The terrain before me rose like a jagged spine, its sharp incline stretching into the night, where shadows reigned supreme and wind howled like a beast long forgotten. Every gust tore through the air with an edge, slicing past me as though warning me away from the path ahead. My heart beat hard against my ribs—fast, rhythmic, alive—matching the tension rising in the air around me.
I planted my boots firmly in the middle of the winding trail, a rough path carved into the mountain's edge, one only brave—or reckless—climbers dared to take. The land felt ancient here. Twisted trees loomed to either side, their crooked limbs groping toward the sky like skeletal hands. Thick underbrush formed wild walls of green and black, leaving the trail open just enough for a single soul to walk. It felt like a forgotten avenue—an eerie stretch of road where the only light came from the distant moon, broken into slivers by the shifting canopy overhead. It reminded me of dim streetlights back in Varis, flickering, unreliable, yet comforting in their own quiet way.
I wasn't alone.
Beneath the cover of those tangled trees, a presence moved. Silent. Elusive. A Wraith. I couldn't see it clearly yet, but I felt it, like a breath at my neck or a thought that didn't belong in my head. It used the shadows, blending with the darkness in a dance as old as night itself. My senses—refined through battle and survival—caught every faint tremor, every shift in the wind that didn't feel natural. It was hunting. Testing me.
But I was ready.
I stood still, my weight low, grounded. My eyes swept the surroundings while my ears picked up the tiniest rustles. The Wraith knew the terrain. It moved with confidence, weaving through narrow patches of shade cast by the ancient trees and dense thickets. I knew it would avoid open space, favouring cover. That was its advantage. My blade, Snowhite, hung at my side, not yet drawn, but humming softly—its mana reacting to the rising tension, responding to the presence that lurked just beyond the veil.
The Wraith was fast. Unbelievably fast. It moved between shadows like water gliding over polished stone—smooth, soundless, with a grace that betrayed its deadly nature. I strained to count them, to identify how many were circling me. One? Two? More? My instincts screamed that there were several. I couldn't confirm their numbers, not yet. They were skilled, far more than anything I'd fought so far. They didn't just hide in the shadows—they became them.
My breath slowed. My heartbeat did not.
I began rotating in slow, deliberate motions, adjusting my posture to face where the pressure felt strongest. I didn't rely on my eyes alone. I listened. Felt. Anticipated. The world around me sharpened—every crack of a twig, every unnatural stillness in the air, was a warning.
With a whisper of thought, I summoned my armour. Mana flared at my fingertips, and a wave of light poured from the ring on my hand. Piece by piece, the plating materialised around me in a seamless cascade—boots, greaves, gauntlets, chestplate—until I was cocooned in its embrace. I exhaled slowly as the final pieces clicked into place. Warmth. Pressure. Protection. The cold no longer bit so deeply. The armour grounded me. Reminded me of who I was, and what I'd survived to get here.
The armour was built in the style of the Battleknights—sleek yet powerful, elegant but unyielding. Though inspired by Sia's, mine had evolved. Jet-black plates shimmered with faint veins of silver and blue—residue from beasts I'd slain and bled into the forging of this suit. Valgura. Knightcrawlers. Their power, now mine. Light enough to let me move freely. Strong enough to take a beating. I could still feel the scars from the battles that earned it.
I left my helmet unattended.
Tonight, I needed my sight—every inch of it. No blind spots. The Wraiths probably thrived in confusion. I wouldn't give them that edge. My cloak thrashed in the wind behind me, its fabric stiff and wild like wings pulled taut in flight. Crimson Ultima remained unsummoned. It wasn't time. Not yet. I still didn't know what I was up against. Information was power, and I needed more of it. Until then, Snow White would be my companion. Steady. Swift. Unwavering.
And then, everything shifted.
They moved.
All at once, the shadows around me rippled—no longer subtle, but bold. The Wraiths gathered near a tree. Not just any tree. It was massive—so old its bark had folded in on itself, wrinkled and thick like armour. Its roots stretched wide like claws clinging to the earth. A silent guardian of this cursed path. The shadow it cast was immense, long and deep. That's where they chose to converge.
Snowhite pulsed in my hand, reacting to their presence. Its edge gleamed like starlight. My pulse slowed. My grip tightened. Every instinct in my body screamed that something was coming. Not a faint. Not a probe. A strike.
Fear churned in my gut. Cold. Raw. Familiar. But it didn't control me. Alongside it came something else—excitement. The rare kind. The kind that only came when danger was real, when your next mistake could be your last. This was the kind of fear that sharpened the mind. That made you feel alive.
I wanted this.
Not just to survive it, but to learn from it. To grow. I'd read theories. Studied monsters. Listened to lectures and combat reports. But those were just words—dry and clean. This? This was the truth. Every motion. Every heartbeat. Every mistake. A living lesson. One I couldn't afford to ignore.
Then the shadow cracked.
Not the tree's bark. Not the air. The shadow itself. It flickered—briefly—as if struck by invisible lightning. I blinked. Once. Twice. It was subtle, but I saw it. A distortion. Like heat rising off desert sand, or water rippling without a breeze. The shadow twitched. Twisted.
I raised my left hand and pointed Snowhite's glowing edge toward it.
Something was wrong.
The shape on the ground—the natural darkness cast by the tree—had changed. Not faded. Changed. Like it had been torn and stitched back together by an unskilled hand. It no longer followed the moon's logic. It bent unnaturally, spiralling outward.
And then, in one sudden breath, the shadow expanded.
It surged like black oil spilt across the earth, stretching toward me, swallowing the trail in its path. It moved fast, unnatural, almost hungry. It wasn't a shadow anymore—it was a presence. A thing. Thick and alive and wrong. It devoured light, drank it in, until the stones beneath my boots disappeared into blackness.
