"Idris, what am I looking at?"
Aisling blinked, her gaze shifting between the shifting shadow cast by the torches and the shapeless mass before her. A head, yes. But a head of what? The object seemed almost organic, yet it lacked any clear anatomical coherence. What kind of creature had this been? She couldn't say. Its skin was marbled with black lines that pulsed faintly, as though a feeble life still lingered in the dead thing.
In certain places, the flesh appeared twisted into impossible contortions, as if it had curled in on itself at the moment of death. Its fangs—because there were fangs, grotesquely long—weren't aligned with any normal jaw, but embedded in a chaotic bone tangle, giving the impression they had grown at random, with no logic or natural order.
A shiver ran down her spine.
"That's the big question… no one knows," Idris replied, running a thoughtful hand through his several-days-old beard. "Ulthane's never seen anything like it either. And you should've seen the whole beast!"
Aisling bit the inside of her cheek, trying to ignore the stench of flesh thickening the air around them.
"If even he and the Horsemen don't know what it is… that can't be good news."
Idris shrugged and pointed to the seed she carried, where elemental essence pulsed gently, like a second heart glowing with a soft inner light.
"We'll figure it out… Just look how far we've come already!"
He gave her one of those encouraging smiles—the kind that used to be enough to make her believe everything would turn out fine, even in the worst of times. But this time, she couldn't return it honestly. She forced a smile, but her heart felt too heavy in her chest.
War had advised her not to talk about what had happened.
"Let us handle it," he had said in that deep, firm voice of his. "Uriel and I will take care of it."
But now, standing in front of Idris, with his genuine joy, his raw optimism, she felt like a fraud.
"Idris… there's something I need to tell you…"
"Come on, kid… over here," a deep, jovial voice interrupted before she could go on.
Ulthane, War, Strife, and Fury approached. The Maker gestured for her to follow with a broad sweep of his massive hand and disappeared toward his forge. Aisling exchanged a glance with Idris before following him. In the vibrating heat of the workshop, Ulthane grabbed a worn piece of chalk from a workbench.
"So… how's it going?" Strife asked with feigned lightness. "I'm up for open-heart surgery if it comes to that!"
"Unnecessary..." Ulthane huffed without looking up. "I just need to make sure the essence flows where I want it to. Would be a shame to end up all incinerated, wouldn't it?"
Without waiting for a reply, he knelt and began drawing symbols on the ground around the young woman. The lines connected into complex circles, ancient runes etched into the forge's blackened dust. The whisper of chalk against stone echoed faintly in the thick air, heavy with soot and dormant magic.
Death arrived at that moment, his silent steps betraying nothing of his presence, save for his shadow stretching across the symbol-covered floor. Soon after, Fenja joined them and took her place beside Idris. Aisling frowned slightly. It was dark, but she thought she noticed something strange in the huntress's demeanor. Her features were impassive, her faint smile unchanged, and yet… something in her eyes felt different. A distance in the way she looked at her. Unease bloomed in Aisling's chest.
She wanted to ask her, but the huntress held her gaze with a forced calm. Ulthane drew the final symbol on the floor before rising and dusting off his hands, leaving behind two perfect circles of esoteric markings. The chalk crumbled slightly under his calloused fingers as he cast a final glance over his work.
"What now, Maker?" War asked with a sharp tone, his keen eyes fixed on the glowing runes.
Without answering immediately, the giant turned and moved toward one of his cluttered workbenches, covered with massive tools and shards of forged metal. He rummaged for a moment among artifacts as old as they were imposing before pulling out a mechanical box shaped like a triangle. The object, matte black with golden engravings, emitted a faint, nearly imperceptible vibration.
He returned to them and carefully placed the box at the center of the second circle he had drawn a bit further off. The floor seemed to absorb it slightly, as if it naturally merged with the energy radiating from it.
"I'm going to store the essence of fire in there until we recover the others," he explained, eyeing the box with a calculating expression. "Once we have them all, I'll know what to do next to replant the seed."
He turned his head toward Aisling, his piercing gaze settling on her with unusual intensity.
"Don't move, little one. This shouldn't hurt…"
His voice was meant to be reassuring, but Aisling detected a faint hesitation. Something was off. Not fear, exactly, but an exaggerated caution, a worry he tried to mask beneath his usual confidence. And he wasn't the only one. War and Fury exchanged fleeting glances, their expressions unreadable, but their tense postures betrayed heightened alertness.
