• The Labyrinth of Desolation

The sun was a pale wound behind a veil of gray clouds that refused to break into rain. I walked for days, following the map Lumière had given me with such hope. My feet, accustomed to the firm ground of Master Fish’s training field, now sank into black mud that seemed to want to claim me for the earth.

My face, hidden under natural dyes that distorted my noble Kansaki features, itched under sweat and filth. Every time I stopped in front of a stagnant puddle, I didn’t recognize the child staring back at me. The tribal lines crossed my cheeks like scars from a war I hadn’t finished fighting inside. It wasn’t just a physical mask; it was the burial of Asashi, the son of "Death Bell."

Hunger began to be a constant noise, an animal gnawing at my ribs. I had exhausted Lumière’s provisions sooner than expected, underestimating the vastness of the forest separating the peripheral territories from the Grand Capital. My mind, exhausted by lack of sleep and the persistent trauma of the fire, began to play tricks on me.

“Did you think this through?” hissed a voice at the nape of my neck.

I spun around, unsheathing air by instinct, forgetting for a second that my rapier was now a twisted piece of steel abandoned in the forest after Edward’s explosion. There was no one. Only the statue of Veritas, manifesting at the edge of my peripheral vision, perched on the branch of a rotten oak.

“Leave me alone,” I whispered, my voice sounding like the crunching of dry leaves.

“Alone?” Veritas clicked his stone jaw, shaking dust onto my head. “You are lost, Asashi. Your ‘perfect plan’ to infiltrate the militia is a crack in a structure condemned to collapse. Do you think the Capital will welcome you with open arms? You are a painted rat seeking a nest of vipers.”

I ignored the spirit and kept walking, but the path simply ceased to exist. The trees closed in on me like the fingers of a giant. The fog, dense as wet wool, erased the horizon. I was alone, without food, without a weapon, and for the first time, without a clear direction.

• The Caravan of the Forgotten

Just as my knees threatened to give out, the sound of bells broke the funereal silence of the forest. It wasn’t a cheerful sound; it was a heavy, metallic jingling, like chains dragging over old wood.

I emerged from the undergrowth onto a secondary trade road, almost hidden by moss. A line of six wagons advanced slowly. They were strange vehicles, covered by black canvases that seemed to absorb the little light filtering through the treetops. The horses were gaunt beasts, with bloodshot eyes, moving with unnatural obedience.

“Halt!” I shouted, my voice cracking.

A man sitting in the driver’s seat of the first wagon pulled the reins. He wore rags that were once military uniforms, now stripped of any insignia. His face was furrowed by burn scars that vaguely reminded me of the ones I carried under my bandages.

“What do we have here?” the man growled, spitting a blackish liquid. “A rat from the south with war paint. Did you get lost on the way to your funeral, boy?”

“I am looking for the Capital,” I said, trying to recover the dignity of my surname even if I couldn’t use it. “I have money. I can pay for transport and some food.”

I mentioned the money expecting greed to be my safe passage, just as Edward had taught me the world worked outside my home’s walls. The man laughed, a sound like sand hitting a coffin.

“Money holds no value in this caravan, little Kansaki,” he said.

My heart stopped. How did he know? My hand instinctively went to where my weapon should be. The man noticed the gesture and his laughter grew.

“Relax. We are all the ‘last of something’ here. Outcasts, deserters, clans that Viper decided shouldn’t exist anymore. If you want to get on, get on. But dinner is earned, not bought.”

He pointed to the last wagon, the only one with no windows and whose canvas seemed made of a material that vibrated with dark energy, similar to what I felt when the door to the forbidden forest opened under my touch.

• The Dweller of Darkness

I climbed into the back of the wagon, body trembling with weakness. The interior was plunged into almost total gloom, illuminated only by a small bronze brazier emitting smoke that smelled of sandalwood and dried blood.

At the far end, sitting on a makeshift throne of black wolf pelts, was him.

