"How does the ailment fare? I might find more draughts to sustain you."
The middle-aged man spoke, clad in robes the hue of shifting dunes. He stood in stark contrast to the locals who, despite the sweltering zenith, remained bound in the suffocating vestments of pilgrims—garments that offered no respite from the heat.
"Speak, I implore you. I have no wish for your agony to deepen before the hour of execution," he continued, addressing the woman sprawled upon the sacrificial altar. She lay there awaiting the final stroke from a scion of the Soragratat bloodline. The medicine he offered was no mercy; it was a tether to bind her soul to her breaking body, ensuring she would not slip into the peace of death before the 'Light of Dharma' claimed her life.
"Kill me! You bastard!"
She thrashed against her shackles until the very skin peeled from her wrists. Her eyes had been seared wide by white-hot irons, and her abdomen lay open in a grisly display of carnage—yet, she still possessed the strength to speak. Her state was a tapestry of profound shame and wretchedness.
"I want none of your fatuous tonics! You lot, who drape yourselves in religion to mask your filth, whispering of nothing but faith... Spit! No!"
A glob of bile escaped her pallid lips. Though her tongue had been severed, her words cut through the air, propelled by a titanic surge of malice. It was this very spite that had bound her to the altar; she was a creature commanded to perish by the weight of her own sins.
"You have forsaken His path, turning instead toward the shadow of the Asura," the man in the heat-wicking robes remarked. To look upon him was to behold an enigma: he wore a turban of burnt-red sand that draped down to his chest. His eyes were hollow pits, weeping a sallow, reddish-orange fluid whenever he moved. He possessed no mouth, yet his voice resonated through the mind, a ripple in the Mana. Only his hands—parchment-thin skin clinging to brittle bone—retained a semblance of humanity.
"Are you not still a woman? Why do you crave the form of those monsters? Those Asuras, those beasts who differ naught from the living dead or the wretches beyond the Horizon? Those scavengers who claim they live for the kill, when in truth they are but hollow shells, desperately seeking purpose to keep their spirits from shattering."
As his words hung in the air, the heavy thud of boots echoed through the hall. A man of towering stature, his hair flowing like a dark shroud, strode into the execution cathedral amidst the desert peaks.
"She refuses to yield, Lord Soragratat," the doctor spoke, bowing as he looked toward the figure.
Soragratat possessed eyes filled with an eternal conflagration. He chanted a silent liturgy within his mind, raising one hand above his head while the other touched a forbidden point upon the woman's body. Her abdomen swelled unnaturally. The Asura-woman let out a final, jagged laugh before her breath was extinguished in a miserable end.
"This harlot's ambition outstripped her soul, leading her into the abyss... but I care little for her fate," Soragratat remarked. He closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the heavens—toward the glittering tapestry of stars and the celestial giants girdled by hundreds of shimmering rings.
After a moment of silent contemplation, he turned to depart. He gripped a shard of withered wood and bit into it; the wood would dissolve upon his tongue, allowing him to vanish into the sands outside. But as he moved, a question plagued the mind of the man watching him.
"Where do you think you're going? I have matters to discuss with you, Sandrago."
The voice was a physical weight, dragging Sandrago's soul back from the precipice of the cold desert night. He felt himself seized by the throat by the executioner.
"O Purifier, I am but a physician who sustains those at the threshold of the end. Now that my duty is finished, what use am I to you?"
Sandrago's voice did not waver, even as his throat was constricted by a grip that threatened to burst his windpipe. The raw, violent strength of a man who had realized his singular, bloody purpose was nearly uncontrollable.
"I require an Airship."
Sandrago froze. He stared into Soragratat's eyes for a long moment before breaking into a low, rasping chuckle. His neck twisted with the unnatural grace of an owl, his flesh dissolving into flowing sand to slip through the Purifier's fingers. Though the executioner's rage flared at the 'sand-worm' before him, he stayed his hand.
"Stop playing the fool with me, Sandrago. I am no simpleton. I need a vessel capable of withstanding the wake of a Calamity Dragon. I must cross the boundaries, north of the Dragon Empire's fringe, before the maps are redrawn... so that I may hunt him."
"The man for whom your entire lineage met an ignominious end? You would dedicate yourself to his slaughter?"
The words caused Soragratat's grip to tighten with such ferocity that, even though he held only a head of shifting sand, the agony forced a scream from Sandrago's lungs.
"You desert rats exist only to serve us!" Soragratat growled. Yet, deep within, the code of a pilgrim in these wasteland marches stayed his hand. He released Sandrago, letting him tumble to the floor like a discarded vial of medicine.
