Chapter 13: The Girl Before the Gloom
Deep within the corrupted heart of the Dream Realm, where the air was thick enough to drink and tasted of ash and regret, the Lady stood sentinel before the pulsing core.
The boy's face lingered in her mind. Not his rage, or his power—but his fear for the girl. The raw, unprotected humanity of it. It was a weakness she should despise. A flaw to be exploited.
Yet, it echoed.
It echoed in a place she had sealed away centuries ago. A place called Before.
The corruption around her swirled, sensing her divided attention. It pressed against her mind, a constant, suffocating static of rage and hunger. It demanded she focus on the coming war, on the sweet destruction of the Dream Continent's shining citadels.
But the memory, once unlocked, was a stubborn weed cracking through stone.
Anya.
The name was a ghost on her lips, soundless.
She had not always been the Lady.
Once, she had been a girl of the Dream Continent, born under the floating mountains of a sector known as the Luminous Vale. Her world was one of starlight and music, not shadows and screams. She was a weaver, not of tapestries, but of light itself—a talented, promising young artisan who could spin Astral Flow into breathtaking, temporary sculptures that brought joy to her community.
Her name was Anya. She had a family. A mother with a laugh like wind chimes. A father who taught her the names of the constellations that drifted past their balcony. A younger brother who followed her everywhere, his small hands always clutching the hem of her robe.
She was happy.
The first time the whispers came, they were subtle. A nagging doubt in the back of her mind during her weaving. A flicker of jealousy toward a more celebrated artist. A cold thought about a neighbor who had slighted her. She brushed them aside. Everyone had dark thoughts, didn't they?
But the whispers grew. They nurtured those petty jealousies, fed those small hatreds, made them grow fat and strong. They showed her visions in her sleep: her family betraying her, her friends laughing at her, the leaders of the Vale overlooking her brilliance.
She began to change. Her light sculptures grew darker, sharper, more beautiful and terrifying. People started to avoid her. Their fear felt like validation to the whispers. See? they hissed. They never truly appreciated you.
The corruption did not invade her Vale with an army. It invited itself in through her own heart.
The end was not a battle; it was a tragedy. In a fit of rage fed by the whispers, she attempted a grand sculpture to show them all, to force their admiration. She channeled more Astral Flow than she could control, twisted by the corruption inside her. The power rebounded. It didn't destroy the Vale.
It consumed it.
The beautiful, floating mountains turned grey and brittle. The rivers of starlight evaporated into mist. The people—her family, her friends, her neighbors—did not die. They… changed. Their forms stretched and cracked, their minds erased, becoming the first of the Corrupted, their whispers joining the chorus that had already lived in her head.
She stood amidst the ruins of everything she had ever loved, the whispers now a triumphant roar in her mind. You are free of them,* they crooned.* Now you are truly powerful. Now you are ours.
The grief should have killed her. Instead, it twisted into something else: a cold, endless fury. The corruption offered her a new name, a new purpose. It offered her the power to never be hurt, overlooked, or weak again.
Anya, the light-weaver, was gone.
In her place stood the Lady. The herald of the end. The most perfect and powerful servant of the core.
She had not thought of that girl in a hundred years.
Now, the boy's fear for his friend had resurrected her.
The Lady's crimson eyes opened, glowing with a fury that was entirely her own. The memory was not a comfort. It was an insult. A reminder of a weak, pathetic creature who deserved her fate.
She would find them. She would show them the true price of weakness. She would ensure that the boy's fear became a reality, and she would carve her old name on their graves.
The moment of introspection was over, burned away in the forge of her hatred. The core pulsed in approval.
The Lady was gone. Only the weapon remained.