——From Days to Dreams, the Unfurling Seethes——
Daylight drew near it's end.
And the forest dreams of nothing else.
The road had long ceased to resemble a road. It was now little more than a sequence of ideas—faint intentions stitched through the dying forest, curving through dense marshlight and rot-veiled trees. Sunlight did not pierce the canopy here—it curled like a frightened thing, retreating through vine and veil like some old god ashamed to witness what approached.
Only one night stood between them and Fort Dawnrise.
But the forest had ceased to honor such measures. It leaned into its own dreaming, its roots drinking from shadows older than roads.
And time itself, seduced by that dreaming, abandoned its post.
The Crusaders marched in a silence that no discipline could command.
What had once been a cadence of sacred order had unraveled into an uncertain rhythm, as though each step were negotiated with the earth. Armor, once a second skin, now dragged upon their shoulders like penance. Prayers fell from their lips brittle and hollow, breaking before they reached heaven. No one spoke of Mar'aya anymore—her presence felt withdrawn, like a candle carried from the room, offended by the unholy breath that moved among them.
It had begun the day before—
—or so she believed.
The notion of days had grown unreliable, smeared into one another like wet ink on an old prayer scroll. She could not name how long they had been traveling, only that the march felt both endless and already complete, as if they were walking through a memory instead of a road.
Arkeia sensed the change not first in sight, nor in sound, but in the fragile seams of memory itself—
those hairline fractures where recollection gives way to something older, stranger, and less certain.
Birds did not take flight in the patterns she remembered.
Time staggered and lurched in the middle of her devotions.
Trees appeared where none had stood an hour prior—gnarled, ancient, already woven into the forest's history as if they had always been there.
At first, it was delicate, dreamlike—an unspooling at the edges of waking thought.
But with each mile, the weight of it pressed deeper into her ribs, like invisible fingers testing the fragility of her bones.
Reality had begun to unwind.
And at the center of that quiet heresy stood Balfazar—unveiled, unfathomable.
He no longer wore disguise.
He wore phenomena.
Not the semblance of a man, but the behavior of the world when it remembered what he truly was.
His form did not blind with brilliance—it did something far crueler.
It eroded with anomalies.
The air thinned where he stood, as though the world itself had been rubbed raw around his outline. He was clothed not in fabric, but in a robe of shadows—woven from folded wings of unlit void, each curve curling inward like the petals of a godless flower shielding its blasphemous heart.
Across his porcelain chest—seen only when that robe breathed apart—shimmered runes that pulsed in defiant rhythm, beating against the grain of creation. Their alien tempo bruised the world's natural pace, making time itself wince.
And around him, his companions bent the world in quieter, stranger ways—warping its breath, its posture, its certainty—until nothing felt entirely where it belonged.
Aethon, cruel and gleaming, drew shadows unnaturally—as though darkness itself longed to curl at the edges of his grin. Even the roots recoiled, not in fear, but in reverence, as if acknowledging a prince of corruption. His laughter slipped between the trees like a private whisper, and when Arkeia heard it, she felt as though it had been meant for her alone. The sound lodged in her chest like a secret sin she could not confess.
Galeel, solemn and winged, left no imprint on the earth. The swamp made no rustle beneath him, no ripple in its pools. Nature itself seemed reluctant to confirm his presence. Flowers dared bloom where his feet had touched, only to turn instantly to ash. To Arkeia's eyes he looked less a man than a memory that refused to vanish. She caught herself wondering whether she had invented him—an angel dreamt up by grief.
Elissa drifted beside him like a sleepwalker trespassing through someone else's recollections. When she murmured, moths gathered at her lips, wings trembling as if in answer. Their hushed whispering translated her breath into void-born syllables, and Arkeia felt them scratch the back of her mind like forgotten scripture. She looked away quickly, frightened of how much she almost understood.
Caelinda walked with a poise that unsettled the ground itself. Her hair flowed like dark water, and stones tilted imperceptibly beneath her tread. The air grew thick around her, so heavy it pressed against Arkeia's armor like unseen hands. Even time faltered, as though it inhaled when Caelinda passed, uncertain if it had her permission to go on. Arkeia swore she saw frost shimmer from Caelinda's breath—yet the air was warm. Her own lungs seized in quiet rebellion, as if her breathing should match the saint's cadence or cease.
