Six years had scraped by in the Forsaken Land, each one feeling like a hundred cycles of the moon in the realm beyond the Barrier. Time here was not measured by seasons, but by the slow, grinding decay of the sealed world. The sky remained bruised, the fungal growths pulsed with their sickly blue light, and the air, heavy with pulverized millennia of dark energy, carried the faint, distant hiss of the purifying Barrier.
In the midst of this desolate landscape, life persisted—a dark, tenacious form of life—and none was stranger or more resilient than Elric.
He was six years old, but his body moved with the coiled economy of a much older hunter. His pale skin, once pristine, was now etched with thin, dark lines of dirt and ash, like natural camouflage. His hair, dark and thick as the root moss of the diseased oaks, hung just above his intense, vivid red eyes. Those eyes, mirroring the predatory gaze of his foster parent, lacked any childish innocence; they held only focus and a deep, ingrained silence.
Elric was dressed in the only clothing available to him: wide, stiffened leaves, cured by Shiva's saliva and woven together with plant fibers, creating a rough, layered tunic and breeches that offered minimal warmth but excellent stealth. He moved through the scrub and slate on bare feet, silent as the White Beast itself.
His current quarry was a Cinder-Hare, a common creature of the Forsaken Land, named for the dark, soot-like fur that allowed it to disappear against the ash-covered earth. It was small, twitchy, and fast—a necessary meal.
Elric did not hunt using speed or force. He hunted using silence.
He paused in the shadow of a basalt column, allowing his six years of primal training to take over. The Heart of Darkness in his chest did not merely beat; it inhaled the surrounding gloom. When Elric needed to disappear, the ambient, corrosive darkness responded to him. It clung to his outline, muffling the sound of his breath, absorbing the minute vibration of his footsteps. He was not just hidden; he was momentarily unwritten from the senses of the world.
He held a length of sharpened slate, lashed to a sturdy, twisted branch with dried vine—his spear. The Cinder-Hare was fifty yards away, nibbling at a patch of blue moss.
The breath, a deep, resonant thought that was not a voice but a presence, echoed in the boy's mind, always controls the shadow.
Elric slowed his already shallow breathing, drawing in the cold, thick air. His internal shadow-smudge, the invisible aura of pure antithesis, flared slightly, coating him. He moved.
Thirty yards. Twenty.
The Hare, a creature adapted to constant vigilance, twitched its ears, but sensed nothing. No wind shift, no snapping twig, no increase in heartbeat. To it, the space Elric occupied was empty.
At ten yards, Elric stopped again, his body perfectly low, his spear ready. The Hare, satisfied with the safety of its solitude, raised its head to chew. That was the moment. The fraction of a second when its focus was internal.
With a speed that defied his small stature, Elric launched the spear. It flew straight and true, driven by instinct honed by desperation and Shiva's brutal lessons. The slate tip found its mark with a soft, final thud.
The Cinder-Hare shuddered once and was still.
Elric approached his kill, the sudden spike of adrenaline already receding. He retrieved his weapon, cleaned the slate tip meticulously on the rough earth, and then crouched beside the carcass. It was a good, medium-sized kill—enough protein for two meals, perhaps three if he stretched it.
But he didn't immediately turn back toward the hidden cave they called home. His successful hunt had brought him close to a place he rarely ventured alone: the shimmering, hostile boundary of his world.
The Barrier of Light.
It stood before him now, not a distant glow, but an immediate, vertical wall of brilliant, sterile white. The ground here was scoured clean of the blue moss and the pervasive ash. Everything was pale, brittle, and silent—killed not by darkness, but by the relentless, sterile purity of the Temple's magic.
Elric stood before it, clutching the spear and the dead hare, and stared.
The Barrier was utterly opaque. It didn't allow vision through, yet it was not dull or earthen like a stone wall. It was precisely as Shiva had described it years ago: a thick, polished mirror.
Elric peered into the impossible light. What he saw was his own small, dark form reflected perfectly back at him: the vivid red eyes, the primitive leaf clothing, the silhouette of the twisted tree line behind him, the purple-grey sky. He saw only the Forsaken Land staring back. It was a terrifying form of containment, ensuring that the inhabitants of this realm were perpetually reminded of their isolated, corrupted existence. They were not merely trapped; they were forced to gaze upon their own gilded cage.
He reached out a hand, hesitating just inches from the surface. The heat radiating from the Barrier was unnatural, like touching the heart of a contained star, and the sound of its constant, high-pitched hiss was the only noise the surrounding darkness could not suppress.
"Did you ever try?" Elric whispered, the words catching on the dry air. His voice was naturally low, rough from disuse, and carried the same eerie stillness as his movements. "Did you truly never try to get out, Shiva?"
As if summoned by the very utterance of her name, a profound shadow detached itself from the gloom behind him. There was no rustle of leaves, no shifting of stone—only the sudden, overwhelming presence of absolute power.
Shiva, the White Beast, settled beside him, her massive, snow-white body a shocking contrast to the black earth and the blinding white barrier. She was larger now than when she carried him as an infant, her muscles like carved stone beneath the thick fur. Her pale red eyes, identical in color and intensity to Elric's own, fixed on the Barrier, then slowly shifted to the boy.
