The scythe missed.
Arlen blinked, still on his knees, braced for death that never came. The marble floor beneath him had vanished, replaced by something scratchy and dry. His hands sank into yellow grass. The stale air of the judgment chamber was gone, replaced by something heavy and electric.
Thunder rolled overhead. Not a storm coming, but a storm that never left.
"Gods," he breathed, scrambling to his feet. Black rocks jutted from the yellow grass everywhere he looked, sharp and jagged. They came in all sizes—some barely ankle-high, others towering like tiny homes. The clouds overhead churned gray and black, but no rain fell—just that constant, distant thunder.
Arlen turned in a slow circle. There was nothing familiar here. No buildings. No people. No signs of civilization whatsoever.
"This can't be happening," he whispered, his voice quivering. "This can't be real."
Something whispered at the edges of his hearing—not quite voices, but something close. The white noise almost formed words. It made his skin crawl, like ghostly fingers tracing his spine.
"Hello?" he called, then cursed himself for the stupidity. If something dangerous lurked nearby, he'd just rung the dinner bell.
His legs felt weak. One moment he'd been in the Judgment Chamber, awaiting execution. The next... this. Where was he? How had he gotten here? What was happening? The questions crashed through his mind like waves against a cliff face, threatening to erode his sanity.
His hand drifted to his chest, where he'd felt the Heir pierce him in the Dead Field. His fingers found strange raised skin—a scar in the shape of a perfect circle with a line cutting it vertically. The skin inside the circle was hot to the touch, angry red. Tiny cracks spread outward from it like a spiderweb across glass.
"What the hell?" he muttered. He pulled his shirt open wider, staring down at the mark. It pulsed with a heat that seemed to come from deep inside him as if something beneath his ribs was generating it.
Something bumped his hip when he shifted his weight. Looking down, he saw a scabbard strapped to his side that hadn't been there during his judgment. The sight of it made his stomach lurch. With trembling hands, he pulled out the blade.
His brother's saber. The one given to him. The one that had somehow ended up in Conroi's throat.
The blade caught the half-light, and instead of his reflection, he saw a face with a bloody, twisted grin.
"Fuck!" The sword clattered against stone as he dropped it and stumbled back. His heart hammered so hard it hurt, blood roaring in his ears. "No, no, no!"
"There's no running from yourself," a voice ground in his head. The same one that had belonged to the Heir.
Arlen fell to his knees, clutching his head. "Stay out of my mind!"
"That's not possible anymore," the voice replied, the words scraping against his thoughts like nails on stone.
"This isn't real," Arlen said, rocking slightly. "It's all in my head. I'm dying on the judgment floor, and this is just... just my mind breaking."
"That is true," the voice agreed, almost thoughtful. "And also false."
Arlen squeezed his eyes shut, willing it all away. The white noise swelled around him, pressing against his eardrums until he wanted to scream.
"A human sack is such a poor Tchekek vessel," the voice continued, sounding different now—less like grinding metal, more like a man mid-aged with a gravel feel. "It hides my... Better qualities."
When Arlen opened his eyes, the saber still lay on the ground where he'd dropped it. It seemed to gleam with an inner light, beckoning.
"Tchek! Pick it up," the voice said.
Tchek? Arlen wondered in a moment of loss.
"A word relatively similar to fuck, I should say."
"Why would I listen to you?" Arlen spat. "You killed my squad. You killed me."
"Because you're alone in a strange land with no weapons and no allies," came the reply, edges of impatience creeping in. "And I don't think you necessarily want any of that without the touch of steel? Do you?"
Arlen stared at the sword. The fear in his gut told him to run, to get as far from the blade as possible. But run where? To what? The alien landscape offered no shelter, no sanctuary. The voice—whatever it was—had a point, in his head, if he was damn crazy enough to talk to himself, which he's yet to believe was entirely true, he might as well pick up his damned sword.
"If I pick it up, will you tell me where I am? What's happening to me?" He thought he might ask of it a favor, something maybe it could give him as if he'd already known it, it was his noble side playing his words, they'd clung in negotiation, and then he remembered where he was again.
Silence stretched, broken only by the distant thunder.
I don't know where we are, idiot!" The voice re-surged in his mind in offense.
Arlen's fists clenched. "What the hell are you!."
