Riel walked.
At first, he counted his steps.
One. Two. Three.
The numbers slipped away somewhere along the path, dissolving into the ash-choked air until even the idea of counting felt distant and pointless.
He stopped trying to measure it.
He walked because something inside him said to.
The land was quiet in a way that felt deliberate.
Ash continued to drift from the sky in lazy spirals, but it never touched him. Not once. The flakes curved subtly as they fell, skirting his shoulders, slipping past his face as though the air itself refused to let them settle on him. He noticed this only after some time had passed, when his boots remained clean while the ground around him slowly disappeared beneath gray.
The shadows moved first.
At his feet, darkness pooled unnaturally thick, gathering where his steps landed. When he shifted his weight, it shifted with him. When the ground dipped, the shadows rose to meet him, smoothing jagged stone and broken earth into something passable. He stumbled once, exhaustion finally catching up to him—
—and the shadows surged upward, catching his fall before his knees struck stone.
Riel froze.
The shadows did not tighten. Did not grab.
They simply held.
Slowly, carefully, they lowered him until his boots touched solid ground again. Then they withdrew, thinning and flattening as if embarrassed by the attention.
Riel exhaled shakily.
"So that's how it's going to be," he murmured.
He felt the shadows' eagerness.
That was what unsettled him most.
The shadows felt… attentive. Not obedient. Not subservient. More like hands hovering near fragile glass, ready to steady it if it wobbled.
Like servants carrying a king—
The thought made him grimace.
"I'm not," he said under his breath.
The shadows did not argue.
The pull in his chest returned, subtle but undeniable, tugging him forward whenever he slowed. It was not pain. Not compulsion. Just a direction. A knowing.
He followed it.
The terrain shifted gradually, the blackened ground giving way to something softer beneath his boots. The ash thinned, replaced by a faint, metallic scent that caught at the back of his throat. The air grew heavier, charged, buzzing faintly against his skin.
Then the ground changed color.
Red grass stretched out before him, dense and tall, rippling beneath the dying light of the sun. Each blade shimmered faintly, dark crimson edged with deeper shadows, as though soaked in old blood that refused to dry. The field extended far beyond his vision, swallowing the horizon in a sea of scarlet.
Riel slowed to a stop.
The pull strengthened.
He stepped forward.
The grass recoiled.
Not bent. Not crushed beneath his weight.
It withdrew.
Blades curled away from his legs, trembling as he passed, parting just enough to allow him through. Where his boots touched down, the red grass flattened instantly, pressing itself into the soil as though afraid to rise again.
Riel swallowed.
"This place…" he whispered.
The air tasted sharp now—copper and ozone, blood and thunder layered together. Each breath carried a faint static charge that raised the hair on his arms. The shadows followed him into the field, threading between the grass like living veins, darkening the crimson sea wherever they passed.
At the center of the field, the pull stopped.
Riel knew without being told.
He stepped into the clearing.
The grass shuddered violently, retreating in a widening circle, peeling back from him as though repelled by an unseen pressure. The earth beneath cracked and darkened, revealing cold stone where soil should have been. In seconds, Riel stood alone in a barren ring, surrounded by red grass that refused to cross the invisible boundary.
The sun hung low above him, swollen and dim, bleeding its final light across the field. Long shadows stretched inward, stopping just short of his feet.
Riel lowered himself to the ground.
The moment he sat, the world changed.
Not violently.
Quietly.
His breathing slowed on its own, falling into a rhythm that felt older than thought. The ache in his bones dulled. The constant tension coiled in his spine loosened, thread by thread. He closed his eyes, letting awareness sink inward, deeper than he had ever allowed it to go.
Power stirred.
Not a surge.
A presence.
Silver light brushed against his soul, cool and distant like moonlight reflected off still water. Shadows followed, curling around it, not consuming, not smothering— weaving together in slow, deliberate harmony.
A symphony without sound.
The ash in the air crackled with power, purple and red lightning streaked through the sky, each bolt producing thunder that rolled across the horizon.
Riel's thoughts drifted past him, fragments of memory and emotion slipping away before he could grasp them. Fear. Exhaustion. The echo of screams that were not his own. He let them go.
Something deeper answered.
The ground trembled.
The red grass writhed violently, blades twisting and knotting as the earth beneath them shifted. The field peeled away from him in widening rings, soil cracking and collapsing inward as though fleeing. Stone emerged beneath his feet, cold and smooth, forming a perfect circle around him.
Riel did not move.
The shadows thickened.
They rose slowly, gathering at his back, his shoulders, his hands. They did not restrain him. They did not invade. They brushed against him like cautious fingers, tentative and reverent, afraid of breaking something precious.
Power continued to gather.
Not flooding.
Filling.
Riel's breath hitched.
His chest tightened as the sensation deepened, threading itself through his soul with quiet insistence. It felt like remembering how to breathe after forgetting you were drowning. Familiar. Intimate.
Too much.
He gasped, the meditation shattering as he pitched forward, catching himself on trembling hands. His knees struck the stone, the impact sharp enough to ground him as the world snapped back into focus.
Riel sucked in a ragged breath.
Then another.
Fragments of understanding slipped through his grasp—fleeting, half-formed truths that left him dizzy. Images pressed against his thoughts: endless shadowed plains, silver-lit horizons, silence so deep it felt alive.
The Umbral Reaches.
The name surfaced unbidden.
They were not foreign.
They never had been.
Riel bowed his head, fingers digging into the stone beneath him.
"I've been here before," he whispered.
The words felt heavier than they should have.
A memory stirred—distant and blurred, like something seen through thick water. Not a vision. Not a revelation. Just the faint, aching certainty of familiarity. Of paths once walked. Of shadows that had known his presence long before he had known himself.
The shadows responded.
They drew closer, not pressing, not binding, simply there, wrapping around him like a cloak against a cold he had not realized he carried. Their presence was steady, grounding, as if anchoring him to the moment.
Riel stayed on his knees for a long time, pondering how he had been here before. How that was possible. His memory was never bad; he remembered everything he had seen—every monster in the shadows of his life in Averith, every landscape he had traversed. Yet he had never been here. Not once. And still, he knew this place.
The Red Field remained silent.
The grass stayed pressed flat around the clearing, unwilling to rise. The sun dipped lower, casting the field in deep crimson and black. Above, ash continued to fall—still curving away from him as it descended.
The storm of ash and lightning grew more violent, responding to the fluctuations of his soul. Bolts as thick as trees struck near him, scorching the red grass and revealing blackened soil beneath. The energy in the air swelled, crackling, vibrating, almost alive, surrounding him like a living thing.
Riel felt the light in the middle of his chest intensify. It pulsed, synchronized with his heartbeat, until a crimson bolt flashed from the sky itself—
And struck him directly.
Pain lanced through every nerve, every fiber, yet he did not cry out.
The world went white.
Then silence.
And somewhere, deep beneath that silence, he felt a presence awaken.