I didn't move. I didn't speak.
The shadow began to evaporate. Thin wisps lifted into the air like steam rising from boiling water. They shimmered, flickered, then vanished, leaving nothing but silence and chill. I stood there, still staring, blinking rapidly to clear the strange fog clinging to my vision. I rubbed my eyes. Once. Then again. The image wouldn't leave.
I'd seen many things. Fought many beasts. But this… this was something new. Something far older, far darker than I had prepared for.
And I was about to face it alone.
This grotesque display of shadow-born sorcery—a corruption of the world's natural laws—unfolded with such fluid hostility that I instinctively took several steps backwards, placing distance between myself and the expanding abyss. The space behind me, though sparse and wind-swept, remained untouched by the writhing corruption, a temporary haven in a battlefield that was quickly turning foreign. I prepared for strategic withdrawal, every part of me ready to retaliate. But the darkness... it reacted.
The shadow ahead suddenly stretched. No, reshaped.
Where once it had lain flat like a stain upon the ground, it now bulged outward, forming a shape—an uneven oval, almost egg-like. Its broadest edges extended wide on my left and right, curving around like blackened arms eager to embrace. The narrowest point of this malformed shadow sat behind me, making that direction—the only route of escape—its weakest reach. I knew what this was: a trap, a calculated field meant to channel me exactly where it wanted.
As I moved to take that first retreating step, the shadow surged again.
Spikes erupted without warning, dozens of them, jetting up from the blackened ground with terrifying speed—long, sharpened tendrils of pure void, all aimed squarely at my body.
I responded reflexively.
My body surged with mana-fed strength as I launched myself backwards using a dashstep, the force of my movement shattering the stone beneath me. The air cracked. The wind split. I soared, yet the spikes—gods, they were faster—closed in like vipers. One spike in particular veered closer than the rest, nearly skewering me mid-air.
But I was ready.
With fluid precision, I rotated Snowhite to intercept, not to parry in full, but to redirect. I allowed the momentum of the spike to meet my blade's durable edge, letting it push against me just enough to accelerate my retreat rather than halt it. I landed several meters back, outside the reach of the corrupted zone. My boots hit solid, untouched ground. I crouched low, three limbs bracing me, prepared to burst into motion again if needed.
The spikes vanished.
Just like that.
As though they had never been there at all.
The earth stood quiet once more, cold and cracked, but free of those grotesque protrusions. Yet the black mass still lingered in front of me, stretching along the soil like a scar that refused to close. It wasn't an illusion. I hadn't imagined it. The cursed terrain remained, just dormant for now.
I stood slowly, brushing the dirt from my glove against the plated ribs of my armour. My movements were deliberate, composed, even though adrenaline still surged through every fibre of my being. I needed to stay sharp.
The shadow pulsed again.
But this time, it didn't lash out with dozens of formless attacks.
It summoned.
From the center of the inky mass, something began to rise—someone. The air shimmered faintly as a greyish glow bled into the surroundings, illuminating the unnatural figure that emerged from the depths. It was tall. Around two meters, maybe slightly more. Lean. Its frame hovered inches above the corrupted ground, as if gravity itself had been rejected.
My breath caught.
The figure's body was entirely concealed beneath layered cloaks—darkness wrapped in darkness. A hood sat atop its shoulders, but where a head should've been… There was only emptiness. No face. No skull. Nothing. Its arms were long and impossibly thin, draping like robes themselves, swaying slightly in the windless air. And just like its head, there were no feet, no lower limbs to tether it to this world.
It was as if death had crawled out of myth to stand before me.
A twisted beauty clung to the Wraith's emergence, paradoxically haunting and mesmerising. A lesser being would have fainted from the sheer pressure its presence exuded. And yet, I couldn't look away. It felt like staring into the abyss and having the abyss acknowledge you.
It felt like being chosen.
My body was still, but my thoughts spun like a cyclone.
I forced myself to breathe—slow and steady. My senses remained on high alert, stretched thin as I tried to locate any other presence nearby. After all, I had sensed many. Multiple entities. Multiple presences circling me, hounding me for minutes now.
But there was nothing else. Just this one.
My brow furrowed as the realisation struck like lightning.
"Wait… all those different presences? They were coming from this one Wraith?"
The clarity of that understanding was like a sunrise after a storm. I took another cautious step back, feeling a bead of cold sweat trail down the side of my temple. A flicker of genuine fear gripped me—not of dying, but of not understanding what I was up against.
Why hadn't it attacked?
Why was it waiting?
Snowhite thrummed in my grip, a steady, resolute hum. The blade responded to my fear by flaring—ice-white mana enveloped its body and slowly stretched over my armour, weaving a third protective layer over me. It wasn't just defence—it was a warning. My weapon sensed the Wraith's power just as keenly as I did.
And then… it moved.
The Wraith's right arm lifted, as though waking from a long, rigid slumber. Its fingers curled with sluggish grace, the hand tilting down toward the ground. Where its thumb pointed, the darkness below responded—no, it obeyed. With a silent crackle, the shadows condensed, twisting and churning in a violent rhythm.
They formed a shape.
A weapon.
A scythe.
The long, curved blade slowly extended from the ocean of shadows, sleek and merciless in design. The surface shimmered with oily ripples like it had been dipped in a dying sea, yet it flickered—alive, reactive. Just like the creature that wielded it.
It was death incarnate. A myth given flesh.
The Wraith floated slightly higher, and in a deliberate motion, it tilted its upper body toward me—its cloak-lined form mimicking my earlier stance.
It pointed the scythe directly at my chest.
I exhaled shakily, unable to stop the whisper from escaping my lips.
"…Now you really do look like the Grim Reaper."