"Oh shut up," the voice said with cold indifference. "Find a way to keep yourself from harm, it matters to me, unfortunately."
Minutes passed as Arlen weighed his options. The saber was his only link to anything familiar, even if that familiarity was twisted into something terrible. Finally, he reached for the handle, half-expecting it to burn him.
"If you're in my head, you're also stuck with my problems," he muttered as his fingers hovered over the hilt. "And I know what happens when a Flicker's power gets unstable."
He remembered the spider-webbing cracks that had spread across his bedroom walls the night he'd learned of his mother's death. The way the stone itself had groaned under the pressure of his rage. The terrified look on the servants' faces.
His fingers closed around the hilt. The metal was cold, much colder than it should have been.
The reflection in the steel changed. The bloody grin vanished, replaced by a face too dark to make out clearly. A patch of ivory skin was visible just below an eye, peeling away like old paper. The eye itself opened—a horizontal rhombus stretched impossibly wide.
Within that eye, Arlen saw himself reflected, then the reflection of himself within the eye, the reflection of that reflection, spiraling down infinitely.
The vision widened.
A dark sky. Clouds flowed downward like waterfalls of blood, pouring from a massive hand with gnarled fingers. Each finger produced its own bloody cascade. Each extended a bridge of jagged rock. The bridges converged at a central point over which floated a white structure—flat, pristine, and vast.
The waterfalls flowed upward.
In the distance, something oval-shaped hovered above the white structure. It flared red—
Arlen crashed back into himself, sprawled on the yellow grass. His lungs burned as if he'd been holding his breath. The scar on his chest throbbed in time with his racing pulse.
"What was that?" he gasped, the words barely audible. "What did you show me?"
"I showed you nothing," the voice said, quieter now, almost... shaken? "You saw what I fear, didn't you?"
"Fear?" Arlen pushed himself up on trembling arms. "What could something like you possibly fear?"
"I cannot go back to that place," the voice said, an edge of desperation leaking through its controlled tone. "Never again."
The vulnerability in those words was more terrifying than any threat could have been. Whatever dwelled in his head was afraid—genuinely afraid—of something.
"Who are you?" Arlen asked again, his initial panic giving way to a hollow dread. "What are you?"
"I am Had'rial," came the reply after a long silence. "Fifth finger of the Slaughter Law, one of the five Heirs that resonate power to him. A lord of the Virelinch, a region of Ul'sathal."
The words meant nothing to Arlen, just strings of alien syllables. "Ul'sathal?"
"The true name of what you people call Sephelos," Had'rial said, the disdain in his voice unmistakable.
Arlen's mouth went dry. He was talking to a creature from the Else—from Sephelos itself. The stories he'd heard as a child, the warnings whispered by Gravers around campfires... they were sitting in his head, speaking to him.
"Why are you in my head?" he asked, forcing the words past the tightness in his throat. "What do you want from me?"
Another long silence. "I have been destroyed too many times," Had'rial finally said, each word measured carefully. "Cast back into that place. Remade. Sent forth again. I cannot... will not... stand to live there anymore."
The admission hung between them. Arlen sensed there was more—much more—that the Heir wasn't telling him.
"You killed my squad," Arlen said, the memory of their deaths still raw. "Conroi, Renny, Lunia—they never did anything to you. Why?"
"It wasn't me," Had'rial said, too quickly. "It was the will of the Slaughter Law, the being that controls the Virelinch. I am... was... merely an extension of its will."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"When I found a Sepki—what you might call a branded item with energy from Sephelos—I bounded with it, beginning the process of freeing myself," Had'rial continued, ignoring Arlen's accusation. "Your friends were simply... in the way." Arlen heard a hint of amusement in that last part.
Arlen looked down at the saber, which now seemed to have a faint golden sheen along its silver spine. "This sword? It's just a normal blade my brother gave me."
"Only a fool would believe that," Had'rial scoffed, the momentary vulnerability gone, replaced by contempt. "Not with that kind of presence bleeding off it. Did you never wonder why it felt different from other weapons? Why it answered your hand so readily?"
Arlen frowned. The sword had always felt right in his grip ever since he'd picked it up, unlike the training blades that never quite balanced for him. But he'd assumed that was just because it was well-crafted.
