*Day 10 - The Desolation's Heart*
The first sign something was wrong—truly wrong, not just dead—was the rain falling upward.
Ora watched water droplets rise from puddles, ascending like reverse tears toward clouds that shouldn't exist over the Desolation. Each drop caught light that came from nowhere, refracting colors that didn't belong in any spectrum she knew. Her breath misted in the heat—five degrees below normal, her body a permanent winter that made the wrongness seem even more alien. The ash taste in her mouth intensified, mixing with something older—the flavor of reality breaking.
"That's new," S'pun-duh said, tilting his head at an angle that would snap a human neck. "Even for here."
The Desolation had been dead for a hundred years. Nothing grew. Nothing lived. But this wasn't death—this was something else. Reality itself was sick.
"We're getting close," Ora said. The corruption in her veins sang recognition, like calling to like.
"Close to what?" S'pun-duh asked, though his black eyes suggested he already knew.
"To where the Distillers are trying to unmake the world."
They walked forward, and distance became negotiable. One step covered a yard. The next, an inch. The third somehow moved them backward while they faced forward. S'pun-duh cursed in three languages, two of which were fungal pheromone releases.
"This is what happens when you break causality," he muttered, pulling out a compass that spun wildly, needle pointing to directions that didn't exist. "Reality gets confused. Starts making mistakes."
The path—if it could be called that—led them through increasingly wrong landscapes. Trees that grew in perfect mathematical spirals, their bark inscribed with equations that hurt to perceive. Stones that floated exactly three inches off the ground, casting shadows in directions that violated light's basic principles.
Then they found the cave—or it found them, space folding to bring it into their path. Inside, ancient paintings covered the walls, older than the Desolation, older than memory. The images showed two figures—one of flowing light, one of crystallized darkness—creating a sphere between them. But their faces showed pain, not joy. Creation as sacrifice, not triumph.
"The Shapers," S'pun-duh whispered, tracing the images with fungal-touched fingers. "They imprisoned themselves in physics. Every conflict since has been an echo of their original opposition."
Ora felt the truth of it resonate in her corrupted bones. She was becoming what they had tried to prevent—the resolution through destruction rather than imprisonment.
And then they saw the soldiers.
Twenty of them, standing in perfect formation in a clearing where grass grew in geometric patterns. At first glance, they looked normal—human soldiers in standard armor. Then Ora's corrupted senses registered the wrongness.
They were all exactly the same height. Not similar—exactly. Six feet, two inches. Their armor bore identical wear patterns, down to the specific scratch on the left shoulder guard. They breathed in perfect unison, chests rising and falling like a single organism.
When they turned—all at once, same angle, same speed—their faces were almost the same person. Not clones. More like someone had tried to draw the same face twenty times and got it slightly wrong each time. Uncanny valley made flesh.
"Distiller soldiers," S'pun-duh whispered. "Don't let them touch you. They spread uniformity like a disease."
The soldiers didn't speak. Didn't need to. They moved as one, drawing swords in perfect synchronization. The sound of twenty blades leaving sheaths became a single note, pure and wrong.
Ora drew her own blade, the one she'd taken from the bandits. It felt heavier here, as if the wrongness added weight to everything real.
The soldiers attacked in perfect formation. Not charging—gliding, their feet moving in exact patterns that looked more like dance than combat. When Ora parried the first strike, all twenty flinched. When her counter-strike cut through one soldier's arm, the same wound appeared on all of them.
"They're networked," she realized. "Hurt one—"
"Hurt all," S'pun-duh finished, lobbing something that looked like a spore grenade into their midst. It exploded in purple clouds that should have been toxic.
The soldiers breathed it in unison. Processed it identically. Died in perfect formation, falling like dominoes arranged by an obsessive god.
But more were coming. Ora could feel them—hundreds, maybe thousands, all spreading out from some central wrongness ahead.
"We need to move," she said.
"Can't," S'pun-duh pointed. "Look."
The path behind them was gone. Not destroyed—erased. Where they'd walked moments ago was now void, the kind of emptiness that eyes couldn't properly process.
"The wrongness is spreading," he said. "Reality is unraveling from the center out. If we don't stop whatever's causing this..."
He didn't need to finish. They could both see what would happen. The wrongness would spread until the whole world forgot how to be real.
More soldiers emerged from the twisted forest. Fifty. A hundred. All moving in that horrible synchronization, hearts beating as one massive drum.
"Too many," S'pun-duh said. "Even for you."
Ora knew he was right. The corruption could kill them all, but it would need fuel. Real fuel. She closed her eyes, diving into her mind's vault where memories floated like glowing orbs.
There—Lyra teaching her to braid hair. Five years old, Ora's fingers clumsy, Lyra patient and laughing. The memory glowed warm, precious, irreplaceable.
