The sky bled.
Not metaphorically. It bled—a solid sheet of deep, burning red stretched endlessly over the Umbral Reaches, trembling with slow currents of drifting ash. It wasn't like any sky Riel had ever seen. There were no clouds, no moon, no horizon. Just a vast curtain of crimson that pulsed faintly, as if an ocean of dying embers had been hung above the world.
Time didn't move normally here.
He could feel it in his bones—an ache behind his eyes, a heaviness in his limbs. Every step felt like wading through water and sprinting at the same time. Exhaustion clung to him like a second skin, yet he was painfully awake, senses stretched thin and trembling.
The ground beneath him cracked like old bone. Pale dust rose around his boots, swirling before sinking into the ashen wind. He kept moving, his breath sharp and shallow. The landscape shifted if he stared too long—ridges sliding like muscle under torn flesh, stones cracking and re-forming, shadows dragging a fraction of a second behind his steps.
The Umbral Reaches were not meant for human eyes.
He tried not to think about that.
He tried not to think about anything except forward—though forward meant nothing here. There was no direction. No path. The land rearranged itself in subtle, nauseating ways. A hill he'd just passed was now to his right. A fissure that hadn't been there moments ago yawned under his next step, forcing him to stumble back.
He swallowed a curse.
At the edge of his vision, stars drifted across the red sky—slowly, lazily, like flecks of embers carried by wind. But they weren't stars. He knew that now. He'd seen them move… crawl. Each left behind a faint, pale smear, like a slug trail made of dying light.
Some of them whispered.
He didn't want to hear the whispers.
They were soft, thin, familiar—too familiar. Sometimes, when the wind dipped low, he could swear he heard his own voice repeating words he had never spoken. Sometimes it was a younger version of himself, bright and hopeful. Sometimes it was the voice from his nightmares—broken, angry, begging for the pain to stop.
Riel wrapped his arms tighter around himself and kept walking.
Ash drifted down from the sky in slow spirals. Each flake glowed faintly before fading. Some landed on his shoulders, burning cold like frostbite before dissolving. Others hovered just above the ground, as if unsure whether they belonged to gravity at all.
He tried not to think about how long he'd been here.
He tried not to think about the swamp nightmare he had escaped—if escaping was even the right word.
The whispers were growing louder. His skin tingled with the sensation of being watched, not from one direction, but from all of them.
Then he felt it.
A tremor that wasn't from the unstable ground.
A pressure in the air, subtle at first, like the moment before lightning strikes.
He dove behind the remains of a colossal ribcage—white, curved bones jutting from the earth like the ribs of a dead being. The skeleton was vast, half-buried in stone and dust. He didn't know what the titan had been, only that its corpse radiated a faint, ancient cold that seeped into his spine.
He pressed himself into the shadow of the broken ribs and forced himself to stay still.
The air grew colder.
The whispers stopped.
Silence swallowed the world.
Then the sky split.
A thin crack of pure white tore through the red expanse, stretching wider and wider until something spilled through—light, but not light. Liquid brilliance, molten and shimmering like glass heated beyond form, dripped downward in slow, horrific tendrils.
It wasn't falling.
It was descending.
A crawling star.
That was what Riel called it—because no other word fit. A piece of sky that had wriggled loose. A malformed star that slid instead of shone.
Riel pushed himself deeper against the titan's bone, fighting the instinct to gag. Its presence pressed against him like a giant, invisible hand squeezing his lungs. The tendrils drifted lazily, each thick and translucent, filled with swirling constellations that moved like trapped insects. Beneath the glassy surface, lines etched themselves—symbols, shapes, fragments of runes that hurt to look at.
No sound accompanied the creature's arrival.
Its voice was pressure—pure, overwhelming pressure—that settled over the landscape like a new atmosphere. The earth trembled beneath Riel's fingers. Dust lifted from the ground and hovered, suspended midair.
The crawling star sniffed.