She swallowed a surge of anxiety and forced herself to take a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment and focusing on the exercises Uriel had taught her on the way back. Get into your body, control your breathing… your breath controls your mind. She wasn't in danger. Idris and Fenja were just a few steps away. And War would never let anything happen to her. She knew that now.
Ulthane raised his hand and, with a simple motion, activated the runes. The entire circle lit up with a golden glow, vibrating with the impulse of an ancient, intangible force. The air filled with static electricity, lifting Aisling's wavy hair as a low hum spread throughout the forge. She felt a strange warmth build in her chest—at first gentle, almost pleasant… then suddenly, a bit too strong.
She flinched, instinct screaming at her to move, to pull away, but she forced herself to remain still. A moment later, the sensation abruptly eased, like a wave of heat receding. Aisling slowly looked down.
A bright red glow radiated from her sternum, intensifying into an incandescent sphere that seemed to float beneath her skin before fully detaching from her body. The ball of light rose on its own into the air, swirling for a brief second like a newborn star before shooting toward the triangular box.
The impact was silent but powerful. The runes etched into the object flared with a scarlet glow, while a wave of light spread across the floor in a flash. The next instant, everything stopped. A heavy silence fell before Ulthane burst into laughter, shattering the tension in the room.
"Aha! Told you! One down, nicely done!"
A collective sigh of relief followed. Even War, who was not one to lower his guard, exhaled slightly through his nose. Aisling felt the tension release from her shoulders and closed her eyes briefly. She could breathe again, too.
"How do you feel?"
Fenja approached slowly, her head tilted slightly, studying Aisling with careful attention, no doubt searching for any sign of discomfort or fatigue. The healer instinctively raised a hand to her sternum, her fingers searching for the familiar bulge of the seed beneath her skin.
"Fine. Really fine, actually. I…"
Her sentence trailed off. A cold shiver ran down her spine as she frowned, focusing on the point where her hand rested. She wasn't sure, but… had she just felt something move under her fingers?
A sharp pain suddenly crystallized in her chest, cutting off her breath and doubling her over with the impact. A strangled whimper escaped her lips as her fingers clawed at her sternum, trying to contain the atrocity radiating from within.
She felt a deep, dull pressure, as if an invisible fist were slowly closing around her ribcage—squeezing, twisting, pushing her body beyond its limits. The pain vibrated through her bones, a low, echoing thrum that reached the tips of her ribs.
"Aisling… What's wrong?"
Idris and Fenja were at her side in an instant, their hands on her back, trying to steady her. But she could barely respond. Her lungs refused to fill properly, every breath becoming a battle, a monumental effort to draw in even a sliver of air. Then the pain seemed to fade, ebbing slowly in fleeting waves.
"Nothing… I… I just lost my breath for a second. It's not… ARGH!"
The pain exploded inside her like a thousand burning shards. An unrelenting force drove itself into her flesh, crawling beneath her skin, burrowing, spreading through the depths of her being. Something moved inside her, slithering between her muscles, wrapping itself around her bones with cruel slowness.
Her back arched under the intensity of the agony, her fingers clawing at the empty air, seeking something—anything—to hold onto. But there was nothing. Nothing but this terrible, consuming pain.
A cold spike drilled into her spine, carving a tortuous path along her nerves, sending violent jolts down to her limbs.
Then came her heart. An invisible vise closed around it, squeezing, twisting, stretching it as though it might burst under the pressure. Her blood pounded in her temples in a dull, erratic throb. Her chest rose in spasms, but each breath grew more difficult, as if something were slowly coiling around her lungs, strangling them inch by inch.
Heat flooded her skull, her vision abruptly narrowing. The pain was everywhere—total, omnipresent. She lost all sense of her surroundings, all awareness of what lay around her. There was no forge, no Idris, no Fenja. Nothing existed except this suffering that consumed her from the inside out. Her screams tore through the air—raw, inhuman.
Powerful hands seized her, holding her firmly as her body convulsed under the assault. A solid arm braced her back while another strong hand pressed against her forehead to keep her from thrashing. She choked for air, unable to perceive anything beyond the agony devouring her.
In a titanic effort, she forced her eyelids to lift. Her gaze, blurred by tears of pain, met Death's. The Pale Rider stood right above her, his expression as impassive as it was sharp, but his eyes… There was a fierce intensity in them, a glimmer of urgency and focus that cut through the turmoil.