Worth their lives. Worth surviving to stop this wrongness.
*I'm sorry, sister.*
She grabbed the memory and fed it to the corruption.
It didn't fade—it BURNED. She felt its exact shape char and crumble, leaving a wound in her mind that would never heal. She would always know something belonged there, something about Lyra and hair and patience. But the specifics were ash. The sound was like glass breaking in her skull—another fundamental truth shattering. Her temperature dropped another fraction, the cold spreading deeper as she became less human, more weapon.
The corruption exploded from her.
Not a wave—a tsunami of wrongness meeting wrongness. When it hit the synchronized soldiers, they didn't just die. Their uniformity shattered. Each one became individual in death—different heights, different faces, different screams. The enforced sameness broke, and they collapsed as the separate people they'd once been.
"What did you do?" S'pun-duh asked, staring at the carnage.
"I paid the price," Ora said, touching her temple where the memory had been. "That's how it works. The corruption needs payment. Memories are currency."
"That's insane."
"That's survival."
They pressed forward through the zone of increasing wrongness. Rivers flowed uphill, splitting into tributaries that merged with themselves. The sun—there shouldn't be a sun visible in this perpetual overcast—hung in three different positions simultaneously.
And then they found Kaelen.
He was pinned to a tree that grew downward into the sky, branches burrowing into clouds. Three Ghul'rok—each one a nightmare of chittering limbs and too many eyes—were taking their time with him. His scholar's robes were soaked red.
"No," Ora breathed.
She'd never met him, but she knew him. The Weave's connection, the Heart Tree's gift, had shown her fragments of his story. The scholar who'd tried to warn the Council. Lyra's friend. The keeper of inconvenient truths.
The Ghul'rok turned at her approach. These weren't synchronized like the soldiers—these were chaos incarnate, each one moving in patterns that hurt to track.
"Leave him," she commanded, and her voice carried harmonics of forest and death.
They laughed—or made sounds that might be laughter if laughter could crawl under your skin.
S'pun-duh threw more spore grenades. The Ghul'rok absorbed them, incorporated them, became worse. One sprouted fungal wings. Another grew mycelia that burrowed into the ground, spreading corruption.
"They're adaptive," S'pun-duh said. "They take what you throw at them and make it part of themselves."
Kaelen coughed blood. He had minutes, maybe less.
Ora dove into her memory vault again. What was worth his life? What could she sacrifice?
There—her first kiss. Age fourteen, behind the crystal gardens, a boy whose name tasted like summer. The memory glowed silver-bright, all nervous joy and discovery.
She fed it to the corruption without hesitation.
This time, the power that erupted from her wasn't a wave or explosion. It was targeted, precise, surgical. The corruption became a blade that existed in more dimensions than three, cutting through the Ghul'rok at angles that shouldn't exist.
They didn't die—they ceased. Their existence unwrote itself, leaving only shadows burned into reality.
Kaelen dropped from the inverted tree, gasping. Ora caught him, and the corruption flowed into his wounds. Not healing—sealing. The flesh that grew back was wrong, lined with black veins like her own, but functional.
"You're—" he wheezed, "—Ora. Lyra's sister. She said—she said you'd come."
"When? When did she say this?"
"Before—" he coughed, "—before she died. She saw it. In the Crystal. Saw you becoming something new. Something necessary."
"Something monstrous."
"Same thing, sometimes." He tried to stand, failed, tried again. "The Distillers—they're not just killing. They're trying to rewrite reality's source code. Make everything uniform. Predictable. Controllable."
"We noticed," S'pun-duh said dryly, gesturing at the upward rain.
"No, you don't understand." Kaelen gripped Ora's arm. "This isn't the attack. This is preparation. They're softening reality, making it malleable. When they're done, they'll reshape everything into their image. A world where every soul is currency, every life a transaction."
"Where's Netharion?" Ora asked.
"Dead," Kaelen said. "Three days ago. The Distillers decided he'd outlived his usefulness. But before he died, he told me where they're gathering. The Bone Amphitheater. Where the God-Eater waits."
"God-Eater?"
"That's what they call it. The thing they're building. Fed by dragon egg essence, powered by ten thousand souls, designed to consume concepts themselves. Starting with free will."
Ora helped him stand. He leaned on her, and she felt his life force—corrupted now, tainted by her touch, but stable.
"Can you walk?" she asked.
"I'll have to." He looked at the spreading wrongness around them. "We all will. Fast. This zone is expanding exponentially. In three days, it'll cover the continent. In a week, the world."
They moved forward through the increasingly wrong landscape. Time stuttered. Space folded. Reality forgot its own rules and made up new ones that lasted seconds before being replaced.
And ahead, Ora could feel it—the epicenter. The place where existence itself was being tortured into new shapes.
The God-Eater waited.
And it was hungry.
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*End Chapter 9*
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