Date: August 21, 542 After the Fall of Zanra the Dishonorable
The ruins Kazai had glimpsed in the distance after the battle with the spirits turned out to be a mirage. He walked toward them for another three hours, pushing through the fog, stepping over the charred remains of spectral bodies that crumbled to dust at the mere touch of his boots. But when he finally reached the spot, only an empty field stretched before him.
No stones. No walls. No hint that a great structure had ever stood here. Only grey, cracked earth covered in a layer of ash, and the occasional tatters of fog clinging to his legs like living things. Kazai stopped at the edge and looked around. The cold, biting wind tugged at his cloak, and in that wind there was nothing but emptiness.
"Perhaps the map is wrong," he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else.
He pulled out the parchment the Seer had given him. Old, battered hide, covered in faded ink and stains impossible to decipher. The point marked by the old man's trembling hand was here. But there was nothing here.
Kazai folded the map and put it away. He closed his eyes and listened to himself.
Somewhere deep inside, where his Spirits of Sin dwelled, a faint, barely perceptible call pulsed. He had felt it from the very moment he crossed some invisible boundary. But the map had led him here, and he had blindly followed it. Perhaps that had been a mistake.
Kazai turned and walked in the direction his intuition tugged him. North. Where the earth seemed even greyer, where the air was denser, and the silence deeper.
He walked for another two hours. The fog thinned but didn't disappear—it became different, more transparent, and within it, if one looked closely, faint, barely perceptible sparks flickered. They weren't light—they were memories. Echoes of something that had once happened here. Kazai felt them with his skin, with every nerve, with every cell of his body.
And at last, he came upon a field.
It resembled the one the Seer had marked, yet it was entirely different. Here the earth was not merely grey—it was charred. Black as coal, covered in deep fissures from which seeped not mist but thick, oily vapor. It smelled of ozone, sulfur, and something else—something ancient, for which Kazai had no name. The air here was so dense that every breath came with difficulty, as if his lungs were filling not with air but with lead.
And Kazai's heart began to beat faster.
This was more than mere intuition. It was a resonance. Somewhere here, beneath this scorched earth, lay what he had set out on this journey to find. Kazai felt it with absolute, icy certainty. His Spirits of Sin—Wrath and Pride—stirred in the depths of his Vessel, as if they too sensed the proximity of something momentous.
He circled the perimeter of the field. Slowly, attentively, peering into every crack, every wisp of vapor. Nothing. Only earth, only ash, only a silence that pressed on his ears harder than any sound. He stopped in the center, crouched down, and ran his fingers over the black, caked surface. There was nothing beneath his fingers—no warmth, no vibration, no hint that an entrance or portal was hidden here.
"Could my intuition be deceiving me?" he said aloud, and his quiet, steady voice spread across the waste, echoing off invisible walls.
There was no answer. Only the cold, indifferent wind rustled in his cloak.
Kazai paused for a moment, closing his eyes. In the darkness, the Seer's words from that long-ago evening in his hut surfaced—the first time the old man had spoken of this place. Kazai had paid them no mind then; too many distractions, too many cares for the Kingdom. But now, standing on this scorched earth amid ash and silence, those words took on a new, frightening meaning.
*This place demands blood. The very blood that flows in your veins.*
Blood.
Kazai opened his eyes. He looked at his hands—pale, with long, slender fingers. On his right palm, a fine, almost invisible vein pulsed. He did not hesitate. He had stopped hesitating many years ago, when he first understood that doubt was a luxury he could not afford.
He drew a dagger—short, with a narrow blade, which he always carried on his belt. The metal glinted dully in the diffused light. Kazai slashed across his palm—sharply, without hesitation.
The pain was sharp but brief. Blood welled instantly—dark, thick, it ran down his fingers, gathering into large drops. Kazai clenched his fist, and the drops, obeying gravity, fell onto the scorched earth.
For a second, nothing happened.
The silence deepened. The vapor rising from the fissures froze, as if time itself had stopped. Even the wind died, and Kazai heard only his own breathing and the steady, calm beat of his heart. He stood motionless, clenching his bloodied fist, and waited.
And then the earth shuddered.
At first—barely perceptibly, like a tremor one might mistake for weariness or a trick of the mind. And then—more violently. The fissures covering the field began to widen, and from them burst not vapor but light. Crimson, pulsing, it flooded everything around, and in its glow, shadows vanished, turning into blurred, trembling blotches. Kazai felt his own blood respond to that light—it boiled, flowed faster, and his Vessel, expanded and fortified by years of training, filled with new, unfamiliar energy.
The hum grew. Low, vibrating, it penetrated to his very core, making his bones ring and his teeth ache. Kazai did not retreat. He stood his ground, and his pale, almost transparent eyes tracked how the earth before him began to rise.
First, two spires appeared. They rose from the depths slowly, almost lazily, but there was such power in their movement that even Kazai, who had seen much, tensed involuntarily. The spires were black, with silvery veins pulsing in time with his heart. Their tops, curved like the talons of a bird of prey, met at the top, forming an arch. They stood no less than ten meters tall, and from them emanated a cold—not the kind that numbs fingers, but a deeper cold, penetrating to the very essence.
Between them, a portal was forming.
It was not like those Kazai had heard about in Hlis's tales. It was not round, nor oval. It was jagged, uneven, and its edges, flickering crimson and black, expanded and contracted as if the portal were breathing. From within came sounds—not voices, not wind, but something else, for which Kazai had no name. It resembled the rustle of ancient book pages, the patter of rain on a roof, the crackle of a campfire in a nighttime forest—and yet it was none of these things. There was something ancient, almost primordial in that sound, and Kazai felt his Spirits of Sin respond to it with a dull, prolonged hum.
Kazai gazed at the portal, and in his chest stirred a strange, almost forgotten feeling. Not fear. Not doubt. Certainty. The same certainty that had driven him through the lands of the cursed, through battles and betrayals, through blood and death. The certainty that would not let him stop, even when everything inside screamed that it was time to turn back.
He knew—this was what he had come for. The thing that would change everything.
He bandaged his palm with a strip of cloth—quickly, in field fashion, paying no mind to the pain. The bleeding had almost stopped—his regeneration was doing its work, and the edges of the wound were already drawing together, leaving a thin pink scar on the skin.
Kazai stepped toward the portal. The crimson light beat against his face, making him squint, but he did not avert his gaze. He looked inside, to where beyond the flickering veil, silhouettes, shadows, outlines he could not discern were visible. It did not frighten him. It beckoned him. He felt his Vessel pulsing in time with the portal's pulsation, his blood surging forward, to where either power or death awaited.
The wind, which had stilled for a moment, rose again, and its gusts, hot and dry, tousled Kazai's hair, made his cloak snap behind him. Somewhere far away, beyond the boundaries of this scorched field, the rumble of thunder could be heard—though the sky remained clear.
Kazai took a deep breath. His thoughts were clearer than ever. The unknown awaited ahead. But he was not afraid.
"Time to take another step on the path to a 'Better World,'" he said, and his voice, quiet but firm, was swallowed by the portal's hum.