His dark gauntlet hovered just inches from her forehead, his fingers slightly curved as if holding onto an invisible thread. An indescribable pressure pulsed around her, seeping into the very air, charged with an energy she couldn't understand.
Chaos roared all around. Voices rang out in every direction—some anxious, others commanding—but they reached her like distant echoes, whispers distorted by the pain still tearing through her insides. The world was slipping away, dissolving into an indistinct mass of sounds and motion. There was only that white tunnel, that burning haze erasing everything. Everything, except the Rider's gaze.
Something intangible and unstoppable slipped into her mind. A freezing wave spread through her, worming its way into every crack of her consciousness. Her body tensed at the intrusion, and for a moment, she thought the pain would utterly destroy her.
So this was how she would die. She felt her breath catch, her heart beat one last time—a dull, heavy thud. Then everything stopped. No more pain. No more burning. Nothing. An abyssal silence wrapped around her, and her eyelids slowly closed. She let herself fall, without resistance, slipping into a peaceful void, a dreamless sleep.
Aisling didn't know exactly when she had come back. Her mind still floated somewhere between unconsciousness and reality, lost in a sea of hazy impressions and indistinct sensations. She remembered fragments of conversation, muffled voices exchanging words whose meaning eluded her. She remembered being carried, her body cradled against something solid, something protective. A bright light had pierced her closed eyelids—burning and gentle all at once. Then silence, deep and soothing.
All that time, something within her kept stirring. A slow and inexorable movement, a dull pulse making its way through her insides. She knew it could have hurt, could have made her scream, but she was submerged in a strange, cottony state where every sensation felt distant, as if filtered through a thick veil. She was not quite present, not entirely gone either. Just suspended somewhere in between.
She also remembered the change. The one she had sensed without understanding how. The air was no longer the same. It had a different density, a softer warmth. The light too had shifted—from a blinding brightness to something dimmer, more comforting.
Then she had ended up in a comfortable place. Soft. Warm. Cushioned fabrics against her skin, a cocooning heat that urged her to stay, to let go just a little longer. From time to time, she felt hands on her forehead—cool and light—or another that took hers, gently squeezing as if to say she wasn't alone.
And in that floating darkness, a voice reached her. A woman's voice, softly humming a lullaby in a language she didn't understand, an ancient melody, vibrant with infinite tenderness, each note flowing with the delicacy of a stream caressing smooth river stones. There was something inexplicably soothing in that voice, a warmth that seeped into the depths of her being, wrapping her in absolute, unconditional love. A love so pure, so overwhelming in its gentleness that it took her breath away.
Tears welled up in her eyes before she could stop them. A raw and irrepressible emotion tightened her throat—a feeling of absence and fullness intertwined. She felt them roll down her cheeks, slow and silent, leaving salty trails on her warm skin. In a trembling breath, her voice, barely a whisper, slipped from her lips.
"Mama…?"
"Aisling, can you hear me?" Ren's voice, soft and worried, echoed close to her.
She blinked slowly. The light of the real world seeped into her still-clouded gaze, blurry at first, then gradually clearer. It took Aisling a moment to recognize the place. The room was bathed in a soft glow, cast by the lantern hanging near the door. The scent of old wood and dried herbs floated in the air, infusing the space with a gentle, comforting familiarity. The little house Ren had chosen in the Twilight Realm.
Her blurred gaze landed on him, seated at her bedside, his face marked by barely contained worry. He held a cloth between his fingers and was gently wiping the tears from her cheeks, which she could no longer hold back.
"Are you hurting anywhere, sweetheart?" he asked gently, concern lacing his tender tone.
She opened her mouth, searching for an answer, but no words came. It wasn't pain she felt—at least not physical. It was something else, a deep, unfathomable sorrow she couldn't understand. A melancholy strangling her from the inside for no apparent reason.
Images still drifted through her mind—those of the strange dream, the humming voice, a love she had felt but couldn't place.
Mama.
Why had she called a woman she had never known that? A woman she couldn't possibly remember, because she had never met her? It made no sense. Especially since her dreams showed her the future, not the past. And yet, that thought gripped her heart with brutal force, plunging her deeper into that emotional distress she couldn't explain.
Her body reacted before her mind had made a choice. Like a child seeking refuge, she shifted toward Ren and curled up against him, burying her face in his chest. The sobs she had been holding back finally broke free, shattering the heavy silence of the room.
He received her without hesitation, wrapping his arms around her with the same comforting warmth she knew so well. He rocked her gently, one hand rubbing her back in a soothing motion, whispering vague, reassuring words—just as he always had when she was younger and came to him after a nightmare.
