The ground trembled with the distant thunder of heavy footsteps, a rhythmic quake that shuddered through stone and root as the daytime behemoths began their migration through the forest.
Each step sank deep into the earth, a low rumble that Belial felt in his shattered bones, a cruel reminder of the world moving on while he lay broken beneath the thin shade of a crystalline tree. His breath rasped shallow and ragged, every inhale a knife twisting in his chest, every exhale a dry, rattling gasp that tasted of blood and ash.
Pain.
It hurt.
Gods, it hurt so much.
The fall had nearly ended him.
At the last second, just as the monster's claw descended, he'd thrown himself from the outcrop's edge—a desperate, reckless act he hadn't meant to survive. Instinct, stubborn and unyielding, had driven him.
He'd unraveled his wings mid-descent, a risky gambit to slow his fall, their dark leather like texture catching the air with a faint, mournful whistle. But the rising sun's perilous rays had kissed the edges, singeing them with a searing light that left charred remnants fluttering in his wake.
He'd crashed through the forest below, hitting every other branch on the way down. Bones shattered with sickening cracks, his spine twisting under the relentless impacts, a fire of trauma igniting his body from within. His left arm and leg—gone, not severed by claw or blade, but vaporized by the sun's cruel embrace.
The star's light had scorched through armor and flesh in those fleeting, exposed moments, reducing them to blackened husks clinging to charred bone. Half of him was a ruin, a grotesque testament to the wasteland's wrath, yet somehow—impossibly—he was alive.
The monster hadn't followed. Repelled by the perilous star, it had retreated, its dark visage vanishing into the shadows above, oblivious to his fall.
Lucky.
If such a word still held meaning, had spared him. He lay curled in the fragile shade of a towering crystalline tree, its luminous branches refracting the sunlight into strange, shifting patterns across the forest floor. The heat was unbearable, a blistering weight that seeped into the edges of his sanctuary, reaching for him like a predator biding its time. His skin prickled where the light grazed, a warning of what awaited beyond the shade.
His sword—Bloodhound, the curved longsword gifted by Cole—lay nearby, its blade glinting faintly in the refracted glow, still intact despite the torture.
It was his anchor, his lifeline. With gritted teeth and trembling fingers, he reached for it, every movement a fresh agony as his broken body protested. He pulled it to his chest, clutching it like a talisman, his breath a sharp rattle in his throat. It gave him something—not much, but enough to cling to.
I swear...I Fucking promise i will kill that damned thing! ,Belial winced angerly.
He had to try Something.
Anything!
He couldn't die here, alone beneath a glassy horizon of the broken mountain where trees bled light and monsters feared the sun. He had to heal—or at least slow the bleeding. With a groan, he centered himself, though the pain made focus a near-impossible feat. Closing his eyes, he reached inward, searching for the familiar flow of ether in his veins. It was there—scattered, unstable, a flickering ember amid the wreckage of his body—but it was alive.
EMR. Ether Matrix Reconstruction.
He guided the ether with broken willpower, circulating it over and over, coaxing it into stability. His mind frayed, his strength faded, but he pressed on, adjusting its properties from within. The foreign ether from the monster—the venom-laced taint from its last strike—resisted him, tangled in his system like barbed wire, thrumming with a rhythm not his own. It didn't belong, a jagged intruder in his blood, and it fought his control with every pulse.
Belial pushed harder, forcing the flow forward through sheer will.
His body locked up, his muscles seizing, and a dry, hoarse sound escaped his lips—half-scream, half-sob. His vision flickered like a dying candle, darkness encroaching, but he refused to yield. The ether fought him, and he fought back, teeth clenched until his jaw ached. Then—finally—something shifted.
The foreign ether responded.
It didn't leave. It dint fight back anymore; it finally changed, bending painfully under his command, merging with his own until their rhythms aligned. It became part of him.
A pulse surged through his body, his own ether rekindled at last. He groaned, barely conscious, and directed it toward his worst wounds, manipulating the particles of his blood to stem the flow. It wouldn't heal—the damage was too vast, his reserves too thin—but the bleeding slowed, then stopped, a fragile dam against the inevitable. It wasn't enough. He was still dying, broken beyond measure, his chest rising and falling like a storm-tossed ship on its final voyage.
