Kallen shot through the ruined halls of the Crimson castle, past shattered pillars and crumbling walls, his every step hammering into the ground, racing toward the sacred grove with every ounce of urgency.
His chest heaved, his heartbeat thrumming wildly against his ribs, erratic and out of control. With burning lungs burned, he gasped for air, but it felt thin and insufficient. His body demanded control and composure, but his mind was spiraling.
The steel will that once anchored him; that made him feel like he would watch the heavens fall without flinching, had crumbled to dust.
He knew running in this direction was reckless. His rational mind screamed at him to stop and think, to turn back. But his body refused to obey. Every fiber of his being pushed forward, driven by desperation.
Kallen wanted to curse,in rage, but the weight pressing down on his chest made it impossible for even utter a word.
Inwardly, he cursed himself for not having absorbed the Essence of the princess or the assassin when he had the chance.
The irrational thought burned in his mind. He knew digesting the princess’s or the assassin’s Essence would force the awakening of his core, and at a pitiful grade, the gains would be barely worth it. But right now, he didn’t care.
He needed anything to distract himself from the suffocating mix of rage and terror threatening to consume him.
He willed his body to move faster. But no matter how hard he pushed, he felt sluggish—like he was wading through thick, invisible chains. Yet, in reality, his body had already reached its peak velocity.
The explosion erupted just up ahead, shaking the very air. His body stiffened from despair. The fear of loss slammed on him like a war hammer, and he tripped, his speed sending him sprawling forward in a violent tumble.
He desperately tried to help himself up but failed.
His mind became a scrambled mess, his vision a whirlwind of red, light and shadow. The world around him spun, disorienting and surreal, moving both too fast and too slow all at once.
His consciousness flickered like a dying ember in a storm. A relentless ringing filled his ears, like a piercing whine, drowning out all other sounds. His auditory senses seemed scrambled, picking up only static noise, and muffling everything else.
Somewhere in the background, he could faintly make out the sound of coughing and choked wheezing. But whether it was his own or someone else’s, he couldn’t tell.
Then, a foreboding feeling of profound loss settled over him that left him feeling naked, helpless and alone. He felt like he had lost the most important thing to him. An irreplaceable treasure.
He tried to scream, but no sound escaped. His mind even struggled to form a single coherent thought.
Tried to move again, but his limbs refused to respond.
Even his sense of self; his basic proprioception seemed to fray, like a marionette with it’s strings cut.
The only thing Kallen could make out through the haze was two vivid, burning orbs—one a deep crimson, the other a smoldering purple. They hovered in his fractured vision, drilling into his very soul like the unrelenting gaze of an eldritch horror.
Suddenly, a sharp, bone-chilling howl unlike anything he had ever heard before, tore through the Crimson estate and even further to Crimson city.
It ripped through the air, a monstrous sound that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Crimson estate. It embodied a force of undeniable authority. A presence so absolute that it demanded the world itself to acknowledge it.
It was heard and felt from every corner, reverberating through the air, the ground, and even though their souls.
The sheer authority and power in it cut through the haze clouding Kallen’s mind, slicing through his disorientation like blade through silk. His senses that were dulled and slipping into darkness, were yanked forcefully to reality by the sheer, primal power of that howl.
The world around him swam in a red, stained by the warm viscous blood flowing down his face from the gruesome wound to his head.
His skull had caved in and his temple split open exposing his brain matter. Although the wound was already closing, his body healing at an unnatural pace, it came with an unnatural itch that made him want to claw at his face and head in agony. But it couldn’t compare to the compulsion in that howl.
Under its effect, he looked up to the sky and he beheld their majesty.
Two colossal, blood-red wolf eyes overflowing with unimaginable bloodlust and madness.
They loomed over the battlefield like twin blood-moons in a pitch-black void, radiating a suffocating pressure so intense it sent instinctual terror clawing down his spine.
The air itself felt heavier.
All across the battlefield, the invaders of the Crimson family’s stronghold, saw the face of death!
While lost in reverence, something sharp pressed against his neck, and a sudden pain flashed through his body. All of a sudden, there was Darkness.
His body collapsed, limbs going slack. The last remnants of his consciousness slipped away.
A lone figure stood behind Kallen’s unconscious body; tall, powerful, and mysterious. His features blurred into the surrounding darkness, but his presence alone was enough to trigger an instinctual sense of unease.
There was no warmth in his gaze, no flicker of emotion. It was apathetic and detached. As if the chaos around him did not exist.
Without a hint of consideration, he flung Kallen’s limp form over his shoulder and turned away.
His movements were unhurried, almost lazy, yet each step devoured distance in impossible strides, with meters vanishing in a step, then kilometers, until the battlefield behind them was nothing more than a forgotten stain in the abyss.
The darkness of distance welcomed them, swallowing them whole.
Not once did he look back. Not once did he acknowledge the catastrophe unfolding behind him, a massacre so absolute it could only be described as instant genocide.
There was no hesitation, nor was there urgency to his steps. Just calm and unhurried grace.