She let go. The warmth of his embrace, the reassuring scent of his coat, the feeling of his fingers stroking her hair… All of it helped to soothe that strange sorrow, to let it drain away until only trembling hiccups remained. At last, she took a deep breath and sat up slightly, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
"I'm fine… I'm sorry," she murmured, her voice still hoarse from crying.
Ren gave her a soft smile, calm and forgiving.
"Better out than in."
She stared at him for a moment, taking in the features of his face with renewed attention. He still wore the same kind expression she had always known, but now that she truly looked, she noticed how much recent events had aged him. The lines around his eyes were deeper, his salt-and-pepper hair even lighter, and he seemed more fragile. A wave of guilt tightened in her throat.
"What happened?" she finally asked, as he adjusted the pillow behind her, helping her sit more comfortably.
He gently pulled the thick fur blanket over her shoulders and took a light breath before answering.
"You came back a few days ago—you and the others. Death brought you back to me," Ren explained, his voice calm and steady, though she didn't need to look to know he was watching her with concern. "You were delirious with fever for the most part, but it seems to be breaking now. Do you want something to drink? To eat?"
"I… no… I'm okay…"
But before she could finish her sentence, her gaze fell on her bare arms. She shuddered in horror at the dark web snaking beneath her skin. The black roots had spread far beyond what she remembered, climbing up to the middle of her biceps—a sinister network that pulsed faintly. With stiff, almost mechanical movements, she lowered her gaze beneath her tunic. The same pattern spread across her torso, denser, more pronounced, descending over her chest and stomach. She tried to take a deep breath, but the air caught in her throat.
"The Maker was sorry not to have foreseen this possibility," Ren said gently, lowering her tunic over her chest with a cautious hand to stop her from examining herself. "Once he removed the fire essence, the seed lacked that new source of energy and turned to you instead. It sped up the process."
The words rang in her mind like a sentence. With every essence recovered, her body would pay the price. She felt a knot form in her stomach, a cold and heavy ball of dread. She abruptly looked away, searching for an anchor—anything to distract her.
At the foot of the bed, carefully arranged among scrolls filled with notes, lay several ovoid nodules, bluish in hue. Some were crystal-clear and translucent, others more opaque, glowing with a mysterious light.
"What are those?" she asked, her voice a little hoarse.
"Ah… Memory globes," Ren followed her gaze and gave a slight nod. "We found them while clearing one of the buildings downtown. Uriel explained their purpose and how to use them. I can store all the memories of our people's history in them—everything we must remember. You said you still had much to learn, well… when the time comes, all of this will be yours."
He seemed immensely proud of his discovery. The young woman studied the globes with curiosity, wondering how such a thing could be possible.
"Uriel came too?" she asked suddenly, lifting her head.
"Yes, with the rest of the Hellguard. She and I spoke at length. They want to help… to atone for what they've done. Fury is reinforcing our defenses from the castle—she managed to convince the Watchers to let her through. Strife is assisting her in the field, setting up protections. War and the angels are working with Briana to organize the training. I don't know where Death is—he has his own agenda. Everything's been in upheaval since your return and…"
Aisling froze. She had just realized. Her stomach twisted in horror, her throat tightening as if she had swallowed poison.
"You know…" she whispered.
Ren didn't know what to say at first. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate, as if searching for the right words, but in the end, he nodded slowly. The weight of that confirmation crashed down on her with brutal force. They knew. They all knew now that they were caught in the War of the End.
Her heart pounded in her chest, sending waves of panic through her entire being. No more secrets, no more false hope. They were walking a path from which there was no turning back.
"And we will prepare as best we can," added Ren, his voice aiming to be reassuring. "Don't worry about that. You need to focus on your mission."
Aisling felt a rush of conflicting emotions wash over her—a mix of guilt, fear, and helplessness.
"Ren… it's my fault…" she murmured.
"This is no longer the time for that, my darling."
He gently took her hand, his fingers closing around hers with warmth and firmness.
"It was probably naïve of us to think we could go unnoticed by the universe for much longer."
But she could see how much those words cost him. He had always hoped to protect them. To keep them safe in that shadowy bubble, far from conflict, far from the chaos of the worlds. But that illusion had shattered, and now he had no choice but to accept the truth.
"How did our people react?" Aisling asked, swallowing with difficulty, the taste of bitterness at the back of her mouth.
The silence that followed said more than any answer could.