The forest had gone too quiet all of a sudden.
Darkness unnatural.
No howls. No wind. No insects. No whispers.
Just the eerie flickering of the broken lamp in Sael's hand, casting a jaundiced, sickly light across the dead caravan.
He sat hunched against a tree, clutching his bleeding, reopened head. His breath came in ragged gasps. The cold bite of iron still clinked at his wrists with every twitch. Beside him, the body of a boy lay impaled, eyes wide open, forever frozen in terror.
Sael wanted to close the boy's eyes.
But something told him to stay still.
Something was watching. He was feeling a gaze.
The other slaves now free, had begun to wake, still dazed from the explosion. Some crawled. Some limped. One began to cry.
The slavers, too, must've been injured since none were trying to recapture them. In the scarlet glow of the broken lamp, their faces flickered into view.
And what Sael saw wasn't just shock. They were terrified.
'Th–They're scared of something!!'
Then, from within the unnatural silence, a sound.
A single scream. Shrill, sharp, and short-lived.
Then silence again.
A slaver's voice called out in the distance.
"Sahi Soho? Tatai hoka!"
Sael didn't understand the words again. But if he had been able to understand, he might've heard,
"Who's there?! Show yourself!"
He waited for the next sound, eyes still fixed on the boy's body. But his thoughts speculating all short of horror.
'What's going on!? Why am I so afraid all of a sudden?'
But no words came out of his tightly closed mouth.
Then...Crunch! Crunch!
The sound of bone being split.
Another scream. This one longer, wailing, echoing into the unseeable dark.
And silence once more.
Sael's eyes widened. Now he understood why the slavers weren't chasing them.
They were too busy getting slaughtered.
Whatever was out there… it wasn't human. It wasn't an animal either.
A young woman, one of the slaves bolted into the woods, dragging her chain behind her. Panting. And then, she was just… gone.
No scream. No sound. Just gone. Like she had been ripped out of existence.
Panic followed.
Chains rattled like windchimes in a storm. Bodies scrambled in every direction crashing through trees, crawling in the mud, praying to long-forgotten gods.
A man near Sael tried to run too.
An unseen force grabbed him mid-air. He twisted back arched unnaturally before slamming into a tree so hard his skull burst like a rotten tomato.
Blood painted the bark.
Sael gagged.
He stayed low. Crawling. Not running.
Not yet.
Whatever it was...it killed anything that moved.
His eyes scanned the shattered wagons. Slaver corpses littered the ground. Some were torn in half. Others still twitched. One man, the one who had picked him up in the woods, armored in iron, was being dragged into the trees by his throat.
But nothing was holding him. Nothing.
He clawed at the dirt, eyes bulging, screaming until he vanished into blackness.
Then...Breathing. Right behind him.
Sael froze.
Hot, wet breath on his neck. But no sound. No footsteps. No body. Just a single presence.
He dared not turn.
He closed his eyes and held his breath.
'Don't move... don't move... don't—'
"Snap!"
A twig broke to his left. And the breath vanished.
The sound of tearing flesh returned, someone else had drawn its attention.
This time, Sael didn't wait. He found an opening and ran.
Didn't look back at the lifeless body of the boy. Didn't say a word. He just ran. No direction. No destination. Only instinct. And fear.
He clutched his rattling chains and ran. Branches clawed at his skin, roots tripped his feet, iron dug into his wrists.
He wasn't alone. Others ran too. Screaming. Praying. But most Bleeding.
Then came the roar, not loud, but deep, as if it rumbled up from beneath the earth itself. A sound that didn't just echo. It reverberated through bone. Like something ancient had just woken up.
A blast of invisible force swept through the trees.
That's when Sael saw it.
The wizard dressed old man, chanting something. A flicker of magic forming. But before he could finish, he was torn apart mid-step. Not just sliced. Unmade. Reduced to red mist and bone dust.
Sael dived behind a rock, hands over his head, sobbing. His own breath thundered in his ears.
He waited. And waited.
The sounds grew faint. The screams faded.
Then… nothing. Just the forest again.
Silent. Broken. Burnt. Bloody.
Sael coughed, spitting blood. His heart pounded like war drums in his chest. He didn't know what had happened. And he didn't care.
All he knew that he was still alive.
And this time...He was the only still alive.