Vharn, joyful and broken, crooned lullabies that bled into the mud like incense. The trees swayed to his rhythm, creaking like pews in some hidden cathedral. His songs were both cradle and dirge, birthing and burying in the same verse. Arkeia felt her heartbeat adjust to his tune, and in the lull, she forgot for a moment whether she was marching to war or to worship.
And Voidstor—the kitten of eldritch whims—vanished mid-yawn, only to reappear smugly in her boot, spectral and purring riddles that coiled inside her bones. The sound was not heard so much as remembered, like a story her mind insisted had always been true. When Arkeia looked down at him, she could not recall if he had just arrived—or had always been there, following her since childhood.
Arkeia could not look at them for long.
Could not dwell too deeply on their shapes, their motions, their subtle wrongness.
To do so was to invite migraines that clawed behind her eyes, blurred vision that turned the world to melting glass, and a crawling itch that rooted itself not in flesh but in the depths of her soul.
Her mind had begun to slip.
At first it was a minor thing—an unfamiliar word creeping into prayer, a comrade's name misplaced, a phrase repeated with odd conviction as though it had always belonged to her.
But now… entire lengths of time collapsed like rotten beams. Hours vanished from her awareness.
She would glance upon her Crusaders and feel doubt bloom—were they real, or merely silhouettes painted into the march? Sometimes their faces seemed foreign, their titles unmoored from memory. At times, she could not recall their names at all.
"Lady Arkeia," Edmun said once, breaking rank with a wavering voice. His hand lingered too long on the hilt of his blade. "Do you remember when we left Erl'twig? I… I don't. I swear it was yesterday. Or the week before. Or—" He cut himself short, his throat trembling as if something had bitten the word.
"Hold your tongue," Thalos muttered sharply, though his own eyes betrayed unease. "We left. We march. That is all that matters." His tone was clipped, iron-willed—but his jaw worked as though chewing a doubt he dared not swallow.
Arkeia offered them no comfort. She could not. She too had begun to doubt.
When her eyes closed, she saw Balfazar in places he had never stood: in the heart of her childhood chapel, at her mother's bedside, in the dreams of her first victory. These false memories rang truer than the real, carved into her like scripture.
And the swamp had grown louder.
The trees no longer whispered—they gurgled with voices too wet and throaty, their roots writhing like throats struggling to swallow. The ground beneath her boots exhaled and inhaled, a steady rhythm she wished not to match. Mist clung to her skin like the breath of a lover, insistent, intimate, invasive.
She no longer recognized the sky.
The sun bled at its edges, seeping into a darkness that should not have been there. Even at noon, stars shone through—a lattice of pale eyes peering down, visible against the wounded blue.
And those stars would not stay still.
They shuffled, rearranging themselves into constellations that had never existed, yet each new pattern struck her with aching familiarity—omens she felt she had already failed, prophecies she could not remember betraying.
"Has… has it always been like this?" Thalos muttered, shielding his eyes with a gauntleted hand. His voice was low, uncertain, as though afraid the heavens might overhear him. "I could swear the Bear should be north, but—" He faltered, his words thinning into silence.
Edmun stared upward, jaw slack. "No… no, it's different. I know it is. But—" His voice cracked, and without reason, tears streamed down his cheeks. He wept as he spoke, not with sorrow, not with despair—simply wept, as if the act had been demanded of him. "Why does it feel like I've… always known these stars?"
Arkeia felt her stomach tighten. She wanted to command them back into silence, to tell them it was madness—but she could not. Their tears were wrong: not born of grief, not born of reverence, but of recognition. A recognition she shared.
In hers spine she felt it—that same pull, that same ache. These constellations did not belong to the sky, but to memory. Memory that was not hers. Memory that bled through from him.
Was this grief for a future already lost?
Or worship demanded by a truth too vast to endure?
She clenched her jaw and looked away, yet the afterimage of those stars followed her into the earth itself, glowing behind her eyes like carved commandments.
And in the hollow of her thoughts, a whisper crept:
They are not mourning. They are remembering.
