"So many... memories." Claude closed his eyes, struggling to sift through the chaotic flood of images surging through his mind.
"Hah...! Haah...!" Ragged breaths tore from his lips as he clutched his head, his fingers digging into his scalp. The sheer weight of it all—the foreign memories, the overwhelming sensations—threatened to crush him.
Then—
'Wait—?!' His eyes snapped open. A sudden, stark realisation jolted through him.
He just clutched his head. He could...
'I can move?!' Blurred from exhaustion, his vision darted around, piecing together the fragmented world around him. Dust drifted lazily in the air, illuminated by the eerie red glow peeking through the shattered walls.
Hawden.
He was back in Hawden. The real Hawden.
As the strain in his mind began to subside, his surroundings took on clearer shapes—wreckage, broken beams, jagged remnants of what was once a home. Stone walls, now turned to rubble, barely stood against the chaos outside.
A wooden beam had collapsed, forming an improvised barricade behind which Claude had taken cover. Dust clung to his clothes, and shards of shattered pottery littered the floor beneath him.
And then, in the dim shelter of the ruins, he saw her.
Evelyn.
She was curled up against a fractured brick wall, her breathing steady, lost in deep sleep despite the distant echoes of destruction.
Claude exhaled, a long, weary sigh escaping his lips. "It seems bringing her with me was the right decision..."
If she hadn't been here—if he had been alone when those memories struck—he would have been completely defenceless. A sitting duck, left at the mercy of whatever horrors roamed outside.
Still, something about it all gnawed at him.
Claude's fingers curled into a fist. "Still..." he muttered, narrowing his eyes. "Why now? Why did those memories only surface now?"
The memories—glimpses of a life that was supposed to belong to this body but felt utterly foreign.
Why had they remained hidden for so long?
What caused them to awaken?
And that crimson pillar…
What connection did it have to these memories?
More questions. Too many questions.
But fate wasn't going to give him time to find the answers.
Shwiiing!
A sharp, creeping noise slithered into Claude's ears. His breath hitched as his gaze snapped toward its source.
Slowly, inch by inch, an ominous scarlet glow bled through the cracks in the broken walls, seeping into the ruined home like liquid fire.
Claude's muscles tensed as he turned toward the outside world. The sky burned in a suffocating crimson haze, its light flickering unnaturally like a flame starved of air.
Not the light of dawn.
No.
This was something far worse.
-----
----------
----------------
Clop! Clop!
Golden hooves of the deer struck the ground as Alfred dismounted his steed, his eyes locking onto the scene before him.
A pillar of seething crimson light loomed ahead, surging skyward from a ritualistic circle, twisting and writhing like a living thing. It did not simply stretch toward the heavens—it tore through them. The sky above, once fractured by the initial eruption, now warped and widened.
The jagged rift pulsed and expanded, stretching apart like the splitting flesh of a festering wound. Within the ever-growing chasm, the void churned, swirling with shifting shadows and flickers of something. Something pressing against the veil of reality.
And standing before this harrowing spectacle were figures cloaked in heavy robes, their faces swallowed by the abyss of their hoods—most of them, at least.
One stood apart from the rest. Stalwart. Unmasked.
"William…!" Alfred ground the name through clenched teeth, his voice thick with restrained fury. At the sound of his voice, the figures turned as one, their unseen eyes boring into him from beneath their veils of darkness.
William smirked, his gaze sharpening as it settled on Alfred. "Well, well..." His voice slithered through the air, laced with mockery. "What do we have here? Another… traitor?" He hissed the final word, his amusement vanishing, replaced by simmering contempt.
William's fists clenched as he took a step forward, eyes ablaze with something deeper than hatred. "Again, and again! All you do is interrupt us! Why?! Have you not done enough all those centuries ago? When you forsook Him?"
"I will not let you, Alfred. Not again. This time, no one will save you—especially not you!"
Whoosh!
With no warning, William's prosthetic leg coiled with tension before launching him forward like a thunderbolt.
Crash!
A piercing impact rang out as his strike met something solid—but not Alfred.
Bang!
Before he could react, a massive golden bear materialised before him, its claws carving through the air with monstrous force, hammering him into the ground.
The ground shattered beneath the impact. The crater bloomed outward, splitting the cobblestone streets like brittle parchment.
Alfred sighed, shaking his head. "William… You couldn't beat me then, and you certainly can't beat me now."
Despite his words, he did not pause his assault. With a flick of his wrist, his golden constructs surged forward, diving into the crater. A storm of dust erupted, obscuring the scene.
Roar!
Schlick!
Thud!
Bam!
As the dust began to settle, the battlefield was revealed.
William moved like a spectre amid the chaos. He twisted past a bear's sweeping claws. As a falcon dived, its talons outstretched—he ducked, the wind of its strike grazing his scalp.
When a wolf lunged, jaws snapping inches from his throat—he sidestepped in a blink and drove his fist into its gullet.
Hurkk!
The wolf crumpled, vanishing in a burst of golden motes as William staggered back, panting, blood dripping from the corner of his lips. His body was battered—clothes torn, an open wound seeping at his waist. And yet, he refused to fall. Not again.
"Oi! William!" A cloaked figure called from the sidelines, drawing both combatants' attention. "Ya need our help or what?"