***
The unnatural night still hadn't gone. In fact, it kept getting darker.
Sael was hiding beneath a group of massive rocks, holding his breath, holding back every sound his body might make, as if his life depended on it.
Right now, all he wanted was for this damn night to end. For the first time in his new life, he missed the terrifying howls echoing from the shadowed woods.
'What had happened? Why?'
His mind couldn't keep up anymore. He slowly pulled out a knife he had taken from a dead armored man lying in front of him.
The blade was rusted, crusted with blood from some forgotten kill. It hadn't even been cleaned. But it was better than nothing. Only if he could even see the thing he was supposed to fight.
A ghost? A phantom? A wraith?
He wasn't even sure if such things existed in this cursed world. But holding the knife gave him a kind of hope. Even though fragile and foolish, but real. Hope he wouldn't have had otherwise.
All of his senses had been sharpened by fear. Maybe that's why he felt it, that presence drawing closer. Something alive.
Sael's heartbeat pounded like drums in the silence of the night. His pupils narrowed. His breath grew heavier.
If he was going to die, he would die fighting.
With that thought, he lunged toward the approaching presence.
And he was right. It was something alive, though still a monster. The same wolf-like creature that had attacked the caravan earlier in the day. He recognized it by the deep, bloody wound across its face left by the old wizard's spell.
The creature growled. Its fur bristled. It was ready to kill and its prey was Sael.
If this had been a normal situation, Sael might have screamed and begged for his life. But not now. He had already faced fear far worse than this.
First, he was crushed to death by a giant space rock. Then, an invisible thing had begun killing everything around him for no reason. And even if it had a reason what did that have to do with a mere slave?
Sael wasn't afraid anymore. His untrained hands clutched the dagger with every ounce of strength he had left.
The wolf-like creature wasn't in great shape either. In fact, it was worse off. Half of its head had been blown away. Its only remaining eye was cloudy, its vision blurry. But it was still a beast and beasts don't die easily.
Then, something shimmered.
His eyes glowed faintly with golden light.
[Rank: High Danger]
[Astra Domain: Beast]
[Name: None]
Sael's mind, sluggish and fading, pushed through one final burst of resolve. With a roar, he lunged.
The blade stabbed directly into the beast's remaining eye.
It bit down on his arm, its teeth sinking into flesh. Its claws slashed his back in fury. Blood sprayed, warm and violent.
But Sael didn't stop. He kept stabbing, again and again, screaming with everything he had left.
Slowly, the beast's claws weakened. Its slashes grew shallow. Its growl remained, but no life was left in it.
The moment it died, Sael collapsed. The beast's final bite had ripped a chunk of flesh from his arm.
Still, he lay frozen, staring up at the starless sky. His life slipping away.
Then, once again, his eyes flickered with golden light. The runes appeared before him, shifting, reshaping into something he could somehow understand.
[You have obtained a Beast Key]
[Astra Key of Beast]
[Not usable without Astra Awakening]
[You have obtained a Spirit Core]
And with that, the glow vanished.
Lying in the dirt, bleeding out, Sael no longer hoped to survive.
He laughed. As it was all he could do.
"Heh… haha… hahaha…"
But the laughter choked into a wet cough.
But it was alright. If only this dying body of his could moved just a hour more. He might be saved. Someone would save him again. He still had that hope.
Just then… the unnatural night shifted.
It moved and bent and twisted, as if the darkness itself were alive.
From the abyss of that living night, two eyes formed. One crimson like fresh blood that flows through all. The other golden like the final light of sunset. And then came a hiss that wiped away even the tiniest trace of hope from Sael's soul.
His eyes flickered golden for the last time.
The runes formed again, shimmering brighter than ever, spelling out something terrible.
[Rank: Catastrophe]
[Astra Domain: Night]
[Title: Terror of the Night]
[Name: Diaboros]
From the void, a monstrous maw formed—massive and open.
It swallowed Sael whole.
Tossed him in the air. Bit down.
His left leg dropped a moment later, slapping the ground like a bloody lump of meat.
But the monster or whatever it was, didn't even glance at it. As if that tinder, fresh meat of the child meant nothing.
Then it vanished.
The silence vanished with it.
And the real night, the dark heaven filled with a million hidden creatures finally returned.
As if… it had never left.