The words lingered like frost on her ribs, too faint to deny, too heavy to dismiss.
And as silence settled over her men, it was broken only by Thalos—his voice low, strained, almost pleading:
"Commander… you're faltering. Say something—say a prayer. Call on Mar'aya. Remind us this march still belongs to her."
Arkeia opened her mouth. Nothing came. No prayer. No name. Only silence.
Edmun turned pale. "She doesn't remember either," he whispered.
And then—
she strayed.
Not in body alone, but in the deeper strata of being. One step slid sideways through reality, and the path of the march no longer held her. The company's rhythm went on, but hers faltered into another cadence entirely. The swamp seemed to pivot around her, its gnarled trees forming an arch like a cathedral door. The air thickened into a veil, and every breath she drew felt borrowed.
Edmun reached for her arm, but his hand closed on mist.
Thalos swore and strode forward, only to find her a pace farther than she should have been—just far enough that his steps didn't bridge the distance.
She had not left the path.
The path had left her.
Her Crusaders shouted, but their voices came muffled, as if she were already on the other side of a veil. She felt her name scatter through the swamp, called by loyal men, but it sounded alien—like a title she had once borne, not something she still was.
The trees bent inward, roots forming a funnel, the swamp breathing her name in a thousand broken cadences.
And Arkeia walked—not away, not astray, but into a fold of reality that had unbuttoned itself, inviting her to step through. The path did not break beneath her; it simply rewrote itself, leading her where it wished.
When she blinked, she was already apart from the others—vanished down a narrow slope beneath a canopy of decaying bone-vines and swollen mushrooms, her body drawn like a needle through thread, pulled by an unseen hand. Ahead, through the haze, the silhouette of Balfazar lingered—impossible, beckoning, inevitable.
She did not question her steps.
Each one felt chosen for her, as though the path itself had long been waiting for her tread.
She merely wished to speak with him.
He stood beneath a weeping tree that bled red sap into its roots, unbothered by the gnats that fled his presence. Above them, the sky was breaking—sunlight leaking into shadow until the very day bled, and stars pressed through the wound, visible even against the pale, wounded blue. The cosmos seeped downward, folding into the swamp, as if night had intruded without permission.
His form was still—composed. He looked less like a man than a monument raised to mourn the living, a pillar of silence erected by grief itself.
Her voice came soft. Too soft for a soldier. Too soft for judgment.
"I wonder…" she said, her lips curving into a smile that bloomed like a bruise, "do you believe yourself to be as all-powerful as they say?"
Balfazar turned his head.
"Oh… so, you've wandered into a fold."
The gleam of his smile—quiet, knowing—caught the mosslight in such a way that she forgot the names of her parents, as though memory itself bowed before him.
But she swore he had not spoken.
She giggled.
Like a girl who had tasted a sacred secret and realized she was not meant to survive it.
"You're so quiet," she cooed, stepping closer, boots brushing the damp grass. "That makes you dangerous. Or shy. I wonder which."
He did not speak. He only watched her—yet not as men watch, nor even as gods watch. His silence carried the weight of presence without confirmation, as though he were both there and not, a shape suspended between thought and dream.
But his eyes—golden jewels veined with faint violet fire—met hers with unbearable patience. They did not see one woman. They greeted her as if she were a multitude, a thousand selves drifting side by side, each caught in a reflection of what she might have been.
She reached out.
Her fingers brushed the edge of his robe.
Living darkness.
Not fabric. Not cloth. But absence—folded wings woven into a seal. The surface repelled and yielded at once, pushing back against her hand like a sacred boundary that remembered the first time it had ever been touched. It was less the touch of a garment than the brush of a threshold, a veil that hummed faintly as if recalling her before she was born.
"You wear your silence like a blade," she whispered, her breath trembling against the air between them. "Do you ever let anyone see what's underneath?"
He chuckled—low, distant.
It was not laughter so much as memory, the sound of thunder remembering it had once been a scream. The swamp seemed to flinch at it, leaves shivering without wind, sap dripping faster from the weeping tree.
She stepped closer—closer still. Her chest pressed faintly against the sealed wings, her face now inches from the veil of shadow. She did not blink. She did not breathe. The space between them hummed with a weight that made her bones ache, as if her own body knew it was trespassing on the skin of a god.