She did not speak with her mouth, which was designed only for tearing and consuming. Instead, a voice, deep as a mountain's core and resonant as a struck drum, formed clearly within Elric's mind. It was their private language, the shadow bond that had kept him alive.
"Elric. Why do you stand at the edge of the fire?"
Elric didn't flinch. He never flinched from Shiva. He simply stared at the impossible mirror. "I caught the Hare closer than I should have. The Barrier... it doesn't show anything. But I know there is something behind my face."
"The world of Light," Shiva's mental voice affirmed, "is hidden. It is not meant for the gaze of the cursed."
"But did you try to break it?" Elric pressed, turning fully to his protector, his red eyes wide with a rare, momentary glimmer of hope. He gestured to her immense, clawed paws and the raw power of her darkness-infused body. "When I was very small. Before you knew it was impossible."
Shiva lowered her great head, the movement slow and deliberate, a gesture that conveyed resignation rather than refusal. She lay down, her weight compressing the brittle earth into dust.
"When I was young, cub, and the bitterness of my mother's death was fresh. I tried. With the fury of a thousand storms, I tried."
She lifted one massive paw, revealing the polished jet of her claws. On the ridge of that paw, just beneath the fur line, was a faint, pink-white scar—a line of skin devoid of the powerful dark pigments that colored the rest of her body.
"The Barrier is not stone. It is a purified thought. It is the accumulated triumph of the Temple of Light over a thousand years. It is reinforced daily by their collective faith and their absolute certainty that we are poison."
"I struck it once, and the power did not repel me; it began to cleanse me. It sought to scour the essence of the darkness from my Heart. It was a pain that exceeded all natural pain—the pain of being undone. If I had continued, I would have become a purified shell, mind broken, body dissolved into nothingness. No one who bears the darkness can pass. Once you are in, you are sealed."
Elric looked at the tiny scar on the beast's massive paw, then back at his own reflection in the shimmering wall.
"The humans. The ones who threw me here," he murmured, petting the soft, soot-like fur of the dead Hare. "They are on the other side. Can they not get in, then?"
Shiva let out a rumbling sigh, a sound that shook the very dust around them. "They can come in, though few willingly do. The Temple sends its soldiers, the fools who seek to prove their faith by venturing into the gloom."
"But their Light is like oil and our Darkness is like water. They do not mix. If they leave the direct, radiant safety of the Barrier for too long, the mass of darkness that permeates the very air here begins its work."
Shiva raised her muzzle, pointing toward the swirling ash. You breathe it, little cub. It strengthens your heart. It is your cradle.
"But for the humans of the Light? It is a slow poison. It corrupts their minds first, turning their precious virtues into the very Sins their Temple fought to defeat. They turn mad, they turn violent, they turn cannibal. If the ambient air does not claim them, the corrupted Beasts of the old Sin-War—my less fortunate brethren—will claim them."
"Only those who bear the Heart of Darkness can live and thrive in this Forsaken Land. It is a terrible gift bestowed upon us by the very defeat that sealed the Sins. This realm protects its own against the weakness of the Light."
Elric absorbed this, his gaze distant, processing the duality of his existence. He was six years old, wearing leaves, holding a sharp stone, and hearing the secrets of a thousand-year war explained by a talking alpha predator. This was his normal.
"So, they threw me here because they thought I was corrupted," Elric summarized, the revelation not shocking him, but merely settling into the logical structure of his world. "And it keeps me here because the barrier will not let me leave."
"You understand the cage, Elric."
"But Wrath," Elric whispered, naming the most dangerous of the sealed Sins, whose energy was said to seep into the deepest caverns. "Wrath promised to return. He is darkness. If he promised, then he knows a way out."
Shiva's massive body tensed. Even the mention of the sealed Sins carried a tremor of ancient fear.
"Wrath is a powerful thought. He is the Father of Fury. He is sealed, Elric. Trapped deeper than any of the rest. He lies beneath the peaks of the Black Mountains."
"But yes. If anyone could unravel the tapestry of the Barrier, it would be a true Heart of Darkness that returns to the world of Light."
Shiva nudged the boy gently with her massive head, guiding him away from the hissing barrier.
"The hunt is done. The lesson is learned. This is our territory. Your fate is here, for now. But destiny is a long road. We must eat. The Hare awaits your blade."
Elric nodded, his red eyes finally leaving the mirror of the Barrier. The moment of longing was over. He had asked the question, received the impossible answer, and now the harsh, simple reality of survival returned. He knelt, took a clean, fine piece of slate from his pouch, and began the meticulous, focused task of preparing his kill.
The White Beast watched him, her huge form a silent, powerful anchor in the oppressive gloom. She saw not a child, but the fragile, terrifying key to an eternity of freedom or oblivion. She had adopted him for survival, yes, but also for something deeper—a connection to the ancient, raging Heart of Darkness that she recognized in his silent, resilient spirit.
As the sunless twilight deepened, the small, leaf-clad boy and the giant, luminous white leopard turned their backs on the Temple's light and walked together into the welcoming darkness of the Forsaken Land, the scent of fresh blood masking the hiss of the Barrier. Elric was home, and the walls of his prison were strong. But Shiva knew that walls were made to be broken, and the boy, Elric, was the only force in a thousand years capable of holding the hammer.