The Prophet's scream still tasted like ash in Kael's mouth. Not just a sound, but a psychic imprint, burned deep. His head pulsed. A hot, wet pain. Every beat of his own heart made the Prophet's agony throb, a persistent shadow beneath his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut. It did nothing. The Prophet's last, guttural gasp, the raw, flayed terror, it clung to him. A permanent scar. His own reality felt stretched, thin, like damp paper.
Ragnar grunted beside him, pulling a bloody spear from a broken Blood Coven grunt. "He's gone. You done breaking their brains yet, Anomaly?"
Kael opened his eyes. The Crimson Wastes spread out, ugly and red. Cracked ground. Rust-colored dust. The air thick, metallic. It smelled like old blood and dry rock. Kael's arm, the one scratched by the Bone Hound chapters ago, throbbed. The spectral rot that had started subtly now pulsed with a faint, visible, sickly green light under his skin. It had spread since the fight with the Lieutenant, since he'd learned to control the raw blood from enemies. His defiance. His "System Logic" had broken something in the Prophet, something in the realm itself. And now that broken piece was inside him. A new kind of rot.
Sylvara stood still, a black shape against the lurid red sky. Her longsword, gleaming and impossibly clean, rested point-down in the dust. She watched him. Not with concern, not quite. Her frost-like eyes were always hard to read. But there was a flicker, a slight tension in her jaw. He felt it, a cold brush against his own fractured mind. Her divine whispers, he knew, were screaming at her to end him. She hadn't, not yet. But the strain was always there, a tight wire between them.
The Prophet's psychic echo was a torment. It wasn't just pain. It was madness. Fragmented images of rituals, of flayed skin, of screaming cultists, all bled through Kael's own thoughts. His mind, already a battlefield of Marcus's fading memories and the warrior's muscle memory, now hosted another, unwelcome guest. He wanted to rip it out. Tear his own skull open and scrape the echo clean. He clenched his jaw. His teeth ground.
"We need to move," Sylvara's voice cut through the static in his head. Flat. Unemotional. But he heard the slight edge. Kael's eyes twitched. He saw a flash, unbidden. The Prophet's last, dying vision. A twisted landscape, writhing with shadows. It was a fragment of the Prophet's own tortured mind. And now it was Kael's.
"Right." Kael pushed off the ground. His legs felt stiff. Every muscle in his body screamed. The raw edges of the battle lingered. The smell of hot iron. The crunch of bone underfoot. The Aether Codex, a cold, metallic voice in his skull, had been quiet for too long. It was waiting. It always waited.
They walked. Ragnar led, a grim silhouette, his heavy steps kicking up rust-colored dust. Sylvara took the rear, her vigilance a palpable weight. Kael was in the middle. The dust grated against his teeth. He felt the Prophet's lingering madness in every step. It warped his vision. The cracked earth seemed to twist. The distant, jagged rock formations seemed to writhe. He squeezed his eyes, blinked hard. The images stayed.
"Pain is truth. Suffering is grace." The Prophet's voice, a thin, high-pitched wail, echoed from inside Kael's own head. It wasn't Kael's voice. It wasn't Marcus. It wasn't the warrior. It was the dead Prophet, clinging. Like a leech.
Kael's Curse Gauge was already high. Thirty percent, it had declared, after the first manifestation of Bloodrot, the skin on his arm visibly corrupting. Now, after daring to "debug" reality, after breaking the Prophet's mind, the curse pulsed with new intensity. He could feel it. A deeper, more invasive decay. The edges of his vision blurred with faint red, like blood in his eyes. Violent urges, part of the Bloodrot, clawed at him. He wanted to lash out. To scream. To break something.
He stumbled. Ragnar turned, a quick, suspicious glance. Kael righted himself. "Just… the dust."
Ragnar grunted. He said nothing. He watched Kael. Kael felt his gaze. Heavy. Unsettling. Ragnar didn't trust anomalies. He knew Kael was one. He saw the rot on Kael's arm. He saw the way Kael's eyes sometimes went distant, lost in something unseen. The alliance was thin. Built on immediate threat. Always.
Sylvara's presence behind him was a strange comfort, a silent anchor. But her whispers, he knew. He'd heard them before. End him. Cleanse him. He is an abomination. They were growing louder, he could sense it. Not in his ears. But in the psychic space around him. Her divine fragments were agitated. The chaotic energy from the Prophet's death, from Kael's own reality-bending stunt, it was a siren song to her god-fragments. They recoiled from him. He felt it. A cold aversion.
