Kaelen Obasi walked into the forest of Kizu, where even sunlight dared not settle.
The trees there were not trees — they were bones with bark, tall and blackened, twisted into the sky like the fingers of buried titans. Moss dripped like blood from their limbs. The soil was damp with old secrets. No birds sang. No animals stirred.
Only the wind whispered… and it whispered his name.
The curse inside him grew louder with every step. It clawed at his ribs, writhed in his blood, and sometimes spoke in voices not his own.
> "More. Feed me. More blood…"
Kaelen clenched his fists.
He wouldn't let it control him.
Not yet.
---
He had no food, no map, no companions — only the rags on his back and the power inside his veins. His feet bled from the sharp roots that curled like claws. His muscles ached from sleeplessness. But still he moved forward.
He had one purpose: to survive.
He didn't know where to go. All roads were burned with Amana. The elders were dead. His kin slaughtered. His past buried beneath ash.
But his instincts whispered west — toward Zuri Wastes, where the air shimmered with old magic, and the ruins of forbidden temples sank into the sand. It was there, the voice said, that answers lay. It was there, the ones who cursed him first might still linger.
---
He crossed a stream where the water ran red, not with blood but with the reflection of the cursed sky. His fingers reached into it. Liquid rippled. The moment he touched it, the stream hardened, rising into a dagger of pure crimson water.
He held it.
It pulsed.
Then melted back into the current.
His curse responded to all liquid — not just blood. Wine, sweat, tears, riverwater, oil, venom — all could be shaped, hardened, and sharpened into death.
He did not yet understand the limits of this power.
But he would.
---
As night fell, the temperature dropped. The forest moaned as if it were breathing. Kaelen crouched beneath a twisted root and let his head rest against the cold earth.
Sleep tried to take him.
Instead, he dreamed of fire.
Of screams.
Of a shadowed god with chains for a face, whispering to him through a veil of flame.
> "You are mine, blood weapon. You belong to the old order. You will open the door."
Kaelen awoke gasping, his hands wet with sweat and blood — his own, this time.
The curse had grown stronger in his sleep.
Something had changed.
---
In the morning, he found tracks.
Not human.
Clawed. Deep. Heavy. Multiple sets.
He followed them.
Something inside him itched. A hunter's hunger.
After an hour, the trees opened to a clearing — and there, circling a ruined shrine, stood three creatures, each twice the size of a man.
They had the torsos of apes, but the heads of vultures, with rotted wings dragging behind them. Their eyes glowed sickly yellow. One chewed on a leg bone — human.
Soulhounds.
Cursed guardians of forgotten places. Once gods' pets. Now... starving beasts.
Kaelen didn't blink.
He stepped into the clearing.
Their heads snapped toward him.
Then they charged.
---
The first beast lunged.
Kaelen rolled under its claws, reached into a puddle, and drew a sickle of blood from the wet grass. He sliced through the creature's leg. Black ichor sprayed. The beast howled and tumbled.
The second crashed into him.
Kaelen hit a tree.
His ribs cracked.
He spat blood.
Then grinned.
The blood on his tongue solidified into a needle, and he spat it back — straight into the beast's eye.
It screeched.
The third leapt from behind.
Kaelen ducked — barely — then pulled the creature's saliva from its jaw, turned it into a blade, and rammed it into its throat.
Squelch. Gurgle. Silence.
The first creature tried to limp away.
Kaelen didn't let it.
He raised both hands. The blood of the fallen rose like a wave, thick and snarling.
It crashed down on the last Soulhound, drowning it, filling its lungs, choking its howl. Then it hardened midair — a coffin of blood, impaling the beast in a thousand places.
Kaelen stood over the corpses, breathing heavy.
Then smiled.
> "I'm getting better at this."
---
Inside the shrine, he found nothing but dust… until he lifted a shattered altar and saw a single glyph, glowing faintly beneath the ruin.
He touched it.
The stone pulsed.
Then a vision flashed through his mind.
A city swallowed by darkness. A horned god rising from a black gate. A girl with sickles standing over a grave. A sword forged from the sea. A war between dimensions. And himself — at the center of it all, soaked in blood not his own.
Then… silence.
Kaelen dropped to his knees.
> "What the hell am I?" he whispered.
The glyph faded.
The shrine crumbled.
---
Elsewhere, news of his survival began to spread.
In Gholar, a high priest sacrificed six virgins to scry his location. The blood boiled and screamed a name — "Obasi."
In Tchamba, Queen Iriya summoned her best bloodreader, who confirmed the prophecy:
> "A boy made of liquid death walks west."
And far across the Veil of Shadows, in a mirror dimension, the god Ezradamus snarled.
He saw the Soulhounds fall.
He felt the glyph awaken.
He turned to his First General, still asleep beneath the city of Ezra'tul, and whispered:
> "Wake him."
---
Back in Kizu, Kaelen rested against the stone of the broken shrine. He watched as blood drained into the cracks beneath him, whispering old names.
He felt stronger now.
But not whole.
He needed answers. Control. Training. Allies.
The world was growing darker.
He had seen it — the city swallowed by shadows. The war. The girl with sickles. Something inside him told him she was real. She would matter. They were walking toward each other.
And when they met…
The world would never be the same again.
---
END OF CHAPTER THREE