Riel moved.
Not because he wanted to, not because he had gathered even a grain of courage, but because staying still felt like it would invite death faster. His legs trembled beneath him, but they still obeyed. He forced one foot forward… then another… then another.
The ground beneath him vibrated faintly with each step, a low hum that sank into his bones. At first he thought it was his heartbeat echoing through the living soil, but then he realized—no. It was whispering.
The hum brushed along his feet and ankles like a cold breath. It carried fragmented sounds, shapes of meaning he didn't know, syllables pulled from a language older than the mortal realms. Some resembled names. Some resembled prayers. Some sounded like the wails of the dying.
Riel clenched his jaw and kept walking.
His breaths came in uneven huffs, each one burning in his throat. The air tasted metallic, thick, like old copper and hot stone. His hands shook, sweat dripping down his palms and sliding along the hilt of his dagger. The blade was his only anchor, the only familiar thing in this forsaken realm.
The Umbral Reaches were wrong. Everything about them was wrong.
As he walked, he caught sight of something ahead—great shapes rising from the shifting horizon. He thought they were mountains at first, jagged silhouettes piercing the dark haze. But when he drew closer, he realized they were not mountains. They were bodies.
Corpses.
Colossal ones.
The remains of beings so vast that even in death they dwarfed the spires around them. Skeletal frames with ribs like bridges. Skulls the size of houses, cracked open as if something had burst out from within. Their forms were half-buried in the trembling earth, impaled on enormous obsidian thorns that jutted up like the world's own fangs.
And from their corpse rivers were formed —rivers of magma and darkness. Rivers that glowed with red-gold heat at the surface but churned with swirling shadows beneath, as though filled with things trapped beneath the molten flow. Screams drifted from the currents—thin, piercing, echoing like damned souls carried downstream.
Riel stopped breathing for a moment.
Those corpses had once been powerful more powerful than anyone he had ever seen
.
He didn't need a lesson or a textbook to tell him that. His soul knew. Their presence—what little remained—pressed against him like the aftertaste of thunder, vast and ancient and broken. These were beings that had shaped worlds, bent reality, commanded forces beyond comprehension.
Dead.
Left to rot like discarded relics.
He stumbled backward, nearly falling. His heel slipped into a fissure in the soil, and for a moment hot air surged up around his ankle, carrying another wail from the river nearby. He jerked free, stepping away as fast as he could.
He shouldn't be here.
He shouldn't be anywhere near this place.
Every few steps he took, something moved.
Sometimes it was just a flicker in the corner of his vision—a shifting shadow, a ripple across the ridges in the distance. But other times he saw shapes more clearly: massive silhouettes limping or dragging themselves through the deep haze, limbs shaped wrong, torsos bent at angles that defied anatomy. He couldn't tell if they were creatures, phantoms, or remnants of the slain titans themselves.
He prayed they wouldn't look his way.
Because even glimpsing their outlines made his thoughts blur and fray, like a hand was tearing the edges of his mind.
His pace quickened.
He walked until his legs screamed, until the trembling in his knees grew so sharp he feared they might give out. His breath fogged in front of him though the air felt warm; breaths turned to smoke and smoke vanished in the wind.
The landscape contorted ahead.
Jagged formations rose where there had been none. The earth itself shifted underfoot, rearranging in slow, grinding groans. He nearly tripped as a ridge lifted slightly, rising like the back of some sleeping beast.
Riel recoiled.
"Just move," he whispered. "Move. Don't stop. Don't think."
His voice was tiny in the vastness of the realm, swallowed instantly.
Eventually—after what might have been minutes or hours—he saw it.
A structure.
Small, compared to the colossal spires, but unmistakably a shelter. A temple built from black stone, cracked and half-sunken into a slope of trembling earth. The walls were etched with shallow grooves, not symbols, just scratches—marks left by claws or desperate hands.
But it was enclosed. And right now, enclosed meant safe.
Riel rushed toward it.