A dry wind picked up. It whipped sand against his exposed skin. It stung. Kael focused on that. The grit. The burn. Anything to drown out the Prophet's internal wail. He ran a hand over his jaw. Rough stubble. He needed water. He needed silence. He needed a moment that wasn't about pain, or curses, or the constant threat of something worse.
He didn't get it.
A new sensation pricked at the back of Kael's mind. Not the Prophet's echo. Something else. Colder. More deliberate. A distant, resonating malevolence. It was Varak. The Flayed One. The warlock who pursued him, who savored suffering. Kael had defeated the Prophet, Varak's direct assistant. The Prophet's dying words had been about Varak's growing obsession with Kael's "unique corruption". Now, Varak was active. He was doing something.
A vision, sharp and brutal, flashed in Kael's mind. It wasn't a memory. It wasn't a hallucination. It was a direct, unwanted feed. Kael saw a vast, cavernous space. Ancient stone, crudely carved altars. And Varak. The warlock's flayed face was a grotesque mask, contorting in a triumphant, wet smile. His exposed muscle twitched. He was surrounded by cultists. Chanting. Their voices, thin and reedy, scraped against Kael's mind. Varak was performing a macabre ritual. His hands, dripping with dark ichor, moved over a writhing, pulpy mass on an altar. Something alive, barely.
Varak's eyes, devoid of lids, fixed on something unseen in his vision. Kael knew it was him. The warlock was sensing Kael's deepening corruption. Sensing the Bloodrot. Sensing the new psychic scar. He was tasting Kael's despair. Kael's defiance. The "Doombrand" on Kael's soul, that mark of the Aether Codex, was resonating, growing stronger, like a bell ringing through the realm. Varak heard it. He heard Kael.
"The Breaker ripens," Varak's voice slithered into Kael's mind. Not a whisper. A cold, oily invasion. "The anomaly blossoms. Exquisite. More than I had hoped."
Kael staggered. He gripped his head. The vision flickered, then solidified. He was still walking, Ragnar and Sylvara ahead, but his mind was somewhere else. Trapped in Varak's ritual chamber. He saw the dark energy coiling around Varak. He felt the cold, calculating intent. Varak wasn't just observing. He was preparing. He was planning. Kael's "Reality Debugging" had gotten the Prophet. But it had brought Varak closer. It had made Kael a prized target.
The Prophet's echo inside Kael screamed. It hated Varak. It hated the pain. It was a living ghost, trapped with its tormentor's biggest obsession. Kael's sanity hung by a thread. He felt like his head would split open. The Bloodrot on his arm, the spectral decay, pulsed faster, hotter. The violent urges roared. He wanted to tear out his own eyes to escape Varak's gaze.
Then the Codex spoke. Its voice, cold and metallic, cut through the psychic static, through Varak's sneering words, through the Prophet's dying wail. It resonated deep in Kael's bones.
"[Anomaly Protocol: Refined. Your unforeseen mutations demand a Trial of Blood.]"
The words hit Kael like a physical blow. The Codex wasn't just a system. It was a sentient, malevolent entity. And it was angry. His defiance, his ability to manipulate its "reality," had drawn its full, terrible attention. He wasn't just hunted anymore. He was being judged.
"[Prepare to be judged, Anomaly.]"
The sound of the Codex's voice vibrated through his body. His Curse Gauge, already a threat, felt like it was straining, ready to burst. He knew what "Trial of Blood" meant. More pain. More forced choices. A forced escalation. The Codex was going to push him. Break him. His Curse Gauge would spike. He knew it. He could feel the pressure building already.
Kael stopped walking. Ragnar turned again, a query in his eyes. Sylvara paused, her head cocked slightly, as if listening to something only she could hear. Kael's arm, the one with the Bloodrot, flared. The spectral rot pulsed, burning deep, spreading, eating at his flesh, at his mind. His vision blurred, not from dust, but from the raw, corrupting energy coursing through him. He saw a flash of the future, a horrible, impossible vision. His mind screamed. He was caught. Trapped between a relentless hunter and a malevolent system. No escape. Not from Varak. Not from the Codex. Not from himself.