowing black.
He didn't dodge. He struck the runes.
The symbols shattered. The spell collapsed.
He stepped in, slammed the blade into its chin, and twisted. Tar oozed. Inside its eye socket—he saw her.
Serah. That ribbon. That moment.
It died too.
The memory curled in on itself and burnt.
Another price.
Grief vanished.
He remembered loving her. But not the feeling. That was gone. The scar stayed. The pain didn't.
The third Speaker opened its mouth.
The trees leaned in.
Roots squirmed. Branches bent. Symbols poured from its mouth, falling like ash, each one burning into the air.
Yren screamed, "Cover your ears!"
Too late.
The sound hit him.
Not noise. Loss. Hope turned to pulp. Futures never lived.
He walked into it.
The Speaker flinched.
Mistake.
Threadburst took him. He moved through the symbols like they were smoke. Behind the Speaker. Knife ready.
He didn't hesitate.
The blade split the spine. The ink inside the creature burst upward, symbols spiralling. Some were etched onto his skin. Some tried to erase him.
He held on.
The Speaker collapsed.
The snow went still.
Yren approached, limping, dragging her blade.
"You killed them," she said. "All of them. Alone."
He nodded.
She swallowed. "What did it take?"
He looked at his hands. Ink threaded through his veins.
"…I don't think I remember her smile anymore."
Yren didn't reply.
Instead, she sheathed her blade, sat down in the snow, and lit a fire with bones instead of wood.