Chapter 0: What He Left Behind

Chapter 0: What He Left Behind

They were supposed to collect soil.

That was the entire mission. Standard requisition, Class C. Simple soil extraction from Igniaria’s outer chamber. Escort provided by the Tundreans, trade rites honoured. Day mission. In, out, done.

So why assign five Crested to a simple fetch run?

No one said it out loud. But Byrin felt it in the silences. The way no one asked questions. The way the names were chosen. Too many elite bodies for too small a task.

His instincts, more reliable than most registrars’ reports, were whispering now—

Too much power. Too much life.

The Phoenix’s Embrace rose ahead of them.

A colossal gate carved into the molten cliffside, bordered by wings of blackened steel and gold. It pulsed with heat—not just from the magma lines beneath, but from something older. Something aware.

Beyond the gate lay Igniaria.

No one drilled into Igniaria. The bedrock rejected machines. The glyph-layers healed behind the bite of steel. The land refused intrusion—Except through the Embrace.

And only when Tundrea said yes.

Now, they had—And Byrin felt the dread tighten.

----------------------------------------

The team waited as Rhess, their Tundrean escort, pressed his palm to the living stone.

A glyph flared.

The flames parted.

“Still think this is a simple soil run?” Velra muttered, stepping beside Byrin.

He didn’t answer. Just glanced at the others.

Rhess, silent and unreadable as always.

Deyric, shifting from foot to foot like his nerves couldn’t pick a direction.

Nessa, too young. Crest still fresh. Holding her spear like a shield instead of a tool. She kept glancing at Byrin like she was waiting for a nod—like this was a test and she didn’t want to get it wrong.

And Velra—sharp-tongued with eyes that had seen too many names go missing in closed reports.

And Byrin?

He adjusted the belt at his hip.

A soot-darkened bear swung gently at his side, stitched half to death and missing an eye. Secured with a cloth tie, the way only a child would think to do it.

Forten hadn’t said much when he gave it to him.

Just held it out, quietly.

Byrin hadn’t said anything either.

Sylvia hadn’t shown fear when she kissed him goodbye. But Forten had felt it. Seen the way her hands lingered on the table. How her hands gripped the table like it might float away.

Trailblazers didn’t come home often. Especially not when they crossed into Tundrean soil.

And yet, the boy had offered the only thing he had.

So it could protect his father.

----------------------------------------

The Embrace took them in like a breath held too long.

The descent was steeper than Byrin remembered. Heat licked at their boots as the descent steepened—slick stone glowing with a dull, volcanic pulse. The walls narrowed, then opened again into a hall of scorched murals: figures kneeling, arms outstretched, offerings held into flame.

The images didn’t move. But they flickered—only when you weren’t looking directly.

Nessa rubbed her thumb along the grip of her spear, muttering something under her breath. Byrin caught a few words. Sounded like a prayer. Or maybe a mnemonic. Probably one of those defence glyph sequences they drilled at the Academy.

“Something wrong?” Deyric asked.

She shook her head too fast. “No. Just… warm-ups.”

Silence stretched.

Then—

“Sir?” Nessa said softly. “Why… so many Crested for a soil run?”

Her voice wasn’t sarcastic. Just unsure. Like she’d been holding the question since they left Ferria and finally couldn’t keep it in.

Deyric snorted. “Because they don’t want to dig our bones out next season.”

Velra didn’t look up from her map. “Or maybe they know something’s still active down here.”

Rhess kept walking. “They say the guardian’s long gone.”

“They say a lot of things,” Byrin muttered. First words he’d spoken in two hours.

They reached the threshold of the inner sanctum.

The temperature dropped. Stone gave way to black ash. Glyphs ringed the chamber in soft, circular layers—like ripples frozen mid-motion.

Faint heat pressed at the air, but there was no fire—Just the weight of where it had been.

At the center: an altar.

Behind it: a figure.

Human-shaped. Robed. Still.

Velra’s hand moved instinctively, sketching a basic ward glyph in the air—more reflex than thought.

“That wasn’t in the brief,” she said.

Byrin raised a hand. “Don’t start anything.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The figure didn’t move.