And then—
"Lady Arkeia?"
The name cracked like a whip across her trance. She snapped her head around.
Edmun.
He was simply there, as though she had never left the path to Fort Dawnrise, as though he had always stood just beyond her shoulder. His sword was drawn, his eyes wide with confusion—no, with fear.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, his voice sharp but unsteady. "That's the Promised One! The vile evil we swore to stop—to vanquish!"
The world seemed to stutter around his words. The stars flickered as though uncertain whether to hide or listen.
She straightened, slow as resurrection, her spine uncoiling with divine poise.
Her voice came soft, but honed.
"Edmun. Return to formation."
"But—my lady. Do you even see wha—"
Her gaze cut him like a divine scalpel, slicing the rest of his words from his tongue.
"Now."
Something in the air shifted. Not her tone, not her stance—something older. He froze.
He saw her—truly saw her—and for one fractured moment, it was not his commander staring back, but something vast that had borrowed her shape. Something ancient pulled at his marrow, dragging obedience out of him before thought could argue.
He lowered his sword. Turned. Left.
But not before looking back once—just once—as though confirming the nightmare had not simply dissolved from his eyes.
And then he was gone as if he'd never came.
She exhaled. The air felt heavier in her lungs, like breathing through water. And almost at once, the memory of his interruption slipped away—dissolving, bleeding into the swamp's hum, rinsed down the drain of her mind until she could not recall how he had arrived, what he had said, or why her pulse still raced.
All that remained was the silence—
and him.
"You should be careful," she whispered. "The children still believe in saints and sinners."
Even as she spoke, she was not entirely certain the thought belonged to her.
He smiled.
"And what do you believe in?"
She leaned in, as though to press her lips against a heresy.
"I believe in curiosity," she said. "And yours terrifies me."
He tilted his head, the gesture both playful and absolute.
"If you wish to speak again," he murmured, "then tonight—come when the fog forgets its name. Come to the edge of the swamp. There… perhaps… we can finish our conversation."
She did not answer.
She only nodded.
"Good," Balfazar said, turning with a grace that felt more like inevitability than movement.
And as he walked, the world folded shut.
In an instant the weeping tree was gone, the bleeding sky withdrawn, the swamp's secretive hush dispelled. Sunlight returned, the path reasserted itself, and the march toward Fort Dawnrise resumed as if uninterrupted.
Arkeia blinked.
And remembered forgetting she had ever strayed at all.
The march resumed without falter. The forest leaned in again, the path stretched forward, and Fort Dawnrise loomed in her thoughts as though nothing had happened. Yet beneath her armor her breath snagged, and a strange weight settled in her chest. She could not name it—only that something had been left behind in the fold, and something else had followed her back.
⸻
Night fell.
The stars stared down like a thousand watching eyes, unblinking, merciless. The insects, once a dull chorus, fell into silence. And the trees began to speak—not with creaks or groans, but with sounds almost akin to whispers, as though gossiping in a tongue too old for the living to recall.
The moon hung swollen, bent into a crooked smile, pale light dripping from its face like milk turned sour. It seemed not watchful, but wroth—anticipating, hungry for what the night would bring.
The fog had no color.
It rose from the swamp like breath escaping a corpse, clinging to the skin, weightless yet suffocating. It smelled of molasses and rot, sweet and fetid all at once, an odor that teased memory rather than sense.
Time no longer marched forward with them. It dripped. Slow, deliberate, in reverse—as if the night itself were undoing the day, unthreading their journey stitch by stitch.
⸻
Camp was made upon a ridge of softened ground, though no one felt certain they had chosen it. The Crusaders worked with mechanical obedience, feigning courage, their prayers muttered but never finished. Helmets were removed, but no one dared polish steel; swords were set aside, yet hands lingered too long on hilts.
And all the while, Balfazar's companions assembled their quarters in ways that defied the natural. No wood was gathered, yet flame appeared. No rope was tied, yet canvas hung. Caelinda's veil glimmered faintly as she spread it across the ground, and where it touched, the soil stiffened into stone. Galeel stood apart, his wings folded as if to deny he had touched the earth at all, and Elissa murmured lullabies that bent the air into uneasy stillness.