"I only truly ever used this blade this one time, it does feel good, but it can't be, I'm only a Kindled, and if this sword is what you say it is, why would I have someone else's Branded. Even so, If the sword was what you wanted, why not just take it? Why kill them?"
"The will of the Slaughter Law isn't something I can simply ignore," Had'rial said, impatience bleeding through. "It's what I am, Arlen. Or was, rather."
"That part of me was severed," he continued after a moment. "Look at the back of your saber. Near the hilt."
Arlen turned the blade. Near where the hilt met the guard, embedded in what was now gilded steel, sat a ruby-like stone that hadn't been there before. It pulsed with a faint inner light, the rhythm matching the throbbing of the scar on his chest.
"An Anguish stone," Had'rial explained, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. "Used for control of regional beasts that conquer and order. Infused with enough power from the Slaughter Law, I stole it and used my own will to rend free the severance and bind myself into the sword."
"You... put yourself in the sword?"
"The three of us are now linked, chaotically," Had'rial continued as if Arlen hadn't spoken. "The cord cannot be undone, at least my knowledge doesn't extend that far, but anything is better than the Virelinch."
"Three?"
"You, me, and the sword," Had'rial said with the exaggerated patience of one explaining something simple to a child. "Your death allowed the binding. Your resurrection was... an unexpected consequence I must say, and now I am a fucking prisoner."
The implications of those words landed like a physical blow. Arlen had died. Actually died. And somehow come back, but changed—linked to this thing, this Heir.
"What happens now?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
But Had'rial didn't answer. The presence in Arlen's mind withdrew, like a door slamming shut. The white noise returned, filling the gap left by Had'rial's absence.
Arlen called out, first in confusion, then in anger, but the Heir remained silent. With nothing else to do, he sheathed the saber and looked around. One of the black rocks nearby rose higher than the others. From there, he might see something besides this endless field of yellow grass and stone.
The rock was sharper than it looked. By the time Arlen reached the top, his palms were cut and bleeding. The pain was almost welcome—a reminder that he was still flesh and blood, not some ghostly remnant.
From the summit, he scanned the horizon. Yellow grass stretched for miles, broken only by the forest of black stones. In the far distance, he could make out what appeared to be a river, its waters dark and motionless. Spanning it was something enormous and black—a bridge or structure of some kind, too far away to make out clearly.
"What is that?" he asked aloud, not expecting an answer.
The white noise surged in his ears, almost forming words before fading back to meaningless sound.
Arlen squinted against the dim light. The distant structure was the only feature breaking the monotony of the landscape. Whether it meant safety or danger, it was his only option.
"Had'rial?" he called out. "What am I looking at?" As if forgetting this place was also alien to him. "Wait, no, was I really calling for him, an Heir?" And Arlen couldn't help but laugh it away, not out of amusement, but out of sheer destruction of any sense in his mind.
But the Heir remained silent, leaving Arlen alone with the endless rumble of thunder and the whispers just beyond understanding.
He sat on the rock summit, overwhelmed. Everything he knew was gone. The Registry, Mazander, even the threat of execution—all of it replaced by this alien terrain and the unwelcome presence in his mind. He hugged his knees to his chest, allowing himself one moment of weakness before he'd have to move on.
A sound cut through his thoughts—a scraping, like stone on stone. Arlen froze, listening.
There it was again. Closer this time.
He peered over the edge of his perch and saw movement among the rocks below. Something was climbing toward him.
Instinctively, he drew the saber. The blade felt eager in his hand, almost humming.
The creature pulled itself into view, and Arlen's breath caught in his throat.
It looked almost like a monkey or gorilla, but its skin was hard as rock, forming natural plates across its body. Its elbows were particularly armored, jagged protrusions of stone-like tissue jutting outward. Its eyes were pure black, but surrounded by impossibly long eyelashes that were riddled with tiny ingrown stones, giving it a grotesque, crystalline appearance.
Where fur should have been, raw, seething muscle pulsed, red and wet against the gray stone-skin. It was nearly Arlen's height as it hung off the jagged rock, staring at him with those lifeless black eyes.
Before Arlen could react, another creature appeared behind the first. This one was larger, with tufts of orange fur sprouting only from its massive shoulders. Two straight, jagged horns of white and gray emerged from beneath its ears, pointing downward and forward like deadly spears.
Both creatures regarded him with a predatory stillness that made Arlen's blood run cold.