Darkness enveloped the forest like a swarm of ghosts, its silence broken only by the rustle of leaves succumbing to the fierce night winds. Arion, exhausted from his long journey, dragged himself under the shadow of a giant tree, trying to rest and eat the provisions Julia had prepared for him. He felt a fiery tingling in his arm where the Aether mark hid, like an ember glowing beneath his skin.
He paused for a moment, contemplating the price he paid as his health deteriorated for survival. Then, with a trembling hand, he pulled a piece of dry bread from his worn bag. But as the first bite of the food touched his lips, a suspicious rustle from the bushes pierced the night's silence.
Arion flinched and grabbed his sword with a steady hand despite his body's tremors. He advanced cautiously, every step calculated, remembering Marcus's words still ringing in his ears: "Danger can lie in the smallest creatures, and carelessness can cost you your soul."
With his sword drawn, he pushed aside the dense shrub branches to discover... a ghost from his past.
"Jacob..."
The name left his lips like a testimony. The ghost of his friend stood among the trees, hollow eyes radiating with malice and pain. Arion collapsed internally, his heart beating like a drum in a losing battle.
"You're just an illusion..." he whispered, trying to convince himself, wondering how much of his soul still lived in that painful past.
But the ghost grew darker, its features turning into an embodied nightmare.
"As if I ate you or something!" The words escaped him with the bitterness of despair.
Suddenly, Jacob's right eye fell from its socket, rolling like a bloody ball until it settled at Arion's feet.
"Enough!" Arion exploded in anger and threw the bread to the ground. "For eight years, I haven't been able to eat or sleep! Leave me alone!"
Then he added in a calm tone dripping with sarcasm: "And know that your taste wasn't even palatable."
He walked away angrily, leaving behind the piece of bread from which he had taken only one bite. He felt a wave of sorrow wash over him - sorrow for the lost friendship, for the lost innocence. The tingling turned into a fire raging in his veins, and the tattoo on his arm glowed like an ember in the night.
He stiffened suddenly, his breath slowing as if time had stopped. Before completely succumbing to the pain, he wished he could cry for all he had lost. His hands convulsed, and black, ink-like veins spread under his skin, extending like venomous snakes from his limbs to his chest.
A deadly pain pierced every atom in his body, but he remained standing like a statue, no expression on his face. The black veins climbed his neck towards his head, then his nose began to bleed black blood.
He smiled.
His blood-covered teeth gleamed in the pale moonlight. And as his consciousness began to fade, he pulled a metal injector from his coat and stabbed his heart with it. The black veins slowly receded, then he collapsed to the ground like a severed tree trunk.
As he succumbed to a coma, the usual flashes began to appear:
Flash: A beautiful woman is dying, her eyes disappearing into the darkness. "Save... our son..." she whispers
Flash: A man sitting in the darkness, muttering in a mad tone: "I will destroy everyone who caused this..."
A voice in the wind whispers epic poetic verses:
"The bearer will gather his scattered fragments
Shards of a soul shattering in the dark
He carries an end in the right hand of his heart
And hides a beginning on the left of hope
The stars will wither when he stands with courage
And touches his destiny with the palm of bravery
An end that gives birth to a new dawn
And a darkness that hides a coming radiance"
Arion doesn't understand the meaning of these words, but they carve deep grooves in his soul, like a map to a fate he doesn't know. He felt a lump in his throat - a mix of fear and the desire to see the truth.
After minutes, he slowly regained consciousness. He rose, leaning against the tree trunk, and whispered in a sarcastic tone tinged with sadness: "Here come the hallucinations again... How pathetic I am."
He contemplated his trembling hand, wondering if he could ever escape this fate. Then he raised his head towards the starry night sky, and suddenly remembered his vision of countless stars filling the horizon, and a giant black star at the heart, shattered like a broken heart. His breath quickened as the scenes mingled in his mind, his limbs trembled, so he raised his hands to cover his eyes, like a child trying to hide from a painful truth, carrying in his chest a fear of an unknown fate forced upon him, and a glimmer of hope he was afraid to believe in.