The Crusaders watched—watched and pretended not to. Their gazes darted like moths to flame, drawn, repelled, and compelled all at once. One swore the shadows of the tents moved before they were pitched. Another whispered that Vharn's humming had coaxed the stars themselves lower, closer, listening.
Thalos sat nearest the fire, jaw set hard enough to crack a tooth. His hands shook as he whet his blade, sparks skittering against stone like frantic insects. "It's trickery," he muttered under his breath. "Nothing more. Glamours. Devil's play. We've seen such things before." His voice carried no conviction, and his eyes betrayed him—they never left the folded wings of Galeel, nor the fire that burned without fuel.
Edmun was less restrained. He leaned close to Arkeia, voice low but fevered, trembling as though each word might draw punishment from the shadows. "Commander… this is wrong. Can't you see it? Look—look how the air bends around them. Even the stars lean toward him. This is not travel, it's temptation." His eyes glistened, fear bright and childlike. "Tell me we still march under Mar'aya's sight. Please."
And then—
One Crusader, apart from the rest, caught sight of Aethon at the tree line. He was speaking to wolves. A pack of them—gaunt, yellow-eyed, their hackles raised—bowed low before him as if he were their sovereign. The Crusader's breath caught.
Aethon turned, meeting his gaze. That smile—cruel, deliberate—slid across his face like a blade unsheathed.
The Crusader blinked.
And for a heartbeat, Aethon was no longer man at all but shade—bleeding shadow from every seam, his form rippling like a wound in the world. One instant he stood at the tree line, the next he was before the Crusader, close enough for his breath to frost the man's cheek.
Around him, the wolves had shifted too—no longer at the edge of camp but circling tight, their bodies weaving through mist as though born from it. Yellow eyes flared like lanterns in the dark, fangs bared in a grin too wide, too human. Their growls vibrated through the Crusader's ribs, each note a weight, thick as iron chains rattling against his marrow.
Aethon's smile widened, sadistic, almost intimate—like a predator savoring the instant before the strike.
He blinked again—shaken. The vision was faded. The wolves were gone. Aethon was gone from before him, now merely walking toward his tent, which swelled with a darkness thicker than night, the very canvas pitching the world into black. He laughed as he entered. The sound was not loud, yet it reverberated through the Crusader's soul, rattling his bones like a cage.
The man staggered back, breath short, and hurried to the fire where Thalos and Edmun sat. His words tumbled out in a hiss.
"Did you see him? The wolves—they bowed. And then—then he was shade, bleeding shadow, and the tent—by the Saints, the tent swallowed the night whole—"
Thalos scowled, grinding his whetstone harder, sparks dancing like angry fireflies. "You saw nothing but fear, brother. Shadows play tricks when faith falters. Bite your tongue before the commander hears such weakness."
Edmun, however, went pale. His hand strayed to the hilt of his blade but did not draw. His gaze darted toward the tent of black canvas where Aethon had vanished. His lips quivered on a prayer he could not finish. Finally, he shook his head, whispering only: "No saint watches here."
The frightened Crusader fell silent, but the tremor in his hands betrayed him. He stared into the fire, but all he could hear was that laughter—reverberating still, as though it had chosen his soul as its echo chamber.
And Arkeia—though she kept her face still—had heard every word.
She did not rebuke them. Did not offer comfort or correction. Their fears dissolved into the night unchallenged, for her thoughts lingered not on their trembling prayers, but on Balfazar—the axis about which every terror bent.
At length, her gaze drifted toward the black tent. Its canvas seemed less a shelter than a wound sutured into the night.
And in the glint of her eyes there flickered no fear, no defiance—
only recognition, quiet and perilous, as though she had finally admitted to herself that she already belonged to the darkness she claimed to resist.
One of the Crusaders, watching her in that moment, mistook the look entirely. He straightened, drew a ragged breath, and whispered to his companion, "Do you see it? She's steadfast. Our commander hasn't faltered. She'll carry us through."
The words, fragile as spider-thread, traveled further than intended. A murmur spread from mouth to mouth, and in its passing it grew. By the time it reached the far edge of camp, it had become something sturdier—almost a prayer. The Crusaders clung to it as though it were truth.
