Ash's first thought was: I'm alive.
His second was: Where the hell am I?
His third was: Why am I walking next to a wooden wagon?
Ash blinked. Looking down, he curiously observed the same mist, yet it felt completely different. It was thinner, less hungry. It floated slowly, carried by a gentle wind.
He looked around. They were crossing a dirt path between mountains. To his right, about five or six meters away, there was a steep drop into a huge precipice. The wagon moved pulled by four horses guided by the driver. Ash assumed he was in a caravan.
Then he looked at his attire.
Simple armor, made of leather. At his waist rested a sheathed sword; its weight made him lean slightly to one side. He could hear footsteps beside him. Another man, young, perhaps around seventeen or eighteen years old. He wasn't the only one. Ahead, there were five with better armor riding horses. Besides the knight or guard at his side, there were two others behind.
Nine in total.
Ash took a deep breath.
"Rune."
The air before him swirled.
Letters of light —not golden, not white, but that ancient gray he now recognized everywhere— began to trace themselves in the void. They weren't stable lines. They flickered like candles in the wind. But they were there. They were real.
Ash read:
Name: Ashfall
True Name: —
Rank: Aspirant
Attributes: (Nothing) (Spark of Divinity) (Shadows) (Soul)
Aspect: Apparition
Aspect Description: Like an apparition, your body is not your own. An apparition can only instinctively sense where to go.
Memories: —
Echoes: —
Ash stared at the last line. He had absolutely nothing.
Well, it wasn't that he had nothing. Rather, within his soul, he possessed no Memories.
He remembered that Memories were recollections of weapons that once existed and the Nightmare Spell had recreated, granting them to Awakened upon killing Nightmare Creatures. That's why they were called Memories.
If he wanted a Memory, he would have to face Nightmare Creatures.
The idea fascinated him while also terrifying him. He sighed. He had written a Shadow Slave fanfic and had to read the novel, so he knew how everything worked. Or well, a good part of it.
Ash, while walking silently attentive to his surroundings, took stock of his overall situation.
Somehow he had been sent to the world of Shadow Slave, through that mist that appeared out of nowhere in his room. When he regained consciousness, he was falling until he ended up in his first Nightmare.
He didn't know what that meant and doubted he would understand it soon. He could only give his maximum to survive.
His Aspect wasn't useful. Beyond simply giving him a kind of intuition about where he needed to go, nothing else.
All he possessed was the sword, the leather armor, and nothing else.
The caravan advanced for a while. Ash looked at the gray sky that had never seen sunlight. Slowly it darkened, signaling the arrival of night.
Ash heard a strong voice come from the front.
"Halt! We'll rest here tonight! Continuing now will be dangerous!"
The voice was strong and clear, with an unmistakable tone of command.
The caravan positioned itself on a flat part of the path, an elevated area easily defensible beside the huge rock wall.
Ash watched as the knights, as well as the people wearing armor like his, began to prepare everything. He curiously observed some oil lamps with a blue light, placed every few meters forming a circle.
The mist swirled at knee height, dense as milky water. To his right, the cliff dropped into a familiar gray abyss with no visible bottom. To his left, the mountains rose as far as the eye could see.
"Nice place," he murmured.
"No place is nice in the Misty Mountains," responded the soldier at his side. "Here you only survive, if you're lucky or if the gods decide so."
Having said this, the man walked away with a serious tone.
Ash was left alone. He looked around for a moment before walking a bit to explore.
The other guards —because that's what he was, he suddenly understood, that was his role here— had also gotten down from their vehicles. Men and women in thick clothing, simple weapons, cautious expressions. Ordinary people. People who were just trying to move supplies from one point to another without dying in the attempt.
People who looked at him as if he were one of them.
"Hey," a woman called him from the wagon ahead. She looked about forty, premature gray hair, an axe hanging from her belt. "You. The one with the stupid face."
"Yes?"
"Are you new? I hadn't seen you before."
"I'm... new, yes."
The woman nodded, as if that explained everything.
