(From the perspective of Orin getting ready to leave Valdora as he had been warned.)
There it was again.
That feeling.
Not fear. Not quite nostalgia.
More like a bruise pressed long after it's healed.
I stood at Valdora's edge. For a moment, it felt like the day I'd leave would never come. The city still held the scent of copper—but not the kind that came with rain.
There was no rain. Only snow falling in quiet spirals, pirouetting from crown to toe.
Yet the scent lingered.
Heavy. Damp.
Petrichor.
I don't know why the word came to me now.
Maybe it was the memory of tarmac beneath my knees, and the hiss of water steaming off its surface. Childhood. Ghosted.
The sky looked rusted—like liquid mercury veined with white phosphorus.
Trains flitted across the horizon like bronze needles, threading light through the cloud-metal. Mechanical angels.
They had no soul.
I pulled on my gloves. Cold leather met colder skin. The seams creaked.
"Warm," I muttered.
A lie. Or a habit.
None of it mattered anymore.
A shallow puddle formed within snow, revealing a dip within the bricks. It was melted, though it should've been frozen solid.
I gazed deeper, drawn into it. Not at my reflection but beneath it. There was a symbol.
Familiar.
One of Ilya's, maybe.
A small spider drifted along its surface. Its legs were light and nimble, methodical–like a surgeon's fingers. The streetlamp above fractured across the water like a broken spotlight.
Then the water began to spiral, circumvoluting it a multitude of colours.
Silver.
Then brown.
Red.
black.
Something tightened in my lungs. I exhaled—and couldn't draw breath again.
Then it came—quiet enough to miss, but numerous enough to hear.
Crackling.
I felt it first on my tongue.
Smooth, but coated in hair.
My lips trembled as my jaw clenched.
Then the sensation moved—up through my sinuses, into my ears, behind my eyes.
Pressure bloomed beneath my eyelid. It felt like a twitch, the type you get when you're tired.
But slowly, it pressed outward–my eyelids slowly protruding outward. I looked frantic into the reflection of the puddle. It pushed forward against the elasticity of my skin, pulling and rubbing against it like braille. It was quick and deliberate. There was no tearing, or blood. Just… parting. I didn't cry out. Fear muffled my screams. A spider's leg appeared from my eyelid– the hairs along its length were as fine as scripture brushwork. It should've hurt. But it didn't. That scared me.
Silk threads caught beneath the lid.
Then another leg came. Then another, and another followed. And it stared into the reflection, back at me.The delicate, searching hairs. The mechanical certainty in how it moved. It was slow, awkward, uncomfortable.
Then more came, this time from my orifices. Slow and deliberate, slinking forth in a silent waltz, all in fixed choreography.
Crrrch.
I couldn't breathe, whether it was fear, or they had enveloped my throat. I wanted to cough. I wanted to scream.
But I couldn't do either.
"My hand's, they're numb."
Their movement vibrated my eardrums, creating a perfect symphony—as if they were dancing to music only they could hear.
A silent procession.
My knees buckled, I could feel my pulse within my throat. Then it stopped. The spider's–they had all vanished as if they were never there.
I turned to see a man, holding a large black widow in his palm, both facing me. He wore a three piece suit, a cravat beneath his collar and oxford shoes. He dressed like a lawyer, but did not look of the law. His hair was brown and messy, and its ends were frayed.
There was a palpable sense of wrongness to the man. He was unblinking with hatred. And his hatred was not hidden, it was clear and directed towards me.
The widow in his hand did not bite him, it spun and spun a web on palm, dancing, with balletic grace from thumb to index.
The man stood within the streets, no burning rage. No fire. But steam rising from the pores of his skin. It were as if he were mourning someone's death, anger… Rather.
I kneeled before him, my hands on the ground, my fingers trembling yet my face stoic. The streetlights seemed to flicker as he walked by. The man was tall, but it wasn't what I had noticed. His skin gave off steam, at any moment he was ready to crack. Like a hot bowl of ceramic placed in cold water. However he wasn't visibly boiling, it was faint wisps rising from his sleeves. It was as if he were grieving, in anger.
