The valley stretched before him like a wound gouged into the earth—long, winding, and unnaturally silent. Moonlight filtered through the mist like silvered gauze, casting pallid shadows that flickered with each step he took. His boots crunched against the frost-bitten grass, but even that faint sound seemed swallowed by the hush that hung heavy in the air.
Something was wrong.
Belial paused, his breath forming small clouds in the cold night air. This path through the valley was familiar—he had taken it many times during his descent from the mountain. Ordinarily, even in the dead of night, this place would writhe with life. Starved fanged beasts, malformed crawlers, and lurking hollow-walkers—always something waiting to fight, to feast. Predators roamed here not as wanderers, but as kings of a forsaken world. Now… nothing.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
He narrowed his eyes, his pupils sharpening slightly as he tapped into the ether that curled within his blood. His vision sharpened. Still—no movement. No glowing eyes in the brush, no distant rustle in the thornbushes, no hiss of breath through jagged teeth. Just empty, frost-kissed earth. A corpse of a forest long forgotten by time.
Then he saw it.
Not a living creature, but a carcass.
He approached carefully, his hand brushing the hilt of his blade out of instinct. The smell hit him first—raw, sour, thick with iron and rot. He knelt by the body. It had once been a gladebeast—those muscular, elk-sized predators with stone-crusted antlers and retractable claws. Now it was barely a collection of flesh.
It had been butchered.
Thick claw marks shredded through its belly and flanks, but not in the patterns of a hunt. No flesh was missing. No organs removed. Its eyes were intact—glassy, rolled to the back of its skull. The jaw had been torn nearly off. Blood had pooled, but the patterns were strange. Not a trail, not a struggle. Just… static violence.
Belial's fingers hovered above the wounds. They were deep, but not jagged—precise in their savagery.
A kill without purpose.
Another body lay not far off, and another. He began to find more the deeper he walked into the valley. Mangled monsters, torn limb from limb, twisted at grotesque angles. All different species—none eaten. He passed a nightfang draped over a stone, its ribs cracked inward. A split-walker lay bisected, its ichor frozen in delicate arcs over the ground like black petals. Some of them hadn't even put up a fight. The damage was instantaneous—merciless and clinical.
What in the gods' names happened here?
Belial crouched near the largest body, a brute-ogre, its head turned completely around, eyes still wide with the memory of its death. The very sight unsettled something inside him. Not fear. Not yet. But a crawling sensation in the base of his skull—something old and instinctive.
A predator had done this.
But it didn't eat.
Didn't consume.
Didn't even claim the kill.
He exhaled slowly and stood up, brushing off his gloves. The cold had settled into his bones, and the wind no longer felt natural. It was like walking through a graveyard in a world that never knew peace.
He stared at the ogre's twisted corpse for a long time before he muttered aloud, "It's in my head."
The words didn't sound like his own voice. They floated, hollow, and vanished as quickly as the wind.
Maybe it was the mountain. Too much time in isolation. Too much ether-silence. He had been alone in that cursed place for what felt like months, if not years. Silence had its own rhythm. Maybe his brain had tuned into it too well—too deeply. The things he thought he saw up there… the whispers in the cracks, the dreams that bled into waking… none of them ever really made sense. Why should this?
Still, the bodies were real.
He crouched again, this time slower, steadier. He touched the blood on a flat rock beside one of the bodies. Still slightly warm. Not a hallucination. Not a trick of the mind.
But then what?
A hollow laugh escaped his throat. Dry and brittle.
"You're losing it, shadow boy," he whispered to himself, echoing Rose's nickname for him with a grim smirk. "Staying in that damned mountain too long…"
He trailed off, eyes narrowing.
There were no footprints.
No drag marks. No signs of a predator coming or going. Just the kill sites, separated by ten, twenty, sometimes thirty meters—but no tracks. Not from the monsters, not from whatever ended them.
That chill crept deeper now.
Belial stood and looked behind him.
The valley was still empty.
Still too quiet.
He could feel his heartbeat in his ears now, a faint thrum against the quiet. Not fast. Not panicked. Just… aware. Alert.
He rubbed his fingers together and summoned a faint glimmer of ether, letting it flicker around his fingertips like smoke. If something was hunting, he needed to be ready. But the thought brought little comfort. Even monsters leave signs. Even ghosts leave echoes.
This?
This was like something peeled away the skin of the world and left the bones behind.
He moved more cautiously now, passing beneath a warped tree arching over the path. The branches above looked like twisted claws. Even the trees seemed to lean away from the center of the valley, like they feared what dwelled there.
Eventually, he reached a small stone outcropping and sat, keeping his back to it. He needed to think. Or maybe sleep. Maybe everything would feel normal in the morning. The sun would rise, the beasts would howl, and the world would feel less hollow.
He watched the mist coil around the corpses in the distance. They almost looked like they were breathing.
And for just a moment, he swore he saw one of them twitch.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
He just stared.
But nothing happened.
Just a trick of the fog, he told himself. Just the cold warping the nerves in his eyes.
Still… he didn't sleep that night.
He kept one hand on the hilt of his blade and the other cradling a flicker of ether.
Something was watching.
And worse—
It didn't need to eat.
It just liked to butcher.
The climb back to the mountain was more grueling than usual. His limbs were heavier, his breath colder, and that same crawling sensation—like unseen fingers dragging against the back of his neck—never left him. The silence in the valley had followed him, clinging to his boots like grave dirt. Even as he reached the upper ridges, that haunting presence remained, growing heavier with each step.
Belial glanced over his shoulder once, but saw nothing. Just mist curling between rocks. If he hadn't taken the form of a human, carrying the carcass of the dead beast would have been nearly impossible. Even now, its weight seemed wrong—heavier than it should be, like something unseen had latched onto it.
He looked in the forest of crystaline infested trees and saw a figure...a odd familiar figure, A tall haunting figure appeared
His eyes quivered for a moment and in the next It was gone
Could it be....Belial shuddered,
It couldn't be there's no way it should.
Once inside the mountain chamber, the comfort of the place—once a refuge—felt hollow. The fire crackled low as he roasted the meat, but the warmth didn't reach his skin. When he bit into it, the taste turned his stomach. It was sour, bitter, tainted. Like something had seeped into the creature's flesh. He forced himself to chew, to swallow. His stomach churned in quiet protest.
He didn't feel like reading. For the first time in weeks, he couldn't bring himself to open a book. The words would mean nothing. His thoughts felt murky, like he was thinking through smoke.
Even Rose noticed. The usually aloof voice that echoed within the dark corners of his mind stirred, concerned for once.
"You're quieter than usual, shadow boy…"
Belial didn't look up. "It's nothing, C.C.," he muttered, his voice dull and distant.
He went to sleep without another word, curling under his thin blanket, blade close at hand.
Late at night, he found himself feeling a strange sensation.
He was choking!
A pressure on his throat—cold, iron-strong fingers tightening around his windpipe. His eyes flew open, and there it was: a tall, shadowy humanoid figure looming above him, its features unreadable, eyes like pits that drank in the light.
He thrashed, kicking wildly, trying to scream—but no sound came. The figure didn't move, didn't flinch. It simply tightened its grip.
Darkness crowded the edges of his vision.