Chapther 36: "Seduction of Sinisters"

Akula helped me escape from the prison. He consumed me within his hourglass to free me during the night.

I abandoned the lakes, the rivers, the people, the towering arches of Kaleron. I abandoned Aurethys, The City of the Greedy Star. I abandoned Zera and Zenith.

I stole a caravan and headed for Neryuth, The City of the Eternal Scourge, on the other side of the continent of Alvelis.

I will raze Aurethys to the ground. For all they put me through: since I was reborn, no other place has shown itself to be as corrupted as this.

I will purge it with fire: I will consume its impurities, split the earth in two and let calamity punish it. Once the city falls, I will finish Zenith, so that infamous place never rises again.

No one will betray me again after this.

After a few days I crossed the Valley of the Fallen Titans: it was the ossuary of an ancestral creature whose green pathways floated suspended in the air and intertwined. Thus, they formed a web.

A thick fog covered the chasms between each walkway, hiding how deep they could reach. The mist sometimes seemed to move with a life of its own, as if whispering warnings from the deep.

Each step echoed through the vastness, and the silence of the place made travelers feel like intruders in a sacred realm where nature grew at the expense of the extinct.

I will use the Order of the Infected to my advantage. I will make the war culminate by raising the Feather to guide them to a fate that not even the glory of victory could offer.

Killing Zera is not enough for me. I will not be sated by that. I want more — my being cries out for more blood: all of them deserve to die for supporting Zenith’s traitor.

I lost count of the days that passed. I traversed the Fungal Court, a paradise where giant mushrooms had taken over every corner, rising like ancient fortresses.

Their caps radiated purples, blues and pinks, bathing the gloom in a hypnotic glow. From the bowels of the earth flowed glowing rivers, as if the earth itself bled liquid light.

There, nature had forsaken all restraint and surrendered to a spectacle of impossible colors.

The Wound is harming me. I can feel how, day after day, it sinks deeper into my skull. It presses on my brain, clouds my thoughts, makes my despair grow and my sanity sink.

It is a sweet, subtle pain. It reminds me that my mission has a purpose, that I am alive and will remain so until I eradicate this curse, ripping out the organs of the one who imposed it on me.

Some time later I crossed on foot the Scarlet Wastes: colossal black towers pierced the overcast sky, as if trying to tear open the entrails of the firmament.

The absolute blackness of the landscape was interrupted only by incandescent fissures of searing red that gushed from the cracks and slopes like burning veins.

The ground breathed, opening itself to light up with igneous explosions, as if a heart of magma pulsed within the earth. In the distance, weathered pillars crumbled in silence.

“Do not be afraid, still your doubts: you will free Aurethys from its tyrant, you will put an end to her rule.” Said the youngest soul.

“You will be their savior, you will deliver them to a pure fate that only the fortunate may reach.” Continued another.

“That is why, if you follow our counsel, the Silence will reward your worth.” Concluded the eldest soul.

What I do is right. I will unleash this unbridled rage that dwells within me when the time comes.

The souls accompany me. Zenith, as with me, experimented on them. They are my only allies in this war: they live inside me, they would never be capable of betraying me.

Finally, I crossed the continent and arrived at Neryuth.

A storm never ceases above the city. Thunder rends the sky with endless fury, and rain lashes the walls without respite. The tempest slowly corrodes its foundations and causes the mass of stone that supports it to sink year after year.

Neryuth endures, defying the storm, as if the city itself were condemned to prolong its agony until the end of time.

It rises as an impossible stronghold, a walled city that dominates the vastness from atop a colossal block of stone. Its walls, thick as mountains, were hewn by titanic hands, and within them opened enigmatic gates that lead to subterranean passageways: the only way into the city.

“Anyone who ventures into those tunnels will have to face the rot that inhabits them.” Remarked one of the souls.

“Malefactors, bandits, and lesser creatures serve as henchmen for greater powers.”

“If you want to be heard, you will have to commit what even the most despicable criminals fear to imagine.”

That is what I intend to do.