Darkness swallowed him first — dense and warm, as if he were trapped inside living flesh. The pressure on his chest crushed him, his ribs threatening to snap. A sweet metallic taste filled his mouth; his throat burned. He tried to breathe, but the liquid rushed in — heavy, viscous, crimson. His body convulsed in a spasm.
A dull pain pulsed — not in his head, but around him. A deep, rhythmic noise echoed through the thickness of the waters, monstrous, steady, like the heartbeat of a dying world.
He opened his eyes. The burn was immediate. Crimson without end stretched in every direction, streaked with dark veins and shifting gleams. Above, the sky vibrated with the same hue, stained with shadows; the horizon was gone — everything blended into a troubled light, saturated with blood.
Eden struggled, lungs on fire, arms weakly slapping the surface. His chest struck something warm and gelatinous — a wave that seemed to breathe. With a desperate effort, he broke through at last, vomiting the sea in heaving gulps, gasping like a drowned man dragged from the depths. The air tore his throat apart, but it was air.
He floated for a few seconds, trembling. His hands searched for support that didn't exist. The liquid clung to him, thick, almost sticky; every movement ripped a sharp burn from his skin, as if the tide wanted to keep him.
He lifted his gaze toward that maddened sky where fragments of rock still fell in a slow rain — echoes of a collapsing world.
— "How… am I still alive?" he whispered.
His voice vanished instantly, swallowed by the underwater rumble. The vibration reverberated through his chest, making his ribs shudder. The surface throbbed softly, as if syncing its breath with his own.
He inhaled deeply — the air was heavy, the scent of iron coating his palate. Every breath stung like a blade. In the sky's reflection, the ocean seemed to bleed upward.
The tingling returned, sharper now. It wasn't just heat — it was alive. Tiny sparks danced across his skin — the electricity of unstable mana, irritating, almost sentient. Instinctively, his hand brushed the strap of the knife against his thigh, the reflex of a trained carrier.
Around him, the surface rippled in time with the beat. With every pulse, the world seemed to tighten by one more notch, as if the sea were trying to reclaim what it had let escape.
A flash pierced the haze. Far to his right, a blue glimmer flickered — thin, trembling, a dying star. Beside it, a second point, red, brighter, pulsed in the wind. Two colors answering each other in the heart of the crimson night.
He blinked, breath short. A blue aura. A red flame. He recognized them instantly.
— "Lucas… and Anabelle… I have to go."
He tried to move; his body refused at first. His muscles trembled, numbed by the strange cold of a burning sea. With each motion, the matter seemed to drag him downward. A diffuse pain gnawed at his limbs — micro-cuts, stings, thin glowing lines under the purple light, as if the liquid were trying to seep into him.
Still, he pushed forward. One stroke, then another. The fluid parted slowly, unwillingly. The heat was suffocating, saturated with energy — a soup of living mana bubbling beneath the world's crust. Each motion tore a grimace from him; the pain sharpened, became real.
His arms beat the water in stubborn rhythm. His eyes never left the two lights — there, atop a jagged spur of stone cutting through the chaos. As he swam, they seemed to drift farther away, pushed back by some malicious will.
He thought of the canyon wind, of the dust before the collapse. Of Valentin — his mocking laughter still echoing in his skull. It all felt so distant, and yet he kept swimming.
Just a little more.
The water slapped his face, entered his mouth — acidic, sticky. Each stroke became torture, but he clung to that fragile, stubborn blue star — the last proof that the world wasn't completely dead.
A cold thought struck him: what if it wasn't them? He banished it. No. It was them. It had to be. Otherwise, there was nothing left to swim toward.
Beneath the surface, something rolled and breathed. At regular intervals, the tide lifted and hurled him back, like a toy in invisible hands. The heartbeat returned, stronger, closer — now it echoed inside his skull.
He froze for a moment, carried by the current. The pulse was maddening. It was as if the sea could think. As if it had noticed him.
A faint sound reached him — metallic echoes, hissing, screams eaten by the wind. Between waves, he glimpsed tiny silhouettes along the ridge: blue flashes, orange arcs, dark masses converging. Lucas. Anabelle. And… something else.
Each impact seemed to vibrate through the sea itself, stirring the depths awake.
He swallowed hard. This wasn't water. Too dense. Too hot. Too alive. Mana acid? Corrupted matter? Organism? He looked down: his irritated skin shimmered with thin cuts. Microscopic bubbles formed along his veins.
A shiver crawled up his spine. He swam faster.
Don't think. Just move.
The resistance grew. The beating quickened. With every pulse, a dull force tugged him downward before thrusting him back, as if the sea were tasting him, hesitating to devour him.
— "No, no…" he breathed through clenched teeth.
Panic took over. He swam with all his strength, forgetting pain, fatigue, the salt burning his wounds. Sky and sea spun together, indistinguishable. Every swell turned into a trap, every hollow a hand ready to seize him.
The farther he went, the more he felt it — something massive below, slow, methodical. A formless shadow. He didn't want to look. If he saw it, he'd never unsee it.
So he kept swimming. Until reason faded, leaving only one thought: get out. Now.
A dark mass appeared, drifting slowly. Still. Peaceful, almost — a rock, an island, anything that didn't move. A sigh of relief escaped him. His arms trembled. He couldn't take much more. A few seconds of rest. Just that.