And yet, the reassurance they passed along was false, born of a lie written in her silence. Their hope was built upon a misreading of her gaze.
For what dwelled in Arkeia's eyes was not resolve.
It was surrender.
From within the Caelind's tent, Balfazar stirred. He did not part the canvas, nor show his face, but the air thinned as though something behind it had smiled. A faint ripple passed through the fog, and the fire guttered low.
He had heard their whispers. Not with ears, but with the weight of inevitability.
A moment later, the fire—unfed, unkindled—flared bright, golden tongues licking the dark. Warmth poured into the camp, soft and undeserved, and for an instant the Crusaders felt blessed, certain their commander's faith had summoned providence. Some even knelt, murmuring thanks to Mar'aya, mistaking the glow for her distant mercy.
Only Arkeia knew better. For when the flames swelled, she saw the faintest answering shimmer beneath the canvas—the emerald runes on Balfazar's chest flickering gold, as if mocking the goddess the soldiers prayed to. The color lingered a moment, then bled back to green, leaving her with the uneasy knowledge that the fire outside and the runes within had pulsed in perfect unison.
Only she understood whose providence they truly received.
And only he allowed the masquerade.
The fire dwindled to embers, then the embers to ash. One by one, the coals sighed into the night air and died. The Crusaders, clinging to their counterfeit faith, retired to their tents in weary silence.
Edmun and Thalos lingered a while longer, their whispers thin and brittle, spoken not for counsel but to stave off dread. When at last they parted, it was with the stiff movements of men who knew rest would bring no solace.
Balfazar's companions withdrew as well—though none seemed truly at rest. Galeel held to the shadows of the trees, his form bowed beneath wings drawn tight; Elissa murmured in her sleep, and the night air murmured back; Vharn's tune seeped into the fog, soft as a cradle-song and sharp as a dirge.
Caelinda lay within her tent, her veil spread across the soil like a second skin of night. To the Crusaders she looked merely asleep, serene in her devotion. Yet Arkeia knew the priestess dreamed with open eyes, her mind curled possessively around the absence of the one who was not at her side.
The camp fell into silence, held by the moon's dream-bound embrace. All, presumably, asleep.
But when Arkeia stirred, her eyes opened to absence. Balfazar was no longer by Caelinda's tent.
She rose without sound, leaving armor behind, her sword thrust into the earth like a broken vow. She slipped into the fog—neither hurried nor hesitant.
The Crusaders lay restless in their sleep—some twitching, some whispering names they had never known. Elissa stirred, whispering in tongues. Galeel sat vigil beside her, head bowed, wings folded inward like a forgotten hymn.
"She's already lost," he murmured, voice low as root and stone, as though speaking not to Elissa, nor to himself—he spoke to the soil that remembered what gods once were.
Vharn's lullabies spiral upward into the fog, threads of ash and devotion twining toward the stars.
Voidstor blinked one eye open, studied her passing, then vanished into the Veil.
Arkeia drifted through it all, a specter threading the narrow lanes between tents swollen with restless dreams. The mist parted for her steps as though it had been waiting.
She did not look back. Yet from within her tent, Caelinda's gaze—half dream, half devotion—fastened upon Arkeia's path, as though distance were no barrier. The veil at her side quivered faintly, like a pulse of warning, but no word passed her lips.
Arkeia crossed the swamp's edge alone.
The mire stretched out before her, black as spilled ink, its waters catching the stars as though the heavens themselves had drowned. Above, the moon wept a single streak of fire—a shooting star that bled across the firmament like a scar. For a heartbeat, it looked as if the moon itself had blinked, uncertain of its place in the sky.
In the wake of that celestial blink, the stars wavered, slipping from their ancient order. They bent into unfamiliar arrangements that clawed at her memory—shapes she could not name, yet felt she had once known. For an instant, the constellations aligned into a silhouette too familiar: wings unfurled, an eye aglow, a figure watching from the firmament itself.
Her breath caught.
Her grandmother's voice stirred in memory—fragile, hushed, spoken over a candle stub on storm-lit nights: "When the sky forgets itself, child, beware the shapes it draws. Those stars do not guide—they remember."
