Wrath Domain, Beyond the Wall, October 8, 2025
It had been exactly 84 days since Ashen stepped back into Seravelle after his short interlude in Esperra.
For him, though, it felt like way more time had passed due to the temporal acceleration of the dreamscape.
These days had been hands down the harshest days of his life, and most of it had been inflicted by himself.
He knew that what he was doing was overly obsessive and self-destructive, but he simply couldn't stop himself from doing his absolute best.
And having a skill like Lucid Dreamweaving simply made the ceiling of 'his best' so high that his actions started looking more like self-torture.
And more than that—his twin soul's words had broken something in him. A haze that he used to blind himself with… the veil that he used to hide behind.
Even after he stopped being a deadbeat man, trained hard, and eventually gained the Steadfast trait, that haze still persisted.
It wasn't something supernatural or extraordinary. It was simply the human's unconscious desire to avoid anything uncomfortable.
This, of course, wasn't unique to him. Ashen knew for a fact that most of the human population had the predisposition to avoid struggle, to always lean toward the fun and easy things.
It was the same for the hardworking.
When an employee goes back home after working all day, the first thing he thinks of will be rest, relaxation, and enjoyment.
A diligent student would still have days when he just wants to lounge around or skip school altogether.
Sometimes, even a dedicated boxer would just decide to spend a day at the bar with his friends instead of training.
But in Ashen's mind, after the haze had been lifted, those notions became obsolete.
A man can go on a vacation, a woman can enjoy life, and children can be happy.
Everyone can be happy, but he couldn't. Because he knew the ending.
Ashen would never forget his twin soul's revelation that he would be the only one left alive.
When he first heard it, he tried to accept it, but it was simply too unbelievable. But Alice's nightmare had been the trigger that made him accept the unbelievable.
That was why only he had no right to rest, no right to stay 'comfortable' and bury his head in the sand while ignoring the truth.
For him, every second he spent in idleness was a second that could have brought him closer to saving everyone. That was why he tried so hard.
And with the haze removed, it became simple what he had to do: Give it his best until he could alter his destiny.
⛧
On a mountainside that teemed with forests and vegetation, three soldiers in leather armor crouched in a hole behind a giant boulder.
The three bore an emblem of a crimson wall with black cracks spiderwebbing through it. The sentence 'TO THE LAST MAN' was boldly scripted on it.
They were the Bloodwall army's scouts, and they were down to the last three men.
Ashen, who was among them, crouched lower, praying to every god he knew to stay unnoticed by the creatures on the other side of the mountain.
BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions kept ringing irregularly but consistently, indicating that whatever they were hiding from wasn't a unified front, but also fought among themselves.
But in the scouts' situation, it made little difference since even the residual splashes of their fight risked wiping them out.
'I knew this promotion was too good to be true.' Ashen thought bitterly.
At first, he had mixed feelings about his new position as a scout, since, despite it being a promotion, he knew that the death rate of this division was unusually high.
Not to mention the uncommon sightings of demi-humans, even though this front was too far away from their territory.
And to Ashen's rotten luck, he had to meet this mysterious race on his second day on the job.
He couldn't say that he didn't have any curiosity toward demi-humans as an Esperian who grew up consuming fantasy novels and stories, but all his curiosity died when he saw a tall, long-eared man with blonde hair—an elf, probably—fire an arrow and shatter a mountain.
Now, all that remained was dread and the desire to return in one piece.
But alas, his job happened to be a scout, and as a scout, he had to at least know some basic information, such as who they were fighting with and their numbers.
So, on the orders of their captain, they approached the battle slowly.
The good news was that they were able to identify the two groups without drawing attention, but it was more probable that they were already noticed and ignored in favor of concentrating on their current adversaries.
The bad news, though, was that a stray arrow drifted their way, wiping out most of them.
Ashen, with his hyper vision, had seen it coming first and grabbed the nearest soldier he could get his hands on and jumped back, which allowed him and the soldier to survive, alongside the team's captain, who stayed on the backline.
After that, the battle got more chaotic, and it became dangerous to move without the risk of catching a stray shot or being caught in an explosion.
Luckily, the three surviving men found a hidden place where they could temporarily hide and wait for the battle to end or for them to eventually move elsewhere.
"Ashen, your eyes are the sharpest among us, so you had the best shot at identifying the unknown elements. State your report."
The captain's grim voice was barely heard with the explosions' sounds still ringing in the air, but Ashen still heard him.
"...Yes, Sir. I've seen three elves, two carrying bows and one carrying a thin saber blade." Ashen started his report. "They were fighting five cloaked men who seemed to be proficient in magic from the amount of spells they were throwing around..."
The captain's expression got even grimmer. "...Was there anything unusual about the cloaked men?"
Ashen furrowed his brows before slowly nodding. "Yes, all of them had this weird symbol drawn on the back of their cloaks... the black attire, the bizarre emblem, and their overall atmosphere made them appear as if they were from some cult."
"What kind of symbol...?" The captain asked, but his tone was more urgent this time.
Ashen, seeing his captain's urgency, promptly answered. "A full moon covered by seven small stars arranged like an eye across its surface—"
"—The Veiled Moon!" The captain's voice was now downright panicked when he cut him off, crying some strange name.
'Is it really a cult...?' Ashen had a questioning look, but he held himself back from asking since he noticed that the battle blasts had stopped for some time now.
"Captain, we should probably focu—"
Ashen had to swallow his words as his eyes landed on the three elves that suddenly appeared not far from their hidden hole.
'Shit.'
They looked to be in a sorry state with their disheveled appearance and the countless small wounds laden across their bodies, but the thought of resisting never crossed the three soldiers' minds because of the overwhelming presence that they radiated.
It was simply akin to an ant meeting an elephant.
"Boy... you know the Veiled Moon?" The elf in the center took a step forward as he addressed the captain.