Dale groaned through the dark hallway and his wail echoed through the metal pipes that lined the walls. Marius didn't stop to spare a glance, the old man was hellbent on leaving this cellar.

  “He needs to rest,” Shalliah said again for the fifth time, the girl’s face tightened with concern.

  The old man gave her a cryptic look. “We keep moving!” he replied succinctly.

  Reece wasn’t fully aware of what was happening around him. He was lost in his own thoughts, cut off from the world. His vision had faded to black and white and it was devoid of any colours, the ethereal strings that surrounded him were drawn tightly to his body. He was making sure not to distract himself while he arranged his thoughts.

  Normally, he wouldn't be doing that in this situation, but he completely trusted in the leadership of the Marshal. For now, he needed to carefully sift through everything that had happened in the last few moments. What unsettled him most was the way the woman had addressed him as Gold.

  It was a common tongue used to address demigods because of their most defining trait —the golden blood. Reece had bled many times before, and his blood was red like any other human’s. Yet the woman seemed certain he was gold-blooded. Was it a mistake, or was there something about his heritage lost within the gaps of his memory?

  He stopped thinking about it after pondering and not finding any valid answers. Then he tried wrapping his head around the ritual itself. He picked up a few things from the entire setting. Ritualistic magic was vast and impossibly complex, far too broad for anyone to fully grasp. Still, he knew a thing or two about it, just as he did about most things..

  Reece didn't just come by all this knowledge by chance. He was inquisitive and liked reading but he also had other-parents that seemed to have encountered everything in the vast realm. His most important source of information, however, was Argaz. His stories covered countless historical events. Though many came from unverified sources, they were broadly accurate.

  There were a few things he picked up from the rituals which didn't seem important at first but now that he thought about it, it felt rather crucial. The first thing were the candles with blue flames. According to the legends, blue flames were used to pray to four gods, distinctively.

  Blue flames burned hotter than ordinary yellow ones, so they represented the ultimate form of destruction. The ritualists were using red cloaks and only two of the four gods were associated with the colour red. Narrowing it down was the number of people in the room—there were nine.

  The number nine in the ancient stories didn't mean much. In fact numbers were not a real factor in the rituals of the past. However with the commencement of this new age and the discovery of equations as another type of language, numbers became rather important. Each god was assigned a number.

  For example, seven is the number of perfection, the number of the god of light — Aureli. Nine, however, was the number of the goddess of ruination and insanity — Airé.

  Of the sixteen gods known to the people of Egrimorth only Airé fit the entire ritual setting. Although he wasn't very sure but for a group named Evil Cult that would be very likely. It aligned with the malignant nature of said goddess. The only thing he didn't understand about the ritual was actually the most important thing. The carrion mass of writhing flesh.

  He pondered on it for a while and then decided to stop thinking about it. He was about to move to his next train of thought when someone tugged at him. He glanced sideways to see the concerned gaze on Shalliah's face.

  “Tell them we need to stop. Dale will die if I don't at least offer him some kind of healing, that pain will kill him.” she complained.

  Reece frowned, for a moment he couldn't register what she was saying but after a while it came to him. “We do need to stop,” he sighed. He didn't agree only because he felt Dale needed the treatment but because he didn't like being in the dark. Neither of them, not even Al Sahim had spoken about what happened to them behind that door.

  He walked briskly to the front of the cohort and stood in front of Marius whose gaze was expressionless. The elderly man halted. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “We need to stop.” he said simply, almost sounding like an order.

  “Well my orders are clear, we keep moving!”

  “You can keep moving, the rest of us stop and I want to hear a full account of what happened back there.” he countered.

  The elderly man chuckled. “You don't give the orders around here boy.”

  “Neither do you, that role is for the captain and he is in pain.” Reece replied, the old man wanted to speak but the boy continued speaking. “We have already stopped for more than half a minute, nothing has happened, I don't think a three minute break will put us in any more jeopardy. So you can either listen or you can try to enforce your order by putting a blade in everyone's guts, but right now we are stopping and that is final!”

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  The Marshal stared at him for a while before his face twisted into a smile. “Alright,” he muttered before placing his sword on the ground. “Three minutes!”

  Shalliah rushed to the captain immediately, bringing out a pouch from her pocket. The pouch contained several wrapped herbs and bandages. Reece watched her begin the treatment, he noticed the leg wound have been cauterized.

  “What happened out there?” he asked.

  Al Sahim inhaled before replying. “Wraiths. A dozen of them at least. They stabbed him with a venomous substance, “ he pointed to Dale. “The Marshal had to cut his leg to save him.”

  “What happened to the wraiths?”

  “He also killed them all!” Al Sahim pointed to Marius. “That Still blade is a scary weapon but he was way scarier. The wraiths bled but even when they died they remained invisible.”

  Reece turned to the Marshal. “If you’ve killed the wraiths, then what else are we running from?” he demanded.

  Marius glanced at him. “I don't know. All this just doesn't sit well with me, it feels like a grand design of someone's intricate plans and I hate being a puppet,” he replied.

  Reece nodded, he understood that train of thought. “How about you boy, what happened in there? You kids looked like you had battled demons.”

  He described what they went through swiftly, leaving out places where he was called Gold blooded on purpose. Shalliah and Jalin glanced at him in a curious manner but didn't say anything.

  “Alright, I am done!” Shalliah announced.

  Al Sahim helped the man up and they continued once more. They didn't encounter anything until they arrived at a possible exit. A rusted metallic ladder was attached to the concrete wall and it led to a small round hatch in the roof.