I couldn’t see his face. He wore a gray silk robe that flowed like mercury, and a wide-brimmed hat that cast an impenetrable shadow over his features. The only visible things were his hands: long, pale, with fingers ending in perfectly manicured nails, yet holding an obsidian dagger with terrifying familiarity.

“Enter, Asashi,” he said. His voice wasn’t a scream like Fish’s, nor a rock like my father’s. “Hospitality is a scarce concept in this forest; do not waste it by standing in the entrance.”

“Who are you?” I asked, taking a step back.

“Someone who finds scraps fascinating,” the man replied, spinning the dagger between his fingers with a speed Veritas couldn’t process. “I have been listening to your thoughts since you entered my territory. ‘I will join the militia. I will gain rank. I will start a war.’ It is… touching. And profoundly stupid.”

I felt blood rushing to my face. The humiliation Edward had made me feel was nothing compared to the quiet contempt of this stranger.

I have the power of Veritas, I thought, activating my spiritual vision out of pure spite.

The world lost its color. Gray took over the wagon. I looked for the red dots on the man in front of me. I looked for the cracks in his stance, the weak knots in his existence that the spirit allowed me to exploit.

But there was nothing.

Before my eyes, the man wasn’t a person. He was a void. There were no pressure points, no imperfections. He was a structure of such absolute perfection that it was inhuman. It was like trying to find a crack in a diamond carved by the Creator himself.

“Looking for something, boy?” the man asked.

Suddenly, I felt an invisible blow to my stomach. It wasn’t physical; it was as if the air itself had punched me. Veritas’s vision mode shut down violently, leaving me blind for an instant and with a metallic taste in my mouth.

“Your spirit is a tool of judgment,” the voice in the shadows continued. “But how can you judge what you do not comprehend? You want to join the militia at nine years old. Do you think the Kingdom is blind? Do you think Edward Minnas is the only one who can see through your carnival tricks?”

The man stood up. There was no sound of footsteps. He seemed to glide over the wooden floor of the wagon. He stopped inches from me, and although I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt a gravitational pressure that forced me to fall to my knees, just as Rachel had fallen before me, but multiplied by a thousand.

“In the militia, you will only be a number,” he whispered. “A pawn that Viper will sacrifice to test the edge of their new swords. If you want revenge, if you really want the Kansaki to be feared again, you don’t need a uniform. You need to be the monster soldiers fear when they snuff out the torches.”

• The Awakening of the Abyss

The mysterious man extended his pale hand and touched my forehead with a single finger. It wasn’t a warm contact like my mother’s, nor the shock of energy from Mezfnir. It was cold. A cold that penetrated my bones and showed me, in a blink, the emptiness of my existence.

I saw the Capital burning, but not by my hand, but because of my failure. I saw Edward laughing over my corpse while Rachel carried my head as a trophy. The reality of my weakness hit me with the force of an arrow of light.

“Teach me,” I said, forehead pressed against the wagon floor. “If my plan is absurd, give me one that isn’t.”

The man stepped away, and the pressure vanished, leaving me panting and sweating.

“I do not give plans, Asashi. I give power. But the price is that the child you are must die today. The caravan is not going to the Capital. It is going to my base, a place where the sun dares not enter and where pain is the only teacher that does not lie.”

I looked toward the open canvas of the wagon. The forest was still there, dark and hostile. I could jump now, try to continue my path toward the militia, and die like a fool. Or I could venture into the abyss with this stranger.

“Do you accept, little executioner?” the man asked, returning to his throne of pelts.

I didn’t answer with words. I sat on the floor, crossing my legs, and closed my eyes, accepting the darkness seeping through the cracks in the wood.

The caravan changed course, abandoning the main road to enter a gorge hidden by perpetual mists. I felt Veritas huddled in a corner of my mind, scared for the first time since I met him in that marble palace.

My training with Master Fish had been child’s play. What was coming now was true hell. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of burning.