Deyric squinted. “You think it’s real?”

“It’s standing,” Nessa whispered. “It’s watching us.”

“It has no eyes.”

She was right.

Where the face should’ve been, there was only a smooth facade of flickering, shifting plane—skin shifting like candlewax trying to remember what a face should look like.

Rhess stepped forward.

The figure didn’t react.

The altar lit up.

With memory.

Glyphs surged along the floor. The walls rippled. Byrin saw—no, felt—a scream pressed flat beneath the stone, like a soul pinned under glass.

Velra collapsed without warning.

Her body bent the wrong way, glyph blinking out in an instant. Her body jerked once, then folded—shoulders twisting backward, spine crackling like dry wood, knees giving way like snapped timber.

She didn’t scream. Just exhaled.

Then stillness.

Nessa shrieked. Deyric pulled her back.

“Knew we weren’t getting out clean,” Rhess muttered—then surged forward, blade in hand.

Byrin barely had time to curse.

The figure raised a hand.

“Told you—"

Rhess froze mid-stride. For a second, he looked like a statue in motion.

Then he sagged.

Collapsed inward, spine first—like his bones had turned liquid. He dropped, curled around nothing.

And vanished.

Just the steam of his breath remained, fading fast.

“Back!” Byrin barked. “Back now—!”

The walls flared in response and sealed shut.

The way out now was gone.

Glyphs spiraled across the stone—interlocking, burning, bleeding light— like a net tightening around a throat.

Deyric cursed. Turned.

The figure pointed.

He didn’t die immediately. That would be merciful.

First, his skin lost colour. Then transparency. His veins showed—then his muscles—then his bones—and then his bones began to move.

Shifted. Reassembled.

Out of sync with his body.

He tried to scream but his jaw cracked sideways.

Byrin caught Deyric’s eyes just before they split down the middle. He saw the moment fear turned into nothing—as if a single line had been drawn from skull to sternum.

Then Deyric was gone.

----------------------------------------

Nessa stood frozen, spear clutched in both hands.

Byrin stood in front of her, one arm half-dead, blood trailing from his wrist and soaking into the ash.

“When the way opens again—” he rasped.

She didn’t respond. Didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed forward—pupils dilated, lips trembling.

Then her knees gave. A puddle spread beneath her.

There, she crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut.

“My mum’s going to be so angry,” she mumbled. “I told her I’d be back before dinner.”

Her voice cracked.

“I don’t want to die here,” she whispered. “Please. Please, I—I didn’t…”

The figure glided towards them, measured.

Byrin stepped in front of her.

“No,” he said. “She’s just a child—”

The figure stopped, then tilted its head.

Not at him.

At her.

Nessa’s glyphs ignited.

They weren’t hers anymore.

Then they flared again—Too bright, too violent.

She screamed.

Not in panic.

Not in fear.

The kind of scream a child makes when they finally realise no one’s coming.

She clawed at her own arms. Tried to peel something off. Couldn’t.

Her body trembled violently as her glyphs burned out, one by one, almost as if they were unwritten.

Her hands blurred. Then slowed. Her breath fogged the air, then stopped fogging. Then—

The figure raised a hand.

And Nessa screamed louder.

At first, it looked like her clothes were falling away—fabric drifting, seams loosening, as if the chamber’s heat had unstitched the thread.

Byrin turned away instinctively—out of decency.

But the sound was wrong.

Wet. Slow.

He looked back—

—and saw it wasn’t just cloth.

It was skin.

It peeled with the sleeves.

Slid with the collar.

Came off her back in smooth, unhurried strips.

Her body tried to scream. It did not. Could not.

Her mind did.

And her voice was already unraveling—drawn out with every layer that lifted.

Her arms twitched as if reaching for something that had already been removed.

Her eyes blurred.

One blink later, and the color was gone from them too.

The figure hadn’t moved.

It didn’t need to.

It wasn’t killing her.

It was harvesting her.

Letting her spiral. Sob. Flood the space with terror.

Emptying her.

She came apart, piece by piece—softly, gently—like something precious being unwrapped.

Byrin could feel it: The tension building. The pressure. The glyphs brightening. The altar cracking. The braziers igniting, one by one.

