El Como's first thought was that he had died.
Not in the ordinary way, with flesh giving way to silence and soil, but in some stranger unraveling—his body loosed from gravity, his blood reluctant to pump, his chest lifting and falling without his say.
He drifted.
All around him, the air was thick and pale, a vapor without warmth or chill. It rolled against him in swathes, dragging across his face like damp wool. He tried to breathe it, but it clung to his throat, refusing to be drawn fully in. For long moments he thought he might suffocate, but breath returned, ragged, unwilling.
His hand twitched, groping for weight that was no longer there. The sword—his poor excuse for a blade, as much a makeshift popsicle stick of steel as a weapon—was gone. He had felt it slip, tumbling from his fingers the instant the world had torn open into this haze. He imagined it falling, endlessly falling, spinning through air until nothing below could catch it.
A pang of helplessness stabbed through his gut. Without the blade, he was bare.
And without the blade, the beast would come.
He tried to steady his eyes, straining through the murk. Somewhere beyond the veil had been its shape—massive, deliberate, the way a storm cloud might lumber if it ever grew bones. The creature had stalked him across the last ridge, and he'd sworn by all things that its breath was on his back as the earth beneath him shuddered and split.
But here, now… nothing.
The haze bent light into strange tricks. He thought he saw shadows move, but when he blinked, they dissolved. Sometimes he swore he saw the suggestion of claws, or teeth. Other times, the haze was so absolute that he felt blind.
His body twisted, yet he realized he wasn't moving forward or backward. His arms flailed, legs kicked, but he drifted in place. For every frantic gesture, the haze yielded only enough to deceive him into thinking he floated free.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest, harsh and frightened.
"Floating," he whispered hoarsely. The sound was small in the murk, swallowed before it could echo. "I'm… floating."
But time passed, and the lie began to rot. His limbs slowed. His back stiffened. He felt pressure—not the absence of gravity but its cruel opposite: a tightening against his ribs, an invisible harness around his chest. He strained to tilt his head, only then realizing how stiff his neck had become. Something held him.
His heart slammed. He forced his hands outward. They met nothing, only haze, yet the resistance remained, unmoved, unseen.
Not floating.
Pinned.
The beast, he thought. It had him. Perhaps its tongue or claw had wrapped him, and the fog was only the shadow of its maw. He tried to scream, but his throat rasped dry.
The haze stirred.
He froze. Every hair along his arms prickled upright. It was not his doing—this shift in the air was deliberate, controlled, a parting like curtains. The cloud pulled back with solemn patience, peeling itself layer by layer until the world beneath him sharpened.
And El Como wished it had not.
He was not in the heavens. He was high, yes, but not drifting on winds or divine mercy. He was suspended—held aloft by some force he could not name. Below stretched jagged stone, broken like the teeth of a skull, gray ridges plunging into dark gulfs. The land was split open, scarred, as if something had torn through soil and rock alike.
And on the plateau beneath him stood three figures.
At first, they were still as statues, their heads bowed, their arms folded. The haze had hidden them until now, but as the veil cleared, their presence bit into him like cold iron.
They were men, in the shape of men at least—tall, broad, every angle of them sharp as if chiseled by a sculptor with no patience for softness. Armor clung to their frames, dull metal scarred with a hundred forgotten battles. Each wore no cloak, no ornament, only the burden of scars and steel.
El Como's breath stuttered. His first thought was that they were executioners. The way they stood, unyielding, the weight of their gazes dragging at his body though they did not yet look up.
The haze thinned further, and one of them moved. The sound of his gauntlet brushing against his armor echoed like a door creaking open. Slowly, deliberately, his head lifted.
Eyes.
They locked on El Como with the indifference of a man measuring livestock. Pale, rimmed with shadow, they did not blink.
The second lifted his gaze next, and then the third.
Three pairs of eyes. Three judgments.
El Como tried to speak. His lips cracked, and words stumbled out as broken fragments.
"Who… are you? What… is this?"
None answered.
They stood, looking at him as one might look upon something caught in a snare. Not with wonder, not with kindness—merely with a soldier's recognition of a thing trapped, a thing that might still bite if released.
A wind stirred across the plateau, rattling the torn edges of their armor. The haze gathered in strands around their feet, as though bound to them. It dawned on El Como then—not air, not weather. The haze was theirs.
The realization split him open with dread. He had not stumbled into a cloud, nor had the beast cloaked him in some foul breath. He was here because they had willed it. The very air had answered to them, smothered him, lifted him like a fly caught in a web.
He thrashed against the unseen bonds, but the force tightened, ribs aching, arms trembling. His chest burned with each breath.
The first man tilted his head, studying him. His face was cut from harsh lines, jaw square, cheek scar carved deep. He bore no beard, no hair to soften him, only the glimmer of light across steel.
The second was broader still, shoulders hunched like a bull, armor dented but intact. His hands flexed at his sides, gauntlets groaning.
The third was lean, his armor less battered but his stare sharper, crueler. His mouth curved—not into a smile, but into something colder, like the twitch of a blade before it fell.
El Como's stomach turned. He tried to force words through his cracked throat.
"You… you did this. Why?"
Again, silence.
It was the silence that terrified him most. Words could wound or soothe, but silence left him drowning in his own dread.
For a time that stretched beyond his measure, they only watched him. And in that gaze, El Como felt smaller than he ever had. Smaller than when he first picked up his pitiful sword. Smaller than when he ran from the beast. Smaller even than when he thought death had already claimed him.
These were not mere men. Fighters, yes, warriors, perhaps—but something older clung to them. The air bent at their presence. The land seemed scarred not only by battle but by them.
The haze was their leash, and he was its dog.
El Como closed his eyes, forcing breath past the ache in his chest. He thought of the beast again. Where had it gone? Why had it stalked him so close, only to vanish? Had they slain it? Or worse—had they been its masters all along?
When he opened his eyes, the three had not moved. But he thought he saw in their stillness the patience of predators. Waiting. Measuring. Deciding if he was worth the killing blow.
And though he could not name them, nor guess their purpose, he knew one thing with the certainty of marrow and blood: his life hung in the balance of their gaze, and mercy would not come cheap.
The haze shivered once more, binding him tighter.
Far below, in the cracks of the broken plateau, something groaned. A low rumble, distant yet rising, like stone grinding on stone. The beast, perhaps, not slain at all but biding its time beneath.
El Como's heart hammered. His voice cracked in a whisper, more to himself than to them:
"Gods help me."
But the gods had never helped him before.
The three men stood, their silence heavier than any prayer.
And in that silence, El Como understood that part Two of his life—if life was what this was—would not be his to write.
It would be theirs.