Not with a nose. It had no face. No shape that could qualify as a body. But its tendrils twitched, curling toward the ground as if tasting each breath of wind. A faint vibration traveled through the air, brushing against Riel's skin like the hum of a tuning fork pressed into bone.
He held still.
His heartbeat felt loud—too loud. He willed it silent, willed his body to become stone, willed himself to be nothing but shadow and dust.
One tendril drifted near.
Close.
Closer.
It passed inches above him, trailing shimmering light that peeled away his shadow. Literally peeled—he felt the sensation of it being tugged upward, stripped like skin. His teeth clenched hard enough to ache. His throat tightened. A scream clawed its way up, but he crushed it, burying it under sheer terror.
The tendril lingered.
Then drifted on.
Riel didn't move. Not even when the light dimmed. Not even when the pressure eased. Not even when the crawling star began to glide away, its enormous form receding like a ship drifting through fog.
He stayed frozen until silence returned.
Then, slowly, he exhaled.
The breath shook violently.
He collapsed forward onto his hands, trembling so hard he almost vomited. Sweat dripped from his face and vanished into the dust. His whole body ached with the effort of not screaming, not moving, not dying.
Everything in this accursed place was out to kill him. He had never felt death so close to him. But here he had almost died three times, three times monsters of absolutely insanity had almost snuffed out the flame called his life.
When he finally lifted his head, he saw them.
Shapes in the distance.
Humanoid. Half-formed. Frozen in positions of terror—hands raised, mouths open, eyes wide. Like sculptures carved from the moment of their final breath. They were translucent, unmoving, caught in a state between life and disappearance.
Victims.
He felt their presence crawling over his skin—echoes of fear etched into the landscape. His stomach twisted.
The crawling star would return.
He didn't know how he knew. He simply did. A gut-deep certainty that made his spine feel hollow. If it had missed him this once, that luck wouldn't last.
He needed power.
He needed something—anything—to anchor himself before the Umbral Reaches tore him apart or the crawling star drifted back down for another search.
His gaze slid to the titan's corpse.
To the ancient bones towering above him like a cathedral of white spears. The air around them hummed faintly. Something about the titan resonated with the realm — like a note that had never fully faded.
Riel's thoughts drifted to his instructor.
"Rituals demand sacrifice. Not death—loss."
He swallowed dryly.
Loss… he had plenty of that.
He knelt in the shadow of the titan's ribcage, running his trembling fingers over the cold bone. Patterns etched themselves faintly across its surface—lines, symbols, echoes of a language that might have once been spoken by gods.
Ash drifted down from the sky.
He cupped a handful of it.
It was cold. Too cold. Like the residue of something ancient long extinguished.
He bit the inside of his cheek until warm copper filled his mouth. He spat a small amount of blood into his palm, mixing it with the ash. The mixture glowed faintly—barely—but enough to twitch against his skin.
He dipped two fingers into it.
And began to draw.
The first line shook.
The second steadied.
He painted the circle slowly across the ground beneath the titan's ribs, the mixture of blood and ash leaving faint, dark streaks that pulsed with quiet intent. The Reaches responded—ash drifting toward the markings as if recognizing something ancient. The ground trembled faintly.
He whispered—not words, just breath, just purpose.
He carved the circle.
He connected each line.
He kept one eye on the sky, watching for any sign of glass light returning.
And as he worked, something changed inside him—not a spark, not a flame, just a quiet tightening of resolve. A thread pulling taut. A weight settling in his chest that did not crush, but anchored.
He wasn't completing a ritual.
He was preparing for one.
Preparing for a ritual that would either save him…
…or tear his soul apart.
The mixture in his palm grew thin. He bit his cheek again, let another drop of blood fall into the ash, and kept going.
The titan's corpse loomed above him, silent and ancient.
The air thrummed.
The red sky pulsed.
And Riel's will began to harden.
This nightmare wasn't done with him.
But neither was he done with it.