The air grew thick.

Hungry.

Byrin couldn’t stop shaking.

Nessa was still trying to hold herself together.

Even as her shape flickered—even as what was left of her mouth stammered “please” through torn lips—it kept going.

Until there was nothing to take.

“STOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!”

The word tore out of him—raw, full-bodied, blooded like a blade.

It echoed.

Rattled the stone.

And every cauldron around the altar erupted.

The light was blinding. The glyphs surged with a roar that had no sound. The chamber held its breath—one suspended, frozen exhale.

Nessa gasped.

Wiped what was left of her face with bloodied, skinless hands.

Looked up.

Her sobs slowed.

She tried to blink, but it was difficult without eyelids.

Still—hope flickered in the back of her eyes.

“Is it… is it over—?”

SNAP.

Her neck twisted clean.

Her body dropped like a discarded tool.

No flourish.

No cruelty.

Just efficiency.

The figure had taken what it needed.

Nessa had outlived her usefulness.

----------------------------------------

Byrin didn’t scream.

He didn’t even move.

He just stared at what was left of Nessa.

At the body that wasn’t hers anymore.

At the flickering glyphs still burning behind her eyes—glyphs that didn’t belong to anyone.

Then he turned to the altar.

And saw it.

Embedded in the obsidian slab, something hummed.

It was just… waiting.

A disc. A seal. A fragment. A glyph, maybe?

Older than the stone around it.

Untouched. Untaken.

It hadn’t touched the stone.

That meant it mattered.

Byrin looked at the relic. Then at Nessa’s body. Then at the figure. There was no time left—not to think, not to grieve. Just act.

His body moved before thought could catch up.

He grabbed it.

Pain hit like ice through bone. His chest locked. His vision shattered. His skull rang voices not his own.

The air screamed again—this time through him.

The figure shifted. A step closer.

Slow. But intentional.

And Byrin understood, all at once:

He was next—The final piece on top of something ancient and wrong.

He didn’t know what the relic was. Didn’t care.

He just knew he couldn’t let that thing have it.

He knew he wasn’t going to win. But maybe, just maybe, he could go down swinging.

He looked at his own arm.

Blood-soaked. Useless.

It could carry glyphwork.

Maybe it could carry this.

He shoved the relic into the wound—

—and howled.

The relic’s power clashed with his glyphs.

Not incompatible—uninterested.

His glyphs—trained, precise, battle-tested—recoiled.

Couldn’t contain it.

Wouldn’t.

It burned like betrayal.

Light erupted from the gash. Flesh seared. Veins split.

The relic rejected him.

His body convulsed, scorched from the inside.

He staggered. Dropped it.

Clutching his ruined arm, Byrin looked around—blinking blood from his eyes, vision swimming.

There was nothing.

No one.

Nothing… except—

The bear.

Crumpled near the altar. Dust-covered. Torn.

Forgotten.

Almost.

Byrin crawled.

Fingers shaking.

He reached for the bear, split open the chest seam with what strength he had left.

His hand touched stuffing… And something he couldn’t name.

Something that felt… possible.

Byrin’s fingers trembled. He looked at the relic, then at the stitched bear—soft, absurd, out of place amid blood, ash and ruin.

The only thing that had ever been given to protect him. The only thing he hadn’t earned. Maybe that was enough.

“He said you’d protect me,” he muttered ironically, breath ragged. “So do it.”

Something cracked in his chest—grief, rage, or whatever piece of his soul hadn’t yet burned away.

He shoved the relic in—defiant, desperate, done.

The chamber reacted instantly.

The glyphs flared.

The walls shook.

The figure stopped.

Head tilted.

And for the first time—

It screamed with an unnatural, bone-deep tearing of silence into something alive.

The light at the altar twisted.

The braziers shattered.

The floor fractured.

Byrin was thrown back.

Hard.

He didn’t rise. Didn’t move.

The chamber dimmed, altar cracking in half.

Then—The figure was gone.

Ash floated like snowfall. The heat faded slowly but surely.

Silence returned—thick, scorched, waiting.

Then, in the wreckage—

the bear twitched.