Was this it?
His thoughts drifted, hazy and disjointed. He'd fought monsters, defied fate, slain horrors from beyond reason—only to bleed out under a tree, a Demon burned by the sun?
No.
He wouldn't let it end like this.
Tightening his grip on Bloodhound, Belial used the blade as a crutch, the hilt slick with sweat and blood, his knuckles white. He began to crawl again. Each inch forward sent fire lancing through his nerves, the shattered bones in his hip grinding against one another with nauseating friction. The pain was no longer a sensation—it had become a sound, a low hum of agony ringing in his ears, dulling the world.
The crystalline earth beneath him radiated heat, its jagged edges biting into his ruined flesh. Dust clung to his face, dried blood turning to flakes beneath his cheek. The air shimmered, warped by heat, the distant haze blurring trees into ghostly pillars of molten glass. A mirage. A waking fever-dream.
And yet—he moved.
Shade to shade.
Tree to tree.
The sun above crawled higher, cruel and uncaring. Its light poured across the land like a tide of knives, gilding everything it touched in blistering white. It wasn't a source of life here—it was death made radiant. The crystalline trees strained against it, their translucent trunks glowing faintly as if groaning in protest, their limbs cracking as internal moisture boiled. Smoke coiled gently from their bark like incense, and the scent was thick—burnt sap and scorched stone.
To his right, the forest trembled.
A daytime behemoth.
It lumbered slowly through the trees, each step like a mountain shifting. Its broad back was overgrown with hanging moss and lichen, a slow-moving island of vegetation. Sunlight reflected off the glossy surface of its plated sides, and tiny birds fluttered in and out of the foliage draped across its spine. Its tusks, curved and ancient-looking, scraped the trees it passed, gouging deep ruts in the trunks before it stopped to nibble at the crystalline foliage with a snuffling, wet sound.
It looked almost peaceful in its enormity.
And yet Belial knew—if it had wanted to—it could have stepped on him without ever knowing.
He paused in his crawl, watching its massive form drift by in silence, heart thudding dully in his ears. It didn't see him. Or maybe it did, and simply didn't care. The indifference stung more than fear. He was a cracked pebble in its path.
No comfort there.
There was not comfort anywhere.
He pressed onward.
The incline steepened, and his muscles refused to obey. He dragged his ruined body up a shallow rise, breathing in short, ragged gasps. His vision blurred—edges of color swirling like oil on water. Heat wrapped around him like a blanket soaked in fire. Bloodhound dragged behind him, the curved blade digging shallow lines in the ground, a trail of steel behind his broken crawl.
He passed out again.
Darkness took him without warning, only to fade moments later, the world snapping back into clarity with cruel indifference. Nothing had changed. He hadn't moved.
But the shade was fading.
The shadows from the trees were growing shorter, slipping away from him like receding tides. The light was coming.
Belial forced his arms to work again, and finally reached the ridge—an uneven crest of stone and dirt under one last dying sliver of shadow. He pulled himself beneath it with a shudder that wracked his body from head to toe and collapsed, half in shade, half in sun, his skin tingling with the nearness of fire.
Above him, the sky stretched—blue glass veined with fractures of golden light, impossibly high and far. It felt like a great dome above a cage. A world too large for him, too cruel for his weight to matter.
His body gave out. He let it.
He lay there, fingers still curled loosely around Bloodhound, his other arm a blackened husk of char and bone. His chest barely rose. His lips cracked with every breath. The only sound now was the wind—the soft moaning hush that passed between the branches, whispering secrets in a language only the dying could hear.
Darkness crept in again, but slower this time. Not the violence of passing out, but a gentle descent—an invitation. A peace he hadn't earned.
A silence he feared to embrace.
His mind, fraying at the edges, offered him one final echo.
Not of pain.
Not of monsters.
Just a whisper of self.
A question.
So quiet it felt sacred:
Should i just give up?