She opened the box.
Inside, three vials, a folded note, a pestle, and a mortar rested in a compartment carved to fit them precisely. Nothing had shifted. Nothing had spilled. The box had been closed with care, as if someone had hoped that time itself would hesitate before disturbing its contents.
She examined them one by one.
The first vial held a violet powder, fine to the point of near weightlessness, reduced to dust through patient grinding. An herb worked carefully, without haste.The second contained a thick orange liquid, perfectly still, catching the light like ancient amber trapped in glass.The third was empty. Clean. Attentive. Too clean to be accidental.
"So you knew what you'd be missing."
A note had been tucked beneath the vials, folded with almost obsessive precision.
She took it and read.
"Grind the alchemilla and place it in the empty vial.Add the orange liquid next.Then the violet powder."
She paused, rereading the lines as if the order itself might shift.
"In that order," she murmured. "Always in that order."
She continued.
"Infuse a small amount of mana to activate the mixture.Then agitate slowly until stabilization."
She folded the note.
It was simple.Precise.And desperate, not in its wording, but in what it implied: a procedure left behind by someone who knew they would not be the one to finish it.
She placed the vials back into the box, one by one.
"You were missing only one thing," she said softly. "And you left everything else ready. As if you knew."
Her gaze lingered on the empty vial.
"Very well, Reinhard."
She closed the box.
"I'll go fetch what you lacked."
She emerged from the mine.
The night was unchanged, unmoved by what had been uncovered below. She found her horse and led him away from the dead ground, toward soil that could still yield something. Rare, in this region. Alchemilla never grew just anywhere. Never on sterile land. It sought proximity to life, however faint. Deep roots. Slow water. A warmth not yet extinguished.
She found it near a meager grove, sheltered by a split boulder, where a few stubborn plants still resisted the land's decay.
"There you are."
The plant pulsed faintly beneath her fingers, its magic subtle but persistent, almost reluctant to be taken. She cut it carefully, leaving the roots intact, then mounted again.
An hour passed.
When she returned to the Scarlet Maw, the night felt heavier. The red torches inside still burned, patient, but their light seemed lower somehow, as though something watched through it.
She descended without hesitation.
At the station, she opened the box and laid out what was needed. Mortar. Pestle. Empty vial.
She ground the alchemilla slowly. The plant released a sharp, living scent that clung to the air longer than it should have. The paste resisted beneath the pestle, as if the substance itself hesitated to be reduced.
She frowned slightly, then continued.
She transferred the paste into the empty vial, added the orange liquid, then the violet powder.
The mixture shuddered.
Not a gentle tremor. A contraction. Like a breath held too long.
She hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Then she infused a thin thread of mana.
Just enough.
The potion darkened too quickly, clouding as something passed through it, fleeting and wrong, like a foreign thought trying to take shape. The vial vibrated faintly in her hand.
She stopped the infusion at once.
Silence.
The mixture slowed. Thickened. Then, gradually, it stabilized, settling into a dense, obedient suspension.
She agitated the vial carefully until all resistance faded.
She studied the result.
"Reinhard's Draught."
This time, the name carried weight.
She did not drink.
She sealed the vial and tucked it close against her body, where she would feel the slightest change.
"Not yet," she murmured, less certain than before.
Then she turned back toward the descent.
And continued on.
***
She descended again.
Lower still, the mine changed one final time.
The stone lost its definition first. The walls no longer bore the scars of tools or the logic of excavation, but something softer, warped, as if the rock itself had been kneaded by prolonged exposure to something too dense to name. Dark red veins threaded through the stone, not carved, not splashed, but absorbed. Blood had seeped into the walls. It had been taken in.
The ground gleamed.
Not in patches.
Everywhere.
A continuous slick, viscous and treacherous, a floor without edges where blood had pooled so deeply it reflected light like blackened glass. Each step threatened to slip. Every movement demanded calculation.
She slowed.
"So that's why…"
The scarlet mist thickened ahead, no longer drifting aimlessly but clinging to the walls, crawling across the stone, gathering low to the ground like a tide held back by sheer will. It brushed her boots, coiled around her ankles, insistent, almost curious.
The air was heavy. Saturated. Warm, as if it had been breathed too long by too many dying lungs.
She understood.
"The Scarlet Maw."
It wasn't a name.
It was a statement.
She moved on.
A sharp sound split the silence.
Metal. A dry clatter. Close.
She stopped instantly.
The sound came again, clearer now. An uneven scrape, chains dragged across wet stone, slow, deliberate.
She lifted her eyes.
The Wanderer tore free from the mist.
Its body was thin, distorted, stretched beyond any natural proportion. Limbs too long for its torso, joints bent at wrong angles, barely holding together. Black chains wrapped around its arms, its chest, its throat, embedded into the flesh as if they had grown with it. Every movement tore skin already ruined. Blood no longer flowed. It oozed, thick and dark, mixing with the mist.
It did not speak.