"Listen, newbie. This is an active mist zone. The beasts come out when visibility drops. If you see the mist suddenly thicken, don't wait for orders. Run toward the lamps. The lamps scare off most of them. But if you hear voices or familiar figures, don't hesitate and prepare for battle. This mist is deceptive and many die from its tricks."
"Thanks," said Ash. "For the advice."
The veteran nodded and walked away. Ash looked distrustfully at the mist licking his boots.
He sat down leaning against the wheel of a wagon, sword crossed over his legs. Night fell quickly in the mountains, and with it the cold became sharper. The other guards conversed quietly around the blue lamps. Some ate dry rations. Others simply stared at the mist in silence.
"Hey, newbie."
He lifted his head. The young man who had walked beside him during the day was there, with a leather bag in his hand.
"Aren't you eating?"
"I'm not hungry."
The boy shrugged and sat down next to him. He was maybe seventeen, maybe eighteen. Acne on his cheeks. Fingers stained with something that looked like grease.
"I'm Kael," he said, biting into a piece of hard bread. "Third trip."
"Ash."
"Weird name."
"Thanks."
Kael chuckled. He chewed in silence for a while.
"Is it your first time in the Misty Mountains?"
"Yes."
"It shows. You have that look of I don't want to be here but I also don't want it to show that I don't want to be here."
Ash didn't know how to respond to that.
"Look," Kael said, lowering his voice. "The veterans give you useful advice, but I'll give you the real advice. See those lamps?"
Ash nodded.
"The blue light scares off most beasts, yes. But what no one says is that it also attracts them. The older ones. The ones that have already learned that behind the light there's flesh."
The silence stretched uncomfortably.
"Thanks," said Ash. "For the real advice."
"Don't mention it. Just don't freeze up when the moment comes."
Kael got up, shook the crumbs from his pants, and left.
Ash kept staring at the blue lamps. The light flickered. The mist was still there, dense as milk, crawling slowly along the ground.
He drew his sword a few inches from the sheath. Common steel. No runes, no shine, no History. A weapon made to kill normal things in a world that had stopped being normal long ago.
He sheathed it again.
'Alright. Let's review the attributes I possess,' thought Ash, eating the food even though he wasn't really hungry.
Night closed completely over the Misty Mountains.
Ash again invoked the runes but this time only focused on his attributes.
Attributes: (Child of Nothing) (Spark of Divinity) (Shadows) (Soul)
[Child of Nothing] Attribute Description: (Nothing recognizes you as one of its own.)
[Spark of Divinity] Attribute Description: (Your soul carries the scent of divinity. As if someone had lightly touched it long ago.)
[Shadows] Attribute Description: (You have an affinity with shadows, allowing you to see in darkness.)
[Soul] Attribute Description: (Your soul is strong and difficult to destroy. Granting you great resistance to soul and mental attacks.)
'I see,' thought Ash, reading the description of his attributes. He still didn't understand the Spark of Divinity attribute or what it really meant, however he was grateful not to possess the Fated attribute moving invisible threads to make him go through enormous hell.
But Ash, despite all this, still didn't have the faintest idea how he could pass his first Nightmare or what he was supposed to do.
Killing them all was simply impossible; there were too many, and he felt that wasn't the objective. His Aspect gave him a kind of sensation that he should leave this place, as if something wasn't right, but he still didn't know what exactly.
'Damn, if only I had more information,' thought Ash, looking at the blue lights provided by the lamps placed in such a way that they surrounded the camp in a semicircle.
Ash dismissed the runes and instead felt a kind of shift. Looking beyond the lights of the lamps, he sensed a feeling that made him shudder.
The sensation of cold and terror he felt when touched by the mist hours before.
Suddenly, the leader's voice was heard.
"Everyone, quickly prepare for battle!"
After he said that, a thunderous noise sounded everywhere and nowhere at once.
Falling in front of the lamps, several of them flew out from the strong gust of wind, and the others began to be hidden by the dense mist that started to surround the entire place.
'Condemnation' thought Ash, drawing the sword from its sheath, his fingers clenched tightly around the hilt and his heart beating rapidly in his chest.
A roar escaped from the dense cloud of mist that froze the hearts of most, and a few tense seconds later, figures wrapped in mist appeared, lunging at everyone at once...