Ren squeezed his eyes shut—but the memories didn't stop.
They weren't playing out like distant visions anymore.
They were clawing their way out from inside him.
"You see now, don't you?"
The voice drifted through the darkness like breath against glass—soft, intimate, inhuman.
"That's why you're here…Broken things get thrown away."
The words echoed through the abyss. He wanted to respond. To scream. To deny it.
But he couldn't.
Instead, he fell. And fell. And then—
He landed.
Not with the crunch of bone or the explosion of pain he expected, but with the brittle rustle of leaves. His body collapsed sideways, momentum carrying him into the ground as he gasped for air, barely catching himself with one arm. The world around him was dead silent, broken only by the distant creak of wood shifting around him. Nearby, the bloodied sword fell after him, buried into damp earth with a dull, shuddering thud.
Ren blinked.
Dim, cold light filtered through the space as his vision adjusted. This wasn't the abyss anymore.
He stood at the edge of a circular glade. The trees surrounding it were tall and skeletal, their bark scorched black—identical to those in the cursed forest above. Their branches twisted overhead like reaching fingers. Ren staggered to his feet and yanked the sword free from the earth. His left arm was still mending, skin stretched tight over raw muscle, nerves screaming faintly beneath the surface. His gaze swept the clearing. Empty. Or so he thought.
Across the glade, beneath the long shadow of one of the blackened trees, laid a corpse.
A woman.
Her skin was pale—almost blue with lifelessness—yet she was unmistakably beautiful. High cheekbones. Long lashes resting against closed eyes. A soft jawline. Lips parted as though caught mid-breath. Pitch-black hair spilled around her shoulders like ink across the ground.
She was perfect.
Too perfect—like a statue sculpted to make the living feel flawed.
Then—
Movement.
Shadows bled from the gaps between the trees, pooling and rising above the corpse. They twisted and folded, reforming into the familiar shape Ren had come to know all too well.
The Mother.
She descended. Her smoky form contracted as she drifted downward, narrowing into a dense black mist that hovered just above the corpse's mouth. The shadows pressed themselves between the woman's red lips. The body didn't jerk. Didn't even resist. It accepted her.
Fingers twitched. Lips trembled. Eyes fluttered—closed once more, then slowly opened.
Crimson. Not glowing. Not blood-red. But deep, beautiful crimson—quiet and deliberate. They adjusted to the dim light before locking onto him.
Her gaze was focused.
Her breathing was accustomed.
She blinked once, slow and methodical.
Then she rose.
First into a seated position. Then, her legs curled beneath her, bare feet pressing softly into the grass. She stood in one fluid motion, flawless and controlled. Her hands folded neatly before her, fingers interlaced. A black dress flowed down her frame like liquid shadow, hovering just above the ground—never touching it.
She spoke.
Her voice carried like a song echoing across a midnight lake—distant, sorrowful, inescapable.
"O, Hollow…empty of belonging. Starved of worth. How long shall you defy?"
She stepped forward. Her footfall made no sound. The grass did not bend beneath her weight.
"How far the Hollow wanders…" She continued, disappointment lacing every word. "When will you awaken? You are what remains when meaning is stripped away—when a name is worn smooth from stone."
She took another step.
Ren's knees weakened despite himself. His grip tightened instinctively around the sword.
Her crimson eyes lingered on him—on his torn cloak, his half-regenerated arm, the blade trembling in his grasp.
"And now you arrive…" She said. "Dragged into the abyss where light has no name. Where that which lacks meaning is forgotten—washed away by the tides of time."
She stopped. Bare feet planted in the grass. Her gaze never blinked.
"You have strayed too far."
The trees responded. A low wind rolled through the glade as trunks creaked in unison.
Black sap seeped from their bark like tears.
"From blackened soil I rise, borne of sorrow's breath. From lips long sealed, I speak anew. I am Nocstella—Mother of the Wretched Vale."
Ren took a half-step back.
'Wretched Vale…?' He thought.
"By your own will," Nocstella continued, a quiet edge of aggravation beneath her gentle tone, "You have severed the bond. You are no longer to be nurtured by me."
Her right hand rose slowly, palm facing him.
"Therefore," She said, her eyes narrowing—not in rage, but sorrow, "let this be your final lullaby."
This was the same voice that had whispered to him.
The same presence that urged him to let go.
And now she stood before him.
She was real.
And his next move would decide his fate.
Give in?
Or fight back?