Darkness. A jolt of icy dampness against skin. Then the impact. Bones cracked. Air burst from shattered lungs in a sharp hiss. A rumble filled the ears like a distant storm, pulsing against the skull. The metallic taste of blood bloomed across the tongue. Damp earth and scorched leather filled the nostrils, mingling into a suffocating haze. For a fleeting moment, everything fell silent, as if the world had held its breath with him. Then came the brittle crunch of armor breaking—followed by silence. And cold. A cold that crept under the skin, deeper than pain. The world was muffled. Suspended. Waiting. Everything was muted. As if the world itself paused.
Leopold blinked. Blood filled his mouth. Every breath burned like fire. Above him, the pale gray of morning flickered through branches. The stench of death clung to the air—iron, fur, blood, burnt magic. Slowly he lifted his head, each muscle pull like a glowing needle.
The Ironhide lay just a few steps away. Its body torn, steaming, a hind leg giving a final twitch—as if it might rise again. For a heartbeat, the world held still, breath caught in suspense, before the silence settled like dust. Flies had already gathered on the wounds. The orc woman—the female—lay motionless at the edge of the hollow, her arm trapped beneath her. Her chest rose shallowly. She was alive, though gravely wounded. Her skin smeared with mud, her hair full of leaves, a fresh, bloody gash ran across her right temple, and her clenched eyes spoke of suspicion and defiance even in unconsciousness. And still—wild, vulnerable—she was imposing.
He only now felt the pain. A gaping wound in his side. Cracks in his ribcage. Broken ribs pressing against his lung. His breath rattled. Every gasp like a dagger, yet he was alive—for now. His blood soaked into the forest floor, turning the moss black.
Next to the beast's carcass yawned a dark crevice in the rock. A cave. Half hidden beneath roots and moss. As if it had waited for him. A strange light shimmered from within. No sunlight. Something else. Something unnatural.
The Cave Beyond
Leopold crawled, gasping, cursing. Every movement a lightning bolt through his nerves. His hands were bloody, slippery, his knees scraped against stone. The entrance was narrow, but he forced himself through, almost falling forward. And then—silence. A different kind of silence. No wind, no dripping, no rustling. Only… expectation.
Inside, it was warm. Too warm. The air did not smell like a cave—not of rot, but of cinnamon, smoke, and old stories—like the scent in his mother's chambers when she read at night, unaware that he was listening. It hit him like a blow: a memory of comfort long buried beneath years of cold and hate. Not decay. But cinnamon, smoke, and old stories. The ground was level. The stone—smooth. Too smooth. Like polished marble, foreign in this wilderness. As if the place was not natural, but shaped. A space that didn't belong. A place like a dream—or a nightmare.
The walls pulsed faintly. Almost imperceptibly. A deep, rhythmic flicker not audible, but felt. In the chest. In the back of the mind. As if the place breathed.
He pushed himself up, trembling, braced against the wall. The pain throbbed with each heartbeat. His fingers trembled. Blood dripped from his sleeve. And yet: he lived. Still. The darkness wasn't complete—it was interwoven with a dim glow that seemed to come from cracks in the wall. An ancient gleam. Something from before time.
The Goddess Appears
"You dragged yourself far, little heir."
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. A resonance like a dream half-remembered. The shadows congealed into form. She emerged from the wall of the cave as if the stone itself had offered her shape.
She was not merely a woman. She embodied womanhood—abstract, divine, terrifying. Not just elven, not simply human, not quite monstrous—each form folded into the next with a grace that defied sense. She moved like a dream slipping into nightmare, like prophecy disguised as temptation. Between forms like a thought that could not be grasped. Elven elegance, human familiarity, monstrous majesty—all layered like silk veils. Her body shimmered with a light that wasn't light, her voice a vibration of will. Hair darker than void, and eyes that saw through.
The cave seemed to kneel.
Leopold stared up. Bloody, broken, defiant. "Who are you?"
"I am the question you've always feared to ask. The end of masks. The maker of games."
She circled him like a wolf assessing prey—but not with hunger. With curiosity. Playfulness. Even admiration.
"You are a flame without fuel, Leopold. A furnace of hatred that devours its own walls. I find that… interesting."
He tried to stand. Failed. Blood soaked his shirt. His hand reached for a blade that wasn't there. "Leave me."
"Leave you? No. You found me. Or did I find you? Hmm... Does it matter?"
She touched his forehead. Cold and hot at once. Images exploded behind his eyes—flashes of his life, his shame, his fury, the moments he never spoke of.
"You are strong," she murmured. "But empty. I don't need strength alone. I need possibility. I need... paradox."
She turned her hand, opened it. A shimmer appeared—a portal not of light, but of memory. And in that portal, scenes unfolded—not generic, but precise. Alexander sitting in the dim blue glow of his screen, fingers twitching over a worn keyboard. A sticky ramen cup forgotten beside him. A paused anime on one tab, half-written theory essays on another. The ache of hours without sleep etched into his hunched back. But more than that: a single memory, glowing brighter than the rest—his mother's hand on his head when he was five. Just once. Just before she left. It lingered like a phantom warmth.
The goddess watched with an unreadable expression—perhaps pity, perhaps joy.
"Yes," she whispered, almost to herself. "This one bleeds in ways no blade can reach."
And there he was: the boy. Pale. Alexander. Slouched in a chair. Screens glowing. Eyes dead.
"That one," she said. "That soul. Broken in ways you are not. Hungry in ways you will never be. He dreams of power without knowing its cost. That makes him perfect."
Leopold trembled. "You want... to replace me."
"No," she whispered. "I want to fuse you."