The red-tinged snow disappeared.
The bitter cold of the forest was gone.
Lucian Vorath opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by such utter emptiness that for a moment he thought he had lost his sight.
Darkness.
Infinite darkness.
There was no sky, no ground, no horizon. Only a black space that swallowed everything, as if he had been thrown into a bottomless pit.
But then, something beneath his hands contradicted him.
It was liquid.
A cold, viscous liquid that covered him up to his wrists.
Lucian raised his hand and brought it close to his face. His fingers dripped with a thick, dark substance that reflected a reddish glow even in the middle of nowhere. It didn't take him long to recognize the metallic, pungent smell that filled his nostrils.
"...Blood."
His voice echoed faintly, bouncing off the walls, as if he were speaking in an endless cave.
The mercenary tried to sit up. His boots splashed against the liquid ground, sending ripples that spread until they disappeared into the distance. But what baffled him most was the temperature: the ground wasn't just cold... it was freezing to the touch, as if all that blood had been drained from lifeless bodies moments before.
His breathing became ragged.
It couldn't be real.
"I died in the forest. The assassins... the sword piercing me..."
Lucian put his hand to his chest, but there was no wound. His body was intact, except for the feeling of weakness that ran through him. There was no blood on him, but everything else was covered in that crimson sea.
He looked around.
Darkness and more darkness.
There was no way out. There were no trees, no wind, no snow, no stars.
Only silence.
A silence so heavy that it mingled with the roar of his own blood in his ears.
"Is this... hell?" His voice broke.
For the first time in many years, Lucian felt fear. It wasn't the fear of pain or death. It was something deeper, something that reminded him of the ten-year-old boy who found his parents dead and had to survive in a rotten neighborhood.
That primitive fear of not understanding what was happening, of not knowing where to run.
He rose slowly, the echo of his breathing reverberating everywhere. He took a step. Then another. The sea of blood responded with splashes that sounded like distant laughter.
Suddenly, a burning pain shot through his right palm.
Lucian let out a growl, falling to his knees. His hand trembled, veins protruding as if burning from within. He looked at his skin, and there, slowly, something began to form.
A tattoo.
First appeared a staff, carved in black and red lines, emerging from the center of his palm. Then, two snakes coiled around it, their eyes glowing like embers. Next came the wings, spreading as if trying to break through the skin and unfold into the world. And finally, the crown: majestic, dark, with ten small rings hanging from its tips.
Half of each symbol was blood red. The other half was shadow black.
Lucian screamed, the heart-wrenching sound reverberating in the void. It felt as if someone were burning that symbol into his flesh. The pain wasn't just physical; it penetrated his bones, his head, as if it were burning his very soul.
He tried to tear off the mark with his other hand, but it was useless. The tattoo was neither ink nor fire. It was something alive.
Then he heard it.
A distant, drawn-out sound, like a body sliding through a sea of blood. Lucian looked up, gasping, and saw it.
A shadow.
Enormous.
Gigantic.
Deformed.
The figure of a colossal snake emerged from the darkness, its eyes glowing like red beacons. Its body was endless: it seemed to stretch on infinitely, circling around him. Every time it exhaled, the blood bubbled as if it were boiling.
Lucian clenched his jaw, cold sweat running down his forehead.
"What... the hell are you?"
The serpent opened its mouth, and instead of a roar, a murmur emerged. A deep, distorted voice, made up of hundreds of overlapping whispers.
He didn't understand the words.
But he felt them.
The promise of power.
The threat to devour him.
The mark on his hand glowed brighter, and a dull thud rumbled beneath his feet. It wasn't his heart. It was the ground itself.
The sea of blood was alive.
Lucian took a step back, but his legs buckled. His vision blurred. The pain in his palm intensified, as if his flesh were being burned from within.
"Aghhh!"
He brought his hand to his head, trying to resist. His breathing was chaotic, his heart pounding like a war drum. But the darkness enveloped him more and more, swallowing him, crushing him.
He fell to his knees, and the crimson liquid covered him up to his waist. The cold invaded him completely.
"What... what is this place?" he whispered in a faint voice, before his eyes closed again.
The last thing he saw was the shadow of the snake fading into nothingness.
...
Silence.
Then, the wind.
Lucian opened his eyes.
He was no longer in the sea of blood. Now he lay on a ground covered with dry leaves, under a strange sky. The trees were tall, with dark bark and twisted roots that seemed to move slowly. The air had an unfamiliar smell, a mixture of damp earth and something else... something arcane.
He sat up with effort. He looked at his hands. The mark was still there, engraved on his palm as if it had always been there. It didn't burn, but it throbbed softly, like a reminder.
Lucian ran a hand through his hair and realized.
It was longer.
It fell below his shoulders, white as snow in the strange sunlight.
He frowned, muttering under his breath:
"Where... am I?"
The wind blew, stirring the dry leaves around him. A new world welcomed him.
And Lucian Vorath, the dead mercenary, was reborn.