The wind howled through the skeletal remains of what once might have been a great city. Buildings stood like cracked tombstones, their facades scorched by fire and time. The air stank of ash and rotting memory. Arkan stepped over the shattered remnants of a billboard that had collapsed, the words too faded to read, but he didn't care. He wasn't here for nostalgia.
He was searching for something.
No—someone.
The Pact he'd formed was still echoing in his veins. Since the moment he bled into the glyph and sealed it with death's mark, something had shifted inside him. He no longer merely commanded death; he had become a bridge to something ancient, unknowable, watching him through cracks in reality.
His pace quickened.
Every shadow bent slightly in his direction, every silence felt like a whisper too quiet to hear. Arkan didn't trust his own senses anymore. Since Chapter 4—The First Pact—he had begun to feel watched, even among the dead. It wasn't fear. Arkan didn't fear. It was something worse: awareness.
The dead no longer stayed still.
A dry scraping echoed from a nearby alley. Without flinching, Arkan extended his hand. Shadows coalesced like liquid smoke, forming a jagged spear of bone and blood. He hurled it without hesitation.
A shriek.
The thing collapsed into brittle fragments—a malformed ghoul stitched from leftover souls, unstable and ravenous. Arkan barely glanced at it before moving on.
His mind wandered to the girl.
Nira.
Her name had lodged itself in his thoughts like a thorn. She'd witnessed his awakening, seen his raw power—but more than that, she hadn't flinched. She had looked through the horror and seen something else. Something even Arkan wasn't sure existed.
He paused atop a cracked overpass and stared into the distance. In the far horizon, a monolith rose—a tower of black iron and obsidian, pulsing with violet light.
There it was.
The Cathedral of Binding.
Where the First Necromancer had once risen. Where Arkan's next step would unfold.
But between him and that place lay the Valley of Whispers.
And it was calling to him now.
By the time Arkan reached the valley's mouth, the air had become thick with voices. Not loud. Not coherent. Just murmurs—hundreds of them—circling his thoughts like flies over fresh blood. They clawed at memories, yanking feelings to the surface.
His mother's eyes as they dimmed under plague.
The scent of burned earth after his village fell.
The look on Nira's face when he turned away from her.
These memories weren't random. The Valley was trying to make him vulnerable.
But Arkan wasn't here to reminisce. He was here to tear truth from the corpse of history.
He descended.
Each step into the valley deepened the voices. Now they were louder—still disjointed, but familiar. Some called his name. Others wept. Others laughed in a way only the dead could laugh: hollow, bitter, mocking.
And then, from the darkest bend in the path, it emerged.
Not a beast.
Not a man.
A presence.
It had no face, only the shifting suggestion of one. Its voice was hundreds layered into one.
"Arkan, bearer of the Pact. You tread where no one survives."
He faced it calmly. "Then maybe it's time someone did."
The presence hissed like old wind. "Do you seek truth? Power? Or mercy for your sins?"
"I seek control," Arkan replied. "I seek the source."
The presence paused. Something about it shimmered. Shifted. As if it were testing him. Then it moved, not walking but gliding, wrapping tendrils of shadow around him.
"Then face what you buried."
The valley trembled.
From the ground, forms began to rise—shapes molded from sorrow and bone. Not ghouls. Not wraiths. These were different.
They were people.
His people.
His mother. His brother. His best friend. All dead. All whispering.
And all with empty eyes.
They circled him, accusing, pleading. Begging him to remember. To regret.
But Arkan stepped forward.
"I remember. I carry you all. But I will not kneel."
He opened his palm.
The glyph burned through his skin—bright crimson against the black.
The figures stopped.
The presence recoiled.
"You dare command the memory of death?"
"I am death's command."
He drove his palm into the soil. The glyph bled into the land. The wailing voices grew louder—but then twisted, changed—until they became silence.
Absolute.
The figures faded. The presence screamed once and vanished into mist.
Arkan stood alone again.
But the path had changed. A doorway had opened ahead, not physical but spiritual. It pulsed with energy. A gate to something deeper.
He stepped through.
The chamber beyond was nothing like the valley. It was warm. Alive. At its center stood a mirror—tall, framed in gold and bone.
It didn't reflect his body.
It showed something else.
A version of Arkan without scars. Without rage. Without the pact.
A boy.
Innocent.
Then the image changed—one by one, his choices burned into the reflection. Until the glass cracked.
Then shattered.
And behind it stood a figure.
Another Arkan.
Identical.
Except this one smiled.
"I've been waiting," the double said.
Arkan raised a brow. "What are you?"
"I'm the part of you that said yes too easily."
The double stepped forward. "The one that enjoyed killing."
Arkan didn't flinch. "I kill to survive."
The smile widened. "You kill to feel."
Then it attacked.
The battle wasn't of blades but of essence. Each strike sent memories flying—echoes of the past turned into weapons. Every time the double struck, Arkan relived a choice.
Letting Nira go.
Signing the Pact.
Burning his enemies.
But Arkan had learned something in the Valley: He wasn't just those moments. He wasn't just death.
He was control.
With a scream, he surged forward, absorbing every memory, every regret—not hiding from them but embracing them.
And with that, the double cracked—shards of him scattering into void.
Arkan stood over the ruins.
Not victorious.
Transformed.
He emerged from the other side of the spiritual gate.
The Cathedral loomed ahead.
His next step was clear.
But so was the warning left behind.
He was being shaped.
Not just by power, but by choice.
And soon—he would have to choose:
Remain the controller of death.
Or become something even death would fear.