He approached, half his face above water, eyes half-closed. Every motion tore screams from his muscles. Just a few more meters… He reached out.
Then he saw.
It wasn't a rock. It was a torso.
The upper body floated face-down, rocking on the crimson waves. Broad back, massive shoulders… the scar along the left flank — he recognized it before daring to turn it over.
— "Valentin…"
He rolled him over with trembling fingers, gently, as if afraid to wake him. The face appeared in the red glow. Eyes open. Empty. Staring at the bloody sky. The lower half was gone — torn clean. Shreds of flesh drifted, filaments of viscera waving like ribbons. The tide tugged them down, then released them again.
His stomach twisted. The stench of iron and burnt mana hit his throat. He jerked back, splashing. A strangled cry rose — he swallowed it. His breathing turned ragged.
— "No… no, no…"
His gaze locked on the corpse's eyes — eyes that still caught the light of the sky. A ripple moved the lips. A bubble surfaced, popped. In that brief whisper, the echo distorted the sound; Eden thought he heard it.
— "…trash…"
The word cut through him like a blade.
He thrashed backward, limbs flailing. Kicking wildly, gasping, the tide slapping salt and blood across his face. He didn't want to see. Didn't want to hear. He just swam — toward the shore, toward anything. Thoughtless, as if fleeing could erase what he'd seen.
The ridge drew closer. He could make out the silhouettes, the blue flashes, Anabelle's flame. One last effort. Just one more.
Something touched him.
At first, a light pull — a cold caress at his ankle. He frowned. The grip tightened.
And pulled.
The world flipped. A force yanked him under with voiceless violence. The red liquid filled his mouth before he realized. A sharp pain ripped up his leg — so intense he thought he'd burst. He flailed blindly. The thick density strangled him. The pounding grew deafening. Bubbles rolled from his throat. He tried to reach his ankle — nothing. The pull, relentless.
His fingers found the strap at last. The knife slid into his palm. He struck wildly. Flashes of steel through the crimson. The blade bit into gelatinous flesh — the tension snapped.
Suddenly, nothing. No heartbeat. No movement.
Silence.
Suspended in stillness, lungs burning, thought vanished. Instinct took over. He kicked once — only once — and pain ripped through his leg. A hot acid surged up his thigh. He understood: something was missing.
Panicked, he swam upward.
The seconds stretched. His arms tore through the waves. When he broke the surface, he screamed — a raw, inhuman cry lost in the wind. He swallowed half the sea and swam blindly toward land, carried by sheer terror.
Every meter was agony. The burn, the dark trail behind him. He was bleeding out and refused to stop. Not here. Not like this.
His hands finally met ground. He collapsed. The pebbles sliced his palms. He crawled, gasping, until the tide no longer reached his back.
The world tilted. He looked down.
And everything froze.
His left leg ended abruptly below the knee. A flash of white bone gleamed for an instant before blood pulsed out in bursts. The stones marbled with scarlet; the wet slaps matched the rhythm of his heart.
He went still.
— "Huh…?" he breathed.
His mind refused the sight. His eyes stared into nothing. Then pain caught up — a burning hurricane tearing through him. He screamed — raw, broken. Cold flooded him, as if the sea had poured into his veins. Sweat mixed with blood, nausea twisting his gut, hands slipping in the red mud.
His vision blurred; colors melted into a mess of white and purple. He tried to rise, fell again, cheek pressed to the wet stone, breath faltering.
Luck: –1.
The words floated in his head like a cruel joke. A strangled laugh escaped him — shaky, nervous, closer to a sob.
— "Fuck… this world keeps screwing me over…" he muttered, mouth full of sand and iron.
His gaze drifted toward the red sky, toward the clouds of ash slowly descending.
— "If only I could… glimpse… peaceful days…"
A crooked smile twisted his lips. He laughed again — short, broken, almost childlike.
— "What the hell am I even saying?"
He pressed a trembling hand to his temple, as if to hold it in place. His eyes widened, lost between fear and delirious amusement. The heartbeat of the world and his own had merged; everything throbbed as one, in a mad red rhythm.
Madness seeped in — gentle, persuasive, like a rising tide. His ragged breaths barely lifted his chest. The world swayed, indistinct, drowned in noise.
Then he heard it.
A voice — faint, a whisper carried by the wind or born in his mind. He couldn't tell.
— "…trash…"
He froze. His heart skipped a beat. Then another. The voice returned, hissing, persistent, as if the sea itself were spitting the word at him.
— "Trash… trash…"
Something snapped. A dry laugh burst out — short, strangled, then swelling until it filled everything. He laughed until his throat tore.
— "You want to fuck with me, huh?" he screamed at the sky. "Then do it. Fucking do it!"
The wind tore his voice away. He laughed, and laughed again, trembling.
— "If this is how it ends… then go all the way, you sons of bitches!"
His cries mingled with the wind, the tide, and a distant laughter he thought he heard beneath the surface — a massive presence receding, just for a moment, as if surprised. Far off, the clang of steel, a name shouted over the ridge; an orange incantation rose and fell.
The world's noise returned. When his voice finally died, only the sounds of blood, wind, and endless battle on the heights remained — and the monstrous heartbeat beneath the earth.
Eden Marron let out one last breathless laugh, eyes open to the scarlet sky that seemed — yes — to smile back at him.