And now, beneath the drowned heavens, she understood. The shape had always been waiting.
Her lips parted before she realized it.
"Balfazar…"
The name slipped out like a secret dragged from her psyche, whispered not to the night but to the pattern itself—as though the stars had demanded it of her.
The swamp stirred at once. The water rippled outward in perfect circles, though no stone had been cast. The fog thickened, then bowed, sinking toward the earth as though it, too, had heard. Even the gnats fled in silence, leaving only the wet breath of the mire
And there, where water met starfire, he waited.
At first, it seemed only a silhouette in the reflection—his form shimmering on the ripple's surface, golden eyes glimmering beneath the skin of the world. Yet when she blinked, he was upon the bank, as immovable and inevitable as stone.
The air grew heavy, thick as resin. The fog bent low, drawn into obeisance. Even the swamp, ever restless with its bubbling breath, fell into silence, as though ashamed to stir in his presence.
He was both there and not there—an apparition balanced between vision and substance, as if the mire itself could not decide whether to release him or devour him whole.
Balfazar stood at the fraying edge of reality, where the fabric of the world quivered thin. His robe of shadow rustled without wind, a low murmur that belonged more to memory than to cloth. His wings remained folded, yet they trembled at their seams—like vault doors suppressing an ancient prisoner too vast to be named.
And from the robe's subtle parting, runes blinked fitfully across his chest—emerald script that beat like a heart which had never once known rhythm, never once consented to creation's law.
Arkeia's breath caught. For each pulse, she felt a bruise bloom beneath her own ribs, as though the alien heartbeat reverberated through her chest. The rhythm was not hers, yet for an instant it commanded her blood, her bones, her very breath—binding her to him as surely as if the runes had been carved beneath her skin.
He turned, and the stars shook.
"You came," he said, voice steady, almost amused.
"You asked," she answered, her tone caught between accusation and surrender.
Balfazar tilted his head, lips curving faintly. "Well… yes—obviously. But still—" He paused, coughed into his hand as though embarrassed by his own theatrics, then let the silence stretch. His smile returned, sharper, more knowing. "Ah. You came."
She approached slowly, as though the ground itself might dissolve with each step. Her breath came shallow. Her limbs felt light, as though some thread had cut her free of gravity. Her eyes no longer blinked in sequence, each shutter staggering behind the other. Her thoughts trailed behind her like incense, curling upward in smoke-ribbons of broken prayer.
"You could have refused," he murmured, his golden-violet gaze fastening upon her.
"Could I?" she breathed.
His smile deepened, sly and cruel, though never unkind. "If you could, you wouldn't be standing here. If you couldn't…" He leaned forward, as though confiding in her. "…well, that's even better."
She reached upward. Her fingers trembled, yet did not falter.
She touched his chest.
Traced a line between two glowing runes that pulsed like her own phantom heartbeat.
"I want your essence," she whispered. "I want what's inside that eye you keep sealed. I want to taste what made the stars weep. Just once. Please…"
The runes flickered beneath her touch, as though her plea had found its way into their alien rhythm. The swamp held its breath. Even the sky seemed to wait, stars dimming in anticipation of his answer.
He chuckled, low and wry. "And here I thought I was just another Rex cockroach, crawling through centuries in the skin of a man."
"You aren't a man," she murmured, her voice trembling like the last note of a hymn. "You're a melody that learned to wear flesh."
Her eyes burned into him, unblinking, as if they sought to pierce the veil itself. "You're far more than your blood," she whispered, "far more than the name that pretends to hold you."
He looked down at her—neither pitying nor resisting. Simply seeing.
Arkeia pressed against him, her breath mingling with the strange rhythm of the runes that beat beneath his robe. Her lips brushed his skin, reverent and defiant all at once.
"I want to forget what it means to be mortal," she breathed, as though surrender itself were a sacrament.
And she kissed him.
And it was wrong.
Her tongue did not find flesh, but syllables—languages that had never been spoken, yet had always existed. Each taste was a hymn fractured on the edge of time, burning and sweet, like drinking fire from a chalice that could never be emptied.
