Path of BlooDld

Everything was eerily quiet... again. But this time, it wasn't the peaceful silence Ashen knew. It was something deeper... as if the wilderness itself had stopped breathing, as if it had become a tomb.

Ashen walked slowly through trees stripped of color. The ground was soaked in a dark liquid that wasn't water, and the sky above was gray, without sun or moon.

The air was heavy... like lungs filled with ash.

And as he moved forward, he heard it...

The whispers.

They weren't human. They weren't of this world. They sounded like a voice mimicking the pulse inside your veins, whispering in rhythm with your blood.

"...Who are you to walk upon our blood?..."

"...Your body is not your own..."

"...Come closer... closer still..."

He didn't look back. But he saw something.

In the distance, beasts marched in long lines—wolves, hyenas, apes, reptiles, even birds. Their eyes glowed with a deadly red. They weren't walking... they were being led.

As if something had drawn out their souls and hollowed them from within.

Ashen followed. Silence walked beside him, and his heartbeat slowed as he approached the cave.

The cave had no clear entrance, but rather a distortion in reality—like the mountains had been sliced open by an invisible blade.

He entered...

And the moment he stepped into the darkness, everything changed.

Time fractured. Space bent.

It was as if he had entered a realm between a heartbeat and a dying breath.

The air shifted. It was no longer air, but a bloody mist seeping from the ground and walls.

The walls pulsed. Yes... pulsed. As if the cave was made of flesh.

And then he heard it again:

"...The heart is awakening..."

He hid behind a broken rock inscribed with slowly pulsing red runes. And he looked.

In the center of the cave, a massive red tree floated in midair. Its roots didn't touch the ground but instead anchored into the void itself, as if feeding on something unseen.

But the worst...

Was beneath it.

A heart.

A giant heart, covered in twisted veins, pulsing with a sound like drums at an eternal funeral. Every beat caused a tremor within.

He saw the beasts enter, one by one. They stood beneath the tree without resistance, as if mesmerized or terrified.

Suddenly... the roots of the tree turned into living vessels, rushing forward at insane speed, piercing the bodies of the beasts.

Some screamed in voices not their own. But none fled.

Each one was drained to the last drop.

Flesh melted. Blood turned to red vapor, flowing into the roots. And the lifeless bodies were thrown toward the heart.

Then... the heart split open. And inside it... a mouth.

A mouth with twisted fangs, devouring the corpses with a sound that made bones shiver.

"An ancient hunger... still feeding..."

Said the voice from nowhere.

For the first time in his life, Ashen felt like his blood wanted to escape his body.

Every part of him wanted to run. But his feet were rooted to the ground.

The eye at the center of the tree opened.

Yes, there was an eye. And it stared directly at him.

And the voice whispered:

"...You were made to be remade... You are the missing link..."

Then everything vanished.

Sound, light, warmth. Even the walls stopped pulsing.

And Ashen found himself alone... again.

But the blood on his skin was

n't his.

And there was a mark... on his chest.

A mark drawn in the same runes as the roots.