He glared at me and said "My wrath is not a choice. It is justice.
It is the only thing that makes the world listen when it turns away.
I am held accountable to the man who made me—
And you…
You are accountable to me."
"You were there. On that day.
And you watched her die."
My tongue felt thick. I couldn't look at him. Couldn't look away either.
"It haunted me," I whispered. "I was powerless... I'm sorry."
"She was all I had left—after the war took my mother. She was a sister to me. And you… let her burn." He responded the words seething through his teeth
He began to tread closer toward me.
I grasped my throat before speaking, "Wh-Why… Me."
He ignored my question and bellowed "My name is Wrath. Look upon my face and fear my name. Let it seep into your mind." The large black widow crumpled into his hands like paper to ash.
The name Wrath shouldn't have weight. And yet-and yet it pressed into me like a brand.
Cracking.
This time it was not bony, but more velar and sharp. Snapping like dry twigs as my eyes began to bleed. The leather of my gloves began to scorch. The snow didn't even come close to the ground—it simply evaporated. The ground blackened into ash. The buildings behind began to crumble.
I blinked hoping it was all a dream, grasping for any semblance of reality.
Then it began.
One by one, they dropped. People standing near the train station. No sound. No cry. Simply into ash… Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I looked up, still on my knees but trying to anchor myself, "Misfortune," I whispered more to myself than him
"That's all it is… That's all it will be." I gritted my teeth.
"But why me?"
No answer came.
Cracks.
They spread from his feet like branches of frostbitten glass, spiderwebbing across the stone.
As he began to speak, the air itself repulsed
"Return to ashes." The man said
His voice was calm, low. Almost tender.
"Ardeat."
A black flame climbed from the ground and rose in reverent smoke along with it. It spilled from the fractures like sap from a cursed tree. The ground burned like brimstone.
And the flame began to envelop everything within a mile, forming a dome-No a bud.
The stem bristled thorns. And from the stem, a flower grew.
And it rose a flower unlike this world had or were to see.
Ten petals unfolded from the flower. One by one.
Then one petal would loosen then fall.
And with it followed hell upon earth, screams ruptured the silence.
The kind that had no breath, no time to cry for help.
Flesh peeled away in ribbons of white phosphorus from their skin.
And still, I was helpless. Sure… I knew magic but this. This was something else. Something more.
And the roots would seep into the ground, and the flames did not flicker, rather they writhed. They clawed the earth and emerged as skeletal tendrils, poised but still. But heavy with death.
"The petals…" I murmured beneath my breath, hardly able to pipe in a thought in fear
They were like seeds of destruction, but no. They had a primary purpose. On each petal was a word.
"sunu, oud, sert, routtauq…"
"I've seen these before… These words- they were in Ilya's notebook."
My breath caught, though my lungs charred. "U…n…u…s" I whispered.
Then it became clear
"They were the true names of numbers, reversed. Why though." I swallowed, hardly able to froth up a spit
"Sigils… True names written to overlap one another, I'd skimmed over it in Ilya's notebook. He had formed a sigil within the puddle, on his hand with silk and on the petals. Each one serves a different purpose. The petal is a countdown. The puddle created a mirror dimension. And the silk cast an illusion." I stood from my knees before taking one deep breath
"A countdown to the destruction of the entire town. I can assume."
The man stared daggers into my soul. There was no impediment in his gaze, not a bluff in his diction. He meant what he had said. He was after justice, and my blood.
"Ilya-is still here." I muttered stuttering over my words
"Someone you hold dearly to you?" His lips parted—
Rows of dagger-like teeth. Stalactites carved from bone, hooked into blackened gums.
A good man who had his judgement clouded by wrath. No-Not possible, a good man wouldn't kill innocent people.
I swallowed, my mouth, dry, my lips cracked and bleeding. Revenge is in no way Justice. I hate fire. Fire reminds me of then. When they burnt his sister.