William did not answer. His fingers trembled as they curled into fists. "Dammit…" he muttered under his breath. "Not again! I will not fail this again!"
Staggering to his feet, William flicked his wrist. His blood, which had dyed his clothes and spilt onto the ground, soon surged forth, coalescing into a massive crimson spear.
Alfred narrowed his eyes as he saw this, his gaze briefly flicking to the robed figures who, for now, remained motionless.
He needed to end this fast. William was not his only foe. Alfred raised a hand toward the sky, his voice steady as he chanted:
"Coil and writhe, O gilded wyrm!
From hallowed lands, let these sinners burn!
Fangs of dawn, strike through the night!
Shed the old, be born in new light!"
The golden creatures surrounding William shimmered before vanishing. In their place, radiant motes of gold hovered, suspended in the air like fireflies caught in a gentle breeze. For a breath, they paused.
Then, as if seized by an unseen force, they rushed upward, spiralling together, fusing into something far greater. A shadow soon eclipsed the battlefield.
A colossal golden serpent now towered over all, its gleaming scales rippling like liquid sunlight. Its sheer size dwarfed the ruins, its tongue, thick as an entire man, flickered through the air like a banner of triumph.
Twin eyes, vast and unblinking, locked onto William with an intelligence beyond mortal comprehension.
"No." William's breath hitched. "You're not an Initiate! How could this—"
Wrought with desperation, William grasped onto the sanguine spear before him, before hurling it towards Alfred.
Whoosh!
The spear split the air, streaking towards its target as tendrils of blood trailed behind it. Nevertheless, as it neared Alfred, time seemed to slow. Then, with a speed which belied its size, the radiant serpent rushed to stand before Alfred, guarding its master.
Fwoooosh!
The serpent exhaled. A torrent of golden flames erupted from its maw, roaring forth like the breath of some vengeful god. The air boiled in its wake.
The very ground beneath it warped and cracked, cobblestone melting into molten slag as the fire consumed everything in its path.
"Cough!" Alfred shielded his eyes, his vision blinded by the sheer brilliance of the flames.
As the inferno dimmed, the battlefield came into view once more.
What had once been an ocean of fire was now a blackened wasteland, ash and soot coating the ground in a blanket of ruin.
And William…
Was nowhere to be seen.
"Haaah..." A sigh slipped from Alfred's lips.
But his moment of relief was short-lived. His eyes flicked toward the robed figures who still lingered, unmoving.
He frowned. "See? This is the end you fools so relentlessly chase. You are dooming both yourselves and this very world."
Hearing this a figure stepped forward, lowering his hood. A middle-aged man with jet-black hair and a single dark eye.
The other half of his face was something else entirely—a gleaming construct of steel, fused seamlessly to his flesh, his jaw and cheek moulded from dark metal, intricate veins of silver running through it like circuitry beneath his skin.
The man chuckled. "Say, Alfred… has anyone ever told you to stop spouting that drivel of yours?" His smirk widened. "Because if you keep at it, we just might have to reunite you with that wench you called a wife."
Alfred's breath hitched.
"Hugh!" His voice trembled with barely contained fury. Beside him, the golden serpent hissed.
Hugh's smirk remained. "As much as I would love to thank you and Elizabeth for your contributions to our grand cause… your fight isn't over just yet."
Alfred's fists clenched, but then—
His gaze snapped sideways.
The crater.
A pool of blood writhed and twitched before reforming as William. The bloodied William crawled toward the ritual circle ever so nearby. His breath came in ragged gasps, steam rising from his mouth in the chill air, but his eyes—his eyes burned with manic purpose.
Inching closer, he loomed over the body of the sacrifice he had murdered. The victim's eyes remained wide in death, fixed in a nigh eternal stillness.
With a snarl, William climbed over the motionless chest and pressed his palm flat against it. The flesh offered no resistance. His arm sank in with a sickening shlorp, warmth and viscera wrapping around him like clinging mud.
His fingers closed around the organ—that organ—and he tore it free. The heart was foul. Not red, but dark—nearly black—veined with strands of glistening violet.
He stared at it, bile rising to the back of his throat. Then, with jaws clenched, he bit in. The taste was foul. Thick. Metallic and putrid, like rusted chains drowned in rot. He gagged, lips trembling, but he did not stop. He could not stop.
Shoving piece after piece into his mouth, he chewed with shaking hands, swallowing each bite as though forcing down chunks of hatred made flesh.
His body convulsed as the last string of sinew snapped between his teeth. He coughed and retched, but nothing came up. He had consumed it. All of it.
Then—
The air shuddered. A crimson aura pulsed from within him, swallowing his figure whole, drawing in the rest of the sacrificial blood like a living cocoon.
Ba-dump! Ba-dump!
The egg of blood pulsed, its surface undulating in sync with an unnatural heartbeat. Alfred's breath was shallow as his mind raced.
Wait or attack? Should he take the risk.
It took little time for him to arrive at a decision.
"Go!"
The serpent unleashed another torrent of radiant, golden flames.
Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump!
But the egg did not break. The flames licked its surface, yet each charred layer simply regrew, again and again. As tenacious as weeds in a garden, and as vile as a sagging corpse of someone long dead.
Crack!
A fissure split the shell amid the fiery barrage.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
More and more splits marred the surface of the egg, until… something emerged.