It did not scream.
It lunged.
The chains sliced through the air with brutal force. She twisted at the last instant, boots skidding on the slick ground. Metal smashed into the wall in a burst of sparks and congealed blood. She staggered back, barely keeping her balance, pulse already climbing.
"You," she hissed, "no discussion."
The Wanderer attacked again, faster. Too fast. The chains snapped and coiled, seeking to bind her, to drag her down into the blood-soaked floor. One grazed her arm, tearing cloth and biting flesh.
She forced the breath back into her lungs.
No panic.
She raised her hand.
Golden light flared — not in an explosion, but compressed, folded inward under her will. The mist reacted instantly, churning, resisting, as if the mine itself rejected the intrusion.
She pushed harder.
Chains formed.
Not metal.
Pure magic, burning, vibrating with restrained force.
They burst outward, wrapping around the Wanderer's limbs, intertwining with the black chains in a scream of grinding pressure. The impact slammed it into the ground, its body sliding across the blood-slick floor with a heavy, wet crash.
It thrashed.
Violently.
The black chains writhed, trying to tear free. The mist condensed around it, feeding its fury, sharpening its movements. It managed to rise halfway, pulling against the golden bindings with inhuman strength.
The stone trembled.
She stumbled, drove her foot down to steady herself, mana flaring under strain. The pressure here was heavier. Every spell cost more. Every second drained her.
She advanced anyway.
Each step was a gamble.
"End of the line."
The Wanderer finally screamed — a twisted, strangled sound that barely resembled a human voice. It surged once more, tearing at the magic, nearly snapping one of the luminous chains.
She didn't hesitate.
She gathered what energy remained.
The light tightened.
Then collapsed inward.
Not a wave.
An implosion.
When the glare faded, the body lay broken and still, half-sunk into the blood-soaked stone. The black chains fell slack, heavy, silent once more.
She released her magic.
The silence that followed was crushing.
The scarlet mist recoiled slightly, as if displeased, deprived.
She studied the corpse for a brief moment, breath still unsteady, then turned away.
"One less."
But deeper still, in the suffocating depths of the mine, something waited.
And she continued her descent.
***
She continued her descent.
Lower still. Always lower.
For a brief moment, she wondered how deep a man could keep writing before words stopped being thought and became nothing more than reflex, before the mind turned into an echo clinging to a body already lost.
The tunnel opened into a narrower section. Older. Here, the stone had not been carved by tools. It had been shaped by repetition. Long gouges scarred the walls, deep and uneven, as if something had been dragged through this passage again and again, without pause. The red mist lingered there, motionless, too dense to drift.
A note rested on a flat slab of stone.
She stopped.
"Another."
She picked it up.
The parchment was damp. Not with water. Something else.
She read.
"To whoever finds this,
Those bastards from the Order have locked me away."
She exhaled slowly, holding back the instinctive response.
"They called for aid across all of Velnaïa, begged someone to descend into this pit, then, at the first sign of complication, treated me like a rabid beast. They didn't listen to my report. They didn't want to understand. To them, I was no longer Reinhard. Just a specter trying to deceive them."
Her jaw tightened.
"Of course."
"To hell with them. Their Order. Their dogma. Their idea of the common good."
A brief curl of her lip. No amusement in it.
"How am I supposed to serve anyone if I can't even obtain the herbs necessary to stay alive?"
She thought of the alchemilla.Of the vial, pressed against her side.She said nothing.
"I found no alternative. And the truth is worse than I feared. I am not ill."
She slowed.
"I am possessed."
The word carried weight.
Not like a revelation.Like a verdict delivered too late.
"The specter has begun merging with my body. Slowly. Methodically. Even my magical protections are failing. They delay the inevitable. Nothing more."
She nodded once.
"I knew it."
"With the proper ingredients, I could still prepare the draught. Reinforce my magic. Expel it.But the Order prevents me."
The parchment trembled slightly in her grip.
"So listen carefully."
She lifted her eyes for a moment, without knowing why.
"If you are reading this, find alchemilla. Prepare the potion. Everything else is already here. The herbs. The formula. The notes. Only one ingredient was missing."
A pause.
"When you return, drink the potion before approaching me. Do not stray from it. Do not alter anything."
The mist around her tightened, barely perceptible.
"Otherwise, the red specter will take you as well."
Something shifted in the air.Not a presence.An attention.
"One last thing… I have begun to speak with it.It answers.It remembers.It has a name."
She inhaled slowly.
"It calls itself the Crimson Exhaled."
The mist pulsed.
Once.
Like a breath held for too long.
She folded the letter carefully, but the parchment remained warm against her palm.
"I know," she said quietly. "I've already felt it think."
She put the note away.
Then she raised her eyes toward the depths, where the red light had grown nearly opaque.
"And now, Reinhard…"
Her hand rested against the vial, without drawing it.
"Let's see how much of you is still there to want saving."
And she continued her descent.