The carving stopped. The glow faded.
His name settled into the stone alongside thousands of others.
Vesperyn stared at it.
*That's me,* he thought numbly.
*I'm on the list now.*
He looked at the crossed-out names around him.
Hundreds visible from where he stood. Thousands more stretching into the distance.
*How many of us make it?* he wondered.
The hall didn't answer.
But the sheer number of scratched-out names was answer enough.
Vesperyn stood there, breathing slowly, arms hanging at his sides.
His hands still trembled. Everything hurt in a distant, muted way, like his nerves were tired of screaming.
Then something appeared.
A flat, translucent pane hovered in front of him.
Text formed across it,
Processing Candidate…
Another line appeared beneath it.
Compatibility Check: Passed.
Vesperyn swallowed.
Passed what? he almost asked,then didn't. He had a feeling asking questions here would be pointless.
The text shifted.
Pathway: Harbinger.
A pause.
Then:
Warning:
Mortality Rate: 85%.
Do you wish to proceed?
Two options appeared beneath the text.
One was marked faintly, barely visible.
[EXIT]
The other was solid.
[ACCEPT]
Vesperyn stared at them for a long time.
He focused.
The word Exit pulled at his attention. Not because it offered safety,but because he knew exactly where it led.
One hundred percent death.
No delay. No bargaining.
He looked at the other option.
Eighty-five percent mortality.
His lips twitched.
"Still terrible," he muttered quietly.
But not impossible.
He exhaled slowly, forcing his thoughts to line up instead of spiraling.
'Fifteen percent,' he thought.
That's not hope. But it's not nothing.
Vesperyn lifted his hand.
For a brief moment, he hesitated,not from fear, but from exhaustion. He was tired of being carried. Tired of reacting. Tired of dying without being asked.
Then he pressed the option.
[ACCEPT]
The moment he pressed Accept, the interface vanished.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—
Pain.
Not sharp. Not sudden.
Invasive.
It felt like something cold and foreign had been driven into his chest—not through skin, not through bone, but through something deeper. Something that shouldn't have been touchable.
His soul, maybe.
If that's what this was.
Vesperyn gasped and dropped to one knee.
The sensation spread outward from his core, threading through every part of him. Not burning. Not tearing.
Rewriting.
Like someone had opened him up and was replacing pieces one by one, swapping out what he'd been with something else entirely.
It felt wrong.
Fundamentally, deeply wrong.
Like being injected with something that didn't belong inside a human body.
A symbol began forming.
Not on his skin.
Inside him.
He could feel it carving itself into existence, line by line, burning into a place he couldn't see or touch.
Vesperyn tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
His throat worked. His mouth opened. But the sound was swallowed by the void before it could form.
The mark settled deeper.
Branding him.
Claiming him.
Marking him as something other than what he'd been.
The pain peaked—
Then stopped.
Vesperyn collapsed forward, gasping, both hands pressed against the cold stone floor.
His whole body shook.
When he finally managed to look up, the interface had returned.
Designation: Initiate
Connection: 1
Another line flickered into place:
Skill Unlocked: [Harbinger's Sight]
Vesperyn stared at the words, breathing hard.
*Connection: 1*, he thought dimly. *One what?*
But before he could process it, the hall began to dissolve.
The walls faded. The names blurred.
Reality was pulling him back.
"Wait—" he started.
Too late.
The void released him.
Vesperyn woke up screaming.
No sound came out.
His throat was raw, crushed, useless. He thrashed, hands flying to his neck, expecting to find the Echo's claws still embedded there.
Nothing.
Just skin.
Intact.
He rolled onto his side, gasping. His lungs convulsed, dragging in air that tasted like ash and copper. Each breath felt new, like his body was remembering how to do it for the first time.
Dirt and bile came up. He retched violently, hands sinking into mud.
When the spasms finally stopped, he lay there, shaking.
Alive.
He was alive.
The realization came slowly, filtered through exhaustion and shock.
*I should be dead.*
The pressure was gone.
That was the second thing he noticed.
The weight that had been crushing him in the void—pressing on his thoughts, his chest, his existence—had vanished completely.
He felt... lighter.
Wrong, but lighter.
Vesperyn pushed himself up weakly, arms trembling.
The forest came into focus slowly.
Everything was wrong.
Trees were snapped in half, trunks splintered like kindling. The ground was torn apart, gouged deep with massive claw marks. Entire sections of earth had been churned black, scorched by something.
A shape lay crumpled a short distance away.
Massive. Segmented.
The centipede.
Its head was crushed inward, chitin shattered, body twitching once before going completely still.
Vesperyn stared at it, trying to process.
*That thing almost killed us.*
*How is it—*
Movement beside him.
He flinched hard, scrambling backward.
A hand caught his shoulder.
"Easy," a hoarse voice said. "Easy. You're alright."
Vesperyn's head snapped around.
Harlen.
Harlen was sitting next to him.
Sitting in the dirt, legs half-folded beneath him, breathing hard. His face was pale. Sweat soaked his hairline. One arm was clutched tight to his chest.
He leaned forward suddenly and wrapped his one arm around Vesperyn, pulling him in hard enough that it knocked the air out of him. His other arm hung uselessly at his side.
Harlen's forehead pressed against Vesperyn's shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice breaking completely. "I'm sorry. I almost let you die."
The words came out uneven, torn loose from something deeper. His breathing hitched. He tried to swallow it back and failed.
"I should've known. This is on me."
Vesperyn froze.
He didn't know what to do. Harlen had always been solid. Annoying. Unmovable. He'd never raised his voice, never shown fear.
Now he was shaking.
Vesperyn felt the warmth of the arm around him. The weight of another body holding on like letting go might make everything fall apart again.
He's not just watching me, the thought came, quiet and steady . He cares.
The realization settled deeper than the awakening had.
Vesperyn lifted his hand slowly and gripped the back of Harlen's shirt.
"I'm fine," he said hoarsely.
Harlen laughed once, then pressed his face into Vesperyn's shoulder again before finally pulling back.
They separated slowly.
That was when Vesperyn saw the damage.
Harlen's left arm hung at a wrong angle, bent inward at the elbow. The skin was already darkening, swelling. His hand trembled uselessly, fingers twitching without purpose.
Blood had dried in a trail from his left ear down his jaw. More stained his teeth when he grimaced.
"You....." Vesperyn started, reaching toward him.
Harlen waved him off with his good hand.
"I'm fine," he said. The lie was obvious.
He forced himself to his feet, movements stiff and pained. He swayed, caught himself against a tree, then straightened through sheer stubbornness.
"We need to move," he said. "Now."