"Fine. I will lead you to the ship. But there is something I desire in return—the truth regarding the Kingdom of Krazmer. I seek the treasures hidden there... for my own body grows too frail. You must take what remains of that."
He gestured toward the pile of ash where the woman had been executed. Amidst the dust lay a sandstone tablet, carved in the likeness of the Goddess—the very deity the pilgrims came to seek.
"What say you, My Lord? Kill me now for your faith, and the Airship remains lost to you. Think carefully. You know that we doctors are no different from the Sages. Whether you claim this is for religion or righteousness, it is all a farce, is it not? So, what will it be? Hunt the enemy of your house, or continue your pilgrimage in this desolation, fueled by a fire that will eventually consume you?"
Soragratat remained unmoved. He watched the doctor groveling on the floor, clutching his bruised neck and rambling.
"Very well. I have no interest in those remains regardless."
The cocktail of hatred and anticipation was too potent to resist. He cared for nothing else. Even Sandrago felt a shiver of dread at the sheer vacuum of the man's resolve.
"It lies in the depths below. We must ferry them across the wastes, further than before. I know not what horrors lurk in those shadows now; it is perilous for those who walk in ignorance."
Before the sentence could finish, Soragratat's gauntleted fist smashed into the crumbling cathedral wall. Stone shattered, and debris rained down upon his back, yet he did not flinch.
"I. Do. Not. Care. Take me to the ship."
The hymns of pilgrims outside reached his ears, but he remained deaf to them. Before the image of the Goddess he once revered, he kept his head bowed—not in prayer, but in a refusal to look at the heavens. The hunt was beginning, and nature's predator was finally unleashed.
In the Southern Lands, near the city of Seniffort
"My disciple, I pray you calm yourself. That is my companion, Prorsun, an initiate and former Sage of the Foundation Stone."
The air was thick with tension. The disciples of Willefs had not taken their eyes off Prorsun since they met on the mountain path. They were preparing to enter Seniffort, leaving the warriors of the borderlands behind.
"Master, I mean no disrespect, but look at this priest. Does he look like a Sage to you? If he ever was one, he surely abandoned the path of wisdom to become a charlatan in robes," one disciple sneered.
The priest did not retaliate. He merely gazed back, his eyes catching the sunlight that filtered through the canopy. The path they trod was eerily silent, devoid of even a whisper—a haunting contrast to the nightmares of the previous nights, as if those horrors were merely a cruel jest told to children.
"My dear student," Willefs sighed, "your words may hold truth. But in the end, regardless of how right or wrong you are, you will be forgotten one day. No different from me in the future, or this priest in his past."
The disciple turned away, refusing to meet the priest's gaze.
"Um... Mr. Priest?"
A small voice chirped from the side. A young girl, clutching a book about the 'Pilgrims of Faith,' looked up with innocent curiosity. "I want to know... why is it that in history, so many priests become obsessed with things that aren't themselves?"
"Little lady..." Prorsun began, his voice solemn. "Sometimes, those from the past simply seek confirmation that they will never truly vanish. They wish to exist in every moment, every place. They want to know what their faith truly is."
The girl looked more confused than before.
"Speaking in riddles again. This isn't a cathedral, old man," the male disciple snapped.
"Indeed, it is not. But for me, every grain of earth is a place to witness the Truth. And whenever I must, I shall return to the cathedral, even if that cathedral is one of unholy vice—Ugh!"
Prorsun's body buckled. He collapsed, blood erupting from his mouth and seeping from his eyes as if his very life were being snuffed out.
"Sir!" the girl cried, reaching out, but Willefs caught her arm. The elderly Sage stepped forward, pressing his fingers to the priest's temple.
"Migellroz... he didn't make it," Prorsun gasped through the blood. "I... I saw him. Executed by fire. Dragged from a skiff... mangled worse than a beached jellyfish. I cannot shake the memory... it is not a memory... it is a connection."
Fragments of a fractured consciousness flooded back. The pain being transmitted through the former Sage was the final agony of Migellroz, a man who had perished upon a sanctified altar too high for common blasphemy.
"I see it now," Willefs whispered, his voice grim. "Stand up, Prorsun. You must stand, or you too will be swept away in the cleansing."
Willefs, aided by a few other disciples, hauled the priest to his feet.
"The world is spinning into a strange orbit..." Willefs muttered, his mind reeling from the visions: a cross of twisted wood, countless bodies being devoured by two warriors, and a terrifying image of himself—pinned to a crucifix in a state that could no longer be called 'human.'