No one stepped forward.
Jadig’s sword remained lodged in the stone, as if it were the last fragment of him still tethered to this world, standing against the void, a witness to a battle that had ended before it could even be seen. The deep gouges in the rock still held their heat, as if the claws that carved them had only just retreated.
The silence was not emptiness—
it was accumulation.
Tizra no longer roared… yet it did not sleep either.
For the first time since their feet had set upon Tizra, something within Ikida broke.
He stood before the embedded sword, refraining from touching it. The commander, who had always known what must be done, found himself incapable of issuing a single order. The silence around them felt different now… not the quiet of an abandoned place, but the quiet of something that had just been sated.
He turned slowly, eyes falling upon Amazal.
There was no anger in his gaze, no doubt, no command.
It was a naked question.
“What… do we do?”
Amazal did not answer at once.
His eyes lingered on the sword…
on the deep gouges in the stone…
on that blackness that was neither blood nor rock.
Before he could speak, Galzim stepped forward.
It was not the step of a warrior,
but the step of a man returned from the edge of death,
a man whose memory had yet to dry its blood.
He bent over the marks, touching nothing,
yet his eyes understood what they saw.
His features hardened.
“No…”
he said, as though confirming a nightmare he had hoped would remain a myth.
He lifted his head slowly, looking at each of them in turn.
Even Amazal did not escape his gaze.
He swallowed, his voice dropping lower, older.
“This is not the mark of a tribe… nor a weapon.”
Cillian lifted her gaze immediately.
“What do you mean?”
Galzim drew a deep breath, as if the name he was about to speak required permission from his chest before it could escape.
“In Tizra…
there are things we do not see, because we agree— we and it— not to meet.”
He raised his head to them, his features tightening.
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“We… call this thing Rathkar.”
The name fell among them like a stone into a well.
Silence returned once more, but this time it was the silence of a name.
Galzim continued, as if hating every word that left his mouth:
“It is not a creature born.
Nor hunted.
Nor seen until it is far too late.”
He gestured toward the claw marks etched into the stone.
“Rathkar does not leave traces to be followed…
only to testify that someone was here.”
He stepped forward, glancing at the rootless stretch of ground.
“When these marks appear, it means one thing only in Tizra’s legends:
that the land itself has forsaken its right to protect.”
Vaelor asked slowly: “What… is Rathkar?”
Galzim answered, voice low:
“It is no monster in the way you understand.
Nor a spirit.
Nor a shadow.
We call it the remnant of something unfinished.
Not a being born as it should…
nor a shadow made to serve.”
He pointed toward the void where the marks vanished: it dwells where roots do not grow.
Where no one passes twice.
He added, in a hushed yet decisive tone: “Some say it is a guardian who forgot itself.
Some say it was a flaw left uncorrected.
But no one in Tizra says it is alive in the way we understand life.”
Silence shivered.
Then he added, as if conceding a truth unspoken:
“It is something old enough to know that Tizra despises noise.
And it likes human flesh… for humans alone scream.”
Cillian asked in a barely audible voice: “And what does Rathkar do to those it takes?”
Galzim hesitated. Then he said:
“No one has ever returned to tell.”
He shook his head slowly, as if admitting this truth weighed heavier than fear itself.
“Rathkar… a being that hates noise.”
He paused, then added:
“We keep away from its land,
and it avoids our sites.”
He looked back at the sword embedded in the stone.
“But…”
his voice dropped lower, more ominous,
“it is said to feed on human flesh.”
No one moved.
“And if it finds a lone human…”
He pointed toward the void where the marks ended.
“It does not kill them here.
It takes them.”
Ikida asked, for the first time without the commander’s sharpness:
“Where?”
Galzim did not answer immediately.
Then he said: “To its place.”
He lifted his gaze to them, eyes carrying the unspoken:
“And those taken there…
do not return.”
Ikida inclined his head toward the sword. So Jadig…
Amazal interrupted, voice cracked: “He’s not dead yet.”
They all turned toward him.
He was pale, but his eyes remained fixed on the darkness, not the sword.
The scream…
was not the scream of death.
He swallowed. It was the scream of uprooting.
No one answered.
Then Galzim spoke.
He did not raise his voice.
He did not look at Amazal.
He said it as one says things that need no debate:
“It’s over.”
He lifted his head slowly, eyes carrying not cruelty, but a certainty older than pity.
“What Rathkar takes…
cannot be retrieved.”
He stepped once, pointing to the embedded sword without touching it.
“We are not facing a lost corpse, nor a captive to negotiate for.
We are before a boundary that cannot be crossed again.”
Then he added, in an even lower voice—almost burying the words rather than speaking them:
“And whoever pursues it…
joins it.”
Vaelor finally spoke, voice low:
“You speak as though death… is mercy.”
Galzim did not answer at once.
He continued to stare at the embedded sword,
then said slowly, as if opening a door that cannot be closed:
“Sometimes…
it is.”
Cillian lifted her head toward him, face pale: “Sometimes?”
Galzim exhaled deeply, as if his chest expelled a memory he did not wish to recall.
“Rathkar does not always devour.”
He paused, then added, voice even lower, more menacing:
“Sometimes it leaves the body alive…
and destroys what lies within.”
He stepped forward, not toward them, but into the darkness.
“Those it does not eat…
are remade.”
Ikida clenched his fist: “Remade?”
Galzim nodded slowly.
“A body that walks.
Eyes that watch.
A voice that speaks when needed.”
Then he spoke the sentence that cemented terror in place:
“But no one returns from there as themselves.”
A moment of silence followed, then he concluded, without exaggeration:
“That is the fate we fear in Tizra…
for it is worse than death.”
Amazal shook his head slowly.
Not in hasty refusal,
but with the defiance of a man unwilling to let the world close a door in his name.
“No.”
He said it softly, yet shattering,
as if the word alone could halt something greater than all of them.
They turned toward him.
His face was pale, but his voice did not tremble.
“All of this…”
He gestured toward the sword, toward the darkness, toward the place where the scream had ended.
“happened because of me.”
He stepped forward, then another step, as if the ground itself summoned him.
“If that passage below had not opened for me…
if I had not delayed…
if we had not left him here alone—”
His voice broke for a moment, not in weakness, but because words were no longer enough.
“Jadig was not taken because he was weak,”
he said, eyes still fixed on the void,
“but because he stood in my place.”
Galzim approached him, voice heavier than harshness could convey:
“Guilt does not bring back the dead.”
Amazal finally lifted his head to him.
In his eyes, there was no hope…
only resolve.
“Perhaps not,”
he said slowly.
“But it stops me from leaving him.”
Another silence fell.
Then he added, voice softer yet sharper than steel:
“If there is a fate worse than death…
to flee it is betrayal.”
They exchanged glances.
Ikida understood what was said without it being spoken.
He did not ask: Will we go?
Instead, with the voice of a commander who sees the storm and chooses to walk into it, he said:
“Then…
we must find how to reach him before what remains is lost.”