He reached the temple's entrance and slipped inside, breath ragged, heart pounding so loudly he was certain the creatures outside could hear it. Darkness swallowed him for a moment, followed by the faintest glow from his dagger's edge.
Only then did he collapse to his knees.
His entire body felt like it had been wrung out and left empty. His hands shook uncontrollably. His mind was a trembling mess of images—giant corpses, screaming rivers, shifting titans, all blending together in an endless smear.
He pressed his back to the cold stone wall, forcing himself to breathe.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
He whispered something.
At first it was just a sound, then it formed into the invocation they were taught as children —the one meant to steady nerves and sharpen focus. He had never really used it properly; back in the temple of silver veil, it had felt silly, a formality, another chant drilled into him by teachers who lived far from danger.
But here…
Here he clung to it like a lifeline.
"Light within… hold fast," he whispered. "Fear without… fall away."
The words shook in his throat, barely audible.
He gripped the dagger tighter, knuckles white.
Outside, the wind moaned low.
Then… it stopped.
The silence hit him like a blow.
Silence here didn't feel natural.
It felt like something had smothered the world.
The walls of the temple darkened suddenly—as if a shadow had fallen over them, thick and suffocating. The faint red glow outside dimmed, swallowed by something massive drifting past.
Riel froze.
He didn't breathe.
Didn't move.
Didn't blink.
The shadow outside pressed against the stone, pushing faint impressions into the walls. A ripple of some enormous limb. A suggestion of ribs or spines. A slithering curve that might have been a tail, or a wing, or something without any name mortals had ever given.
The temple shuddered.
Dust slid down from the ceiling.
Riel pressed himself lower, practically curled into the base of the wall. His heart hammered so violently it hurt—sharp stabs running up his ribs, like his body was trying to burst its way free and run without him.
The shadow lingered.
He could hear something faint—a low, resonant vibration, too deep to be called a growl, too slow to be called breathing.
It was searching.
He didn't know how he knew that. But something primal, instinctive, whispered it to him.
The creature outside was searching.
"Please," he mouthed soundlessly, "don't see me. Don't. Don't. Don't—"
The shadow shifted.
Pressed deeper.
The walls groaned.
Riel squeezed his eyes shut.
He wished he could make himself smaller, smaller, so small he would cease to exist.
Then—
The shadow pulled away.
The pressure lifted.
The faint red glow seeped back into the cracks of the temple.
Riel stayed still long after the creature passed. A minute. Two. Ten. His lungs hurt by the time he finally drew a proper breath.
He pulled himself up slowly—his legs shaking so violently he had to lean on the wall for support.
His dagger was still in his hand, but its glow had dimmed. His grip tightened around it—not in fear, but in stubbornness. In refusal.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
He knew that.
Everything here screamed it.
This realm belonged to monsters and discarded ascendants, to things beyond understanding. He was a mortal student barely learning to wield his soul.
Insignificant.
Fragile.
"The invocation worked," he whispered to himself. "A little, at least."
His voice was hoarse.
He wiped sweat from his brow.
That was when he felt it.
A pulse.
Sharp. Hot. Sudden.
Right under his eye.
Riel flinched, touching the mark beneath it—the small tattoo shaped like his dagger. The mark that allowed him to summon his weapon. But the dagger was already in his hand. He hadn't summoned anything.
So why did it pulse?
It throbbed again.
Not painful.
Responsive.
As if reacting to his emotions—to the anger boiling beneath his fear.
He didn't understand. Not yet. But something about it felt… wrong. Or important. Or both.
Riel stepped out of the temple.
Not because he felt brave.
But because staying inside felt like he was waiting for something worse to trap him there.
He walked into the humming soil again, gripping his dagger, gaze fixed forward.
He needed to get out of the Umbral Reaches.
He didn't know how.
But he knew if he stayed here too long…
He would die.
Not quickly.
Not mercifully.
Not cleanly.
And so he forced his shaking legs to move.
One step.
Then another.
Then another.
Under that Hollow Sky.
Into the realm that did not forgive trespassers.