Her skin remembered lives that had never been hers. Memories poured into her pores like molten glass: a girl kneeling before altars she had never seen, a warrior drowning beneath seas that had never been mapped, a child laughing in a city that had never existed.
Her thoughts fractured and bled, spilling across her vision in constellations that spelled only ruin.
She clutched at him—pulling, gasping—as if he were the only axis keeping her from unraveling into the void. Words failed. Her moans and her prayers blurred until they became indistinguishable, one thread of sound woven between supplication and hunger.
Her hand strayed beneath his sentient robes. They breathed as she touched them, parting like midnight waves, resisting and yielding all at once—an absence with the texture of remembrance. She pressed further, fingers searching, desperate, ever exploring the forbidden contours of his form.
And then—Fury arrived, clothed in a woman's voice.
"ENOUGH!"
The word split the swamp like a thunderclap. Arkeia was ripped backward, flung as though unseen hands had torn her free. Her body struck the mud with a heavy slap, the earth swallowing her breath in a spray of cold mire.
A towering figure loomed above her.
Caelinda.
Her veil was lifted, her eyes unblinking and terrible, still as glass filled with ancient storms. The fog recoiled from her like smoke from flame.
"Oh, sh—" Balfazar began, lips quirking with rueful amusement, but he was silenced by the lash of her voice.
"You touch what is sacred," Caelinda hissed, her tone both jealous and liturgical. "You dare court what was never meant to be begotten. His essence is not yours to taste—it was written for none."
Arkeia's chest heaved as she struggled in the mud, words choking into silence. The stars above seemed to blink shut, one by one, as though averting their gaze.
Caelinda turned her fury not upon Arkeia, but upon him. She seized Balfazar's hand with both of hers, clutching it as though to anchor herself. The gesture was possessive, desperate, reverent all at once.
Balfazar's expression was unreadable, a mask suspended between bemusement and caution.
And he did not protest.
Caelinda wrenched him away, her grip fierce, her shoulder rigid with rage. The swamp seemed to part for her steps, mist curling back like a curtain dragged against its will. As she passed Arkeia, her voice dropped to a venomous hiss—words meant to injure, to scar.
"You are not the first to crave him."
Her eyes, gleaming like drowned moons, cut through Arkeia's trembling frame.
"You will not be the last."
A pause—sharp, deliberate, like the silence before a blade falls.
"But you will be forgotten."
Her lips curved, cruel as a dagger. Then, colder still, her final strike:
"You will not survive the dreaming… harlot."
The last word slithered like poison into the mire.
And then they vanished into fog. Caelinda's veil of devotion and fury swallowed them both, the mist drawing shut behind them as though sealing a tomb.
They did not turn to look back. Not once.
Balfazar's face remained unreadable, caught between resignation and silence—yet Arkeia swore the faintest gleam of regret flickered in his eyes before the night claimed him.
And when they were gone, the fog recoiled from her only to press in again—tight, clinging, jealous. It hissed low through the reeds, curling against her legs like a spurned lover, as though it too remembered her trespass and meant to keep her marked.
Arkeia remained—Alone.
Mouth parted. Skin damp. Eyes emptied of certainty, hollow as vessels poured out for gods that never answered.
Above her, the stars watched without blinking—patient, pitiless. Their light did not comfort; it weighed upon her chest like a crown too heavy to bear.
And slowly…
they began to turn. Constellations shift against themselves, twisting into half-formed shapes, omens only her blood seemed to remember. The heavens wheeled like an ancient mechanism grinding its gears, as though her trespass had nudged the very firmament off balance.
She did not move.
Not right away.
She only lay there, chest rising slow, limbs swallowed by the wet earth as if the swamp itself meant to cradle her in its jealous embrace. Mud crept into her armor, into the lines of her palms, seeping between flesh and bone.
And in that silence—
that aching, holy silence—
she whispered something to no one.
A vow.
A confession.
A seed.
"If this is damnation…" her voice quivered, cracked, yet did not falter, "…then let it be beautiful."
Her fingers curled into the mire until nails split and bled.
And somewhere deep within her spine—where the soul's roots once clung to law and light—something opened. Not a wound. Not a door. But a hunger. A trembling aperture through which stars poured like sand into her veins.