  “What is this place?” Shalliah blurted, her voice echoing across the entire room.

  The Marshal glanced at her for a while before deciding her question actually warranted an answer. “There are several vaults such as this scattered around the Great Forest. Most of them were built as research guilds to better understand the bizarre nature of the jungle.” he explained. “This one is one of such vaults, most of them are abandoned now!”

  He climbed up the ladder and pushed open the hatch, he climbed out and then signalled for the rest of them to follow. They all let Dale go first. It took a lot of difficulty, even with Al Sahim who helped him climb. After that the rest of them filed out.

  Reece stepped out last and when he climbed out, he was greeted by a foggy atmosphere. It was so hard for them to see each other even at close proximity. He sighed realizing they were now deep into the Harrowing. He glanced around to try and determine their exact location, although he knew that would be difficult. In the Harrowing, the trees possessed an uncanny habit of moving around.

  “I will suggest we move in groups,” Marius began. “Dale…” he paused, his brows stiffened into a frown.

  Reece sensed the danger just a fraction too late. A vine coiled around his ankles, yanking him into the thick mist. Screams echoed as he was pulled under, grunting as he twisted his body, trying to ease the relentless drag. Soon enough, his body slammed against a tree and more vines tied him firmly to the trunk. He tried moving but the vines only grew tighter.

  “Gold.” A voice called from within the mist as footsteps approached him.

  Reece frowned as three people appeared from the thick fog. He didn't see them clearly at first but when they got closer to him he could clearly make out their appearance. Three men stood before him. Two looked like cutthroats, their faces marked with tattoos and piercings. The third was different—calm, hood pulled low over his head, a long duster coat trailing along the floor as he advanced toward Reece.

  He pulled his bandaged hands from his pockets and drew back his hood, revealing a blue-eyed young man, just a little older than Reece. “Your survival at this stage is paramount to our cause. It will be of great calamity to us if you were to die…” he paused and shook his head. “Dare I say… Beyond Calamity.”

  “What do you want with me, what's all this?” Reece demanded.

  “I am going to be plain with you, we don't want anything from you, I personally would have killed you a long time ago if it were left to my decision but the visitor needs you. I mean not you in particular but we both know Golds don't necessarily find human kingdoms as comfortable habitats.”

  “But I am not a Demigod.” he sighed. “I bleed red, like any other man. You have the wrong person!"

  The man chuckled and ruffled his deep brown hair. “The Evil Cult doesn't make mistakes and I can assure you, even if we did, the visitor doesn't.”

  “Visitor?” Reece demanded, frowning. When he first used the word he didn't think much about it but now, he felt it meant something.

  “We don't hide who we are, Reece. “ the man said, speaking familiarly with him like they were friends. “We don't wish any good upon this world, we are a bunch of evil miscreants that have grown tired of all human pretenses. The visitor is a pinnacle of evil and we need some answers from it. That is all!”

  Reece stiffened as the man stepped closer to him reaching for his shirt. He pulled open his cloth and reached for the inner pocket pulling out the talisman that he’d used earlier. “How did you manage to get such a powerful spirit of madness sealed in here?”

  There was no answer so the man chuckled. “ No matter,” the man said, then held the locket high in the air. “Destruction doesn't really care,” the man said as the locket rusted right before Reece’s eyes and soon enough, the metal degraded so much it blew away in little particles of dust.

  “We don't want you summoning such a high grade spirit into this realm again.”

  “You saw that?” Reece asked in surprise.

  “Me, gods no.” he replied. “Taka did, he went raving mad for a while,” he said pointing to one of the two cutthroats.

  “So, what will you do to me now?”

  “Now, we await the visitor!”

  “Lovely proposition, but I am afraid I don't have the time. I would love to meet this visitor of yours, sure he is a nice guy, but I have places to be,” he said.

  “Oh, I understand, a little problem though, how would you get out of the vines and past us?”

  “Friendship, obviously!”

  As if on cue, a fourth man stepped out of the mist and standing before them was Marshal Marius, looking rather angry.

  The two cutthroats dashed towards him brandishing broad swords as they launched a simultaneous attack on him. The vines around Reece snapped and he stepped forward.

  He glanced up at the blue eyed man. “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Odran,” the man said with a cheeky smile as Shalliah stepped out of the fog standing side by side with Reeece. “A question of mine before we go,” he said, glancing back at the fight between the Marshal and the two cutthroats. “Do two acolytes match up to a Chalice?” he demanded with a smile.

  “Guess we will find out!” Shalliah said as massive tentacles of vine formed around her.

  ***

  Underneath the vault, the flesh grotesquerie attached to the wall began to writhe more aggressively and wails escaped from within it. Different voices screamed and screeched in overlapping tones. The embryonic sac between this carrion mass began to beat faster.

  The tiny arms pushed against it more, dragging at the surface of the membrane wanting release. “Help us,” voices came from within the mass of flesh but they only emitted wrongness.

  The black goo that dripped from the body of the flesh monster began to corrode the very floor of the room, degrading everything with a vile and sickening hunger.

  The embryonic sac gave way at last to the thousand of hands pushing against it and it burst out, causing white and yellowish fluid to fill the entire room.

  The space left after the destruction of the embryo was similar to the innards of a normal human. However, no baby was coming out of this wound, only a black smoke passed through it and soon

  enough it dissolved into space.

  The carrion mass of flesh then began a new set of likely eternal cries of pain and anguish.