The first rays of dawn shyly pierced the forest's darkness, as if hesitant to reveal what this afflicted land hid. Arion woke from his restless sleep, his body weighted down by the traces of the night's battle with the Aether. The faint blue veins crawling under his skin were witnesses to the unending suffering. With a slow movement, as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, he packed his worn belongings as he continued his journey towards Julia's destroyed village, every step carrying a painful memory.
After hours of continuous walking through rugged paths, he found himself in the heart of a dense forest where giant trees blocked most of the sunlight, leaving golden spots sneaking through the intertwined branches like light ghosts in a kingdom of shadows. The forest air was heavy with the smell of corrupted Aether, that pungent mixture of burnt metal and old mold that filled the lungs with suffocation.
He stopped under the shadow of a giant tree and took out some wild fruits he had gathered on his way. But before the food touched his lips, Jacob's ghost suddenly appeared, standing a few steps away, his eyes radiating with blame and immense anger. Arion froze in place, the morsel stuck in his throat. He tried to force a tense smile: "Don't you want some?" But the burning look the ghost gave him made his hand tremble. Jacob's silence was harsher than any scream.
Arion quickly put the food back into his bag and whispered in a broken voice: "Alright... I understand." The ghost's silence was more painful than any words.
At that moment, his silence was broken by faint rustling from the bushes. He cautiously advanced to find a small doe trapped among deformed beasts - squirrels with leathery wings and dangling fangs, foxes with multiple eyes and claw-like limbs, and reptiles emitting electric sparks. The Aether deformities made their bodies a living nightmare - fur falling out in patches, eyes bearing that pale blue color, and movements unnaturally spasmodic.
The doe was wounded, despair filling its eyes, and it had stopped resisting. Arion looked at it with sympathy and whispered, "The weak find each other in this harsh world."
And the small battle erupted when the winged squirrels swooped from above, their wings making a sound like tearing cloth. Arion dodged their attack with a backflip while his feet sank into the damp soil, his sword drawing a silver arc in the air to cut the wing of one of them. The multi-eyed foxes advanced from both sides, their six eyes in each face following his every move with terrifying concentration. He struck the ground with his sword, raising a cloud of dust, and used the moment to pounce on the nearest one.
The electric reptiles began emitting small sparks, leaving burnt scars on tree trunks. Arion jumped between moss-covered rocks, avoiding the shocks, then used his sword to throw a small pebble that hit one of the reptiles precisely in the head. The air filled with the smell of burnt flesh and the hissing sound of dying beasts. With skillful movements, he killed them all using only his sword, avoiding the use of Mana, as self-punishment for all his pains.
As the sunset began, painting the sky with shades of purple and orange, Arion found himself at the edge of a small river whose waters had a strange, greenish hue, another evidence of Aether pollution in the area. He decided to camp here, surrendering to the day's exhaustion.
As he lit the fire, he felt the familiar tingling in his arm. This time, as usual, he decided not to inject himself, but to endure the pain to the end.
"Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you have to push yourself to the brink of death?"
A childish whisper from Anabelle came back to him, reminding him of that distant day when she sat beside him with eyes red from crying.
He answered in silence: "Because Marcus taught me that death is training... and pain is preparation."
He opened the map with a trembling hand, discovering his proximity to the Shattered Moon Lake. He remembered Julia's description of the beauty he had never seen, the beauty she always described while she was trying to plant hope in his heart. He decided to continue his path towards the lake, wondering if that said beauty still existed in this destroyed world.
And as the moon rose in the sky, Arion walked towards the lake through a winding path surrounded by trees that began to take on deformed shapes due to the Aether. With every step, he felt the pain receding, replaced by a strange curiosity. The air gradually became purer, and the smell of corrupted Aether disappeared, replaced by refreshing breezes.
Then suddenly... the scene unfolded before him:
An emerald lake shimmering under the moonlight, its waters unnaturally clear, reflecting the twinkling stars in the night sky, Willow trees gently bent at its edges, water flowers bloomed on its surface. And a young woman dancing on the water's surface like a heartbeat in the body of the universe.
As the sun withdrew behind the horizon, leaving the sky adorned with shades of purple and crimson, Arion found himself standing mesmerized. He didn't know if what he was seeing was real or just another hallucination from his illness.