THEY'RE ALIVE.
IT'S
It's right
in front
of
me
me.
I
I can't
can't move.
my head
won't
turn.
I can
ju
st
s e e
the page.
don't
look
away
c
a
n
'
t
look
away
KEEP LOOKING
don't blink
don't
b l i n k
It' s f ace
is
right
in
fro n t
of
me
It's been
a
day
d a y
d a y
d ay
I want
to shut
my
m y
eyes.
e y e s
shu
shut
d
o
n
'
t
don'tbli
bli
blin
blin k
bl i—
n k
—— ❖ ——
Words lost their sanity the further down the page they lay. The last lines dissolved into jagged, desperate scribbles, ink smeared as though the hand that held the quill had been shaking too violently to control. Then it ended. Abruptly. Mid-breath.
Arion stood frozen on the stone floor of the sanctum. A single bead of cold sweat traced a slow, icy path down his temple and along the line of his jaw. He did not wipe it away. He did not dare move anything but his eyes.
The world had gone mute, as though even the air had stopped carrying sound.
His heart slowed to a sluggish, terrified crawl, each beat loud in the sudden silence. He could hear nothing else—no crackle of candles, no whisper of draft, no distant groan of settling stone. Just the wet thud of blood in his ears and the shallow rasp of breath he refused to release.
A crack.
His gaze snapped toward the sound—sharp, splitting, like stone parting under impossible pressure. Nothing. The statues stood exactly as before. The candles burned with their unnatural steadiness. The chests remained sealed. Yet the air had thickened, heavy with Essence so potent he could taste it on the back of his tongue: metallic, bitter, alive.
Something is in this room with me.
And I cannot detect it.
His eyes swept the sanctum in restless arcs, never allowing a single blink.
Chests creaked. Shard-light overhead fluttered. The statues stood in perfect stillness. The candles wavered just enough to throw dancing shadows along the sanctum's walls.
Every detail was catalogued, burned into his mind: the exact angle of a cracked plinth, the faint discolouration on a statue's hem, the way one candle's wax had pooled. Patterns. Distinctions. Anything that might betray movement.
Come on…
Nothing.
…Fuck—fuck!
"What the hell!"
"No disturbances, no outline anomalies, no refraction distortions, no light-bending, no Vantablack effects—"
His gaze swept the chamber again and snagged on the statue in the far corner. A woman carved in flowing robes, head slightly tilted, eyes fixed directly toward him.
"Stare some more, or take a picture while you're at it. Creepy fucker."
The words came out hoarse, edged with forced bravado, but his pulse hammered harder. He stayed locked in place, eyes darting between statues, refusing to let any single point of focus claim him for more than a heartbeat.
CRACK.
The same splitting noise—louder, closer.
"What is mak—"
He froze.
There—directly across from him—the same female statue.
"Haha… no."
The staring contest had begun.
"No. No no, you're fucking with me."
Then—he blinked.
A single, deliberate closing and opening of the eyelids.
Arion's heart plummeted into freefall. For one blinding instant his mind flooded with impossible futures: a quiet life somewhere safe, a wife—no two wives, ten kids, friends and allies, five-star meals. The vision hit like a physical blow.
He snapped back.
The statue still stood, unmoving.
Just stone. Just a creepy, motionless statue staring back with blank, polished eyes.
"Ahrrr! You're making me think the weirdest shit with all that staring, woman."
The statue offered no reply.
Arion kept sweeping the room, breath locked tight in his chest. A sudden scrape of stone split the silence behind him.
Paranoia hit so fast it felt electrical. He tore his gaze back to the female statue, refusing to lose line of sight for even a fraction of a second.
His heartbeat turned erratic, thudding so hard it felt like his ribs were trying to shake it back into order.
"H-hello…?"
He took one slow, deliberate step sideways, staying well within reach of his new quarterstaff leaning against the plinth. His eyes remained locked, keeping the statue framed perfectly in his vision.
Every rational thought screamed for an explanation: shifting light, refractive shadow, trick of fatigue, anything. Nothing answered.
Another crack—directly behind him this time.
Reflex took over; he spun toward the sound—just enough to glimpse a fresh fissure spider-webbing across the far wall.
CRACK.
Then he whipped back.
Pure white eyes.
A stretched-out maw of absolute darkness where a mouth should have been.
Only then did he realise the truth.
It had been playing with him.
…
There it stood—the female statue—fully morphed and disfigured. Its face was inches from his own. He knew, with absolute certainty, that if he flinched, if he so much as blinked, he would die.
All he could do now…
Don't. Blink.
Then came the second sensation—sharp, hot pain blooming along his left side. Warmth spread beneath his shirt, wet and insistent.
Am I… bleeding?
He ignored every screaming instinct to look down. Keeping his gaze riveted to the horror inches away, he sent a thread of Vitalis inward, probing the wound.
Something blocked the flow—dense, alien, hungry.
Realisation hit like ice water.
He had been stabbed.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Petrified.
White eyes—polished, unblinking—stared straight into his soul.
A pitch-black maw stretched beneath them, deeper than sight, a void cracked open and ready to swallow anything that dared look away.
The first thing he felt was warmth. Then liquid. A strange, creeping wetness that had not been there a moment earlier. Several thin streams trickled down his side from separate puncture wounds, soaking through fabric and pooling at his waist.
Then the pain arrived.
It was not clean. It throbbed with something colder than blood, a foreign pulse that beat in time with something that was not his heart. Nerves screamed. Pain receptors overloaded. His Vitalis flickered with instinctive unease, as though the energy itself recoiled from the intrusion.
Adrenaline dulled the edge just enough to keep him upright, but something was clearly, horribly wrong.
It didn't go all the way through, otherwise I'd be bleeding out by now.
J-just a trickle…
But why does it feel like I'm losing far more than I am?
He forced his awareness inward, circulating Vitalis through the wounds with surgical focus. The moment the energy touched the foreign presence, the flow weakened… then vanished entirely, as though something had opened its mouth and drunk it down.
It's… siphoning. It's feeding on my Vitalis. His eyes widened as the truth hit.
Static crawled through his veins like glass shards grinding beneath the skin.
At this point, Vitalis was worth as much as blood—perhaps more.
This is going to suck.
He arched his back in a slow, controlled motion. Stone claws—cold, jagged, impossibly sharp—slid out through flesh with a wet, tearing sound.
"G-grrhh!" Teeth clenched until his jaw creaked, eyes burning but locked forward, he fought the overwhelming urge to look down.
He took one step. Fresh blood surged. Another step. Agonising fire tore through muscle and nerve until, finally, he ripped free of the statue's grasp.
He stumbled. Dizziness crashed over him like a wave. He caught himself against the plinth, one hand slamming down for balance while the other pressed hard against the wounds. Slick warmth coated his palm instantly.
Heartbeats hammered behind his ears. The sanctum shrank to nothing but rhythm and breath and the metallic reek of his own blood.
Weakness spread through his limbs like poison. Whatever the statue had done, it had succeeded—draining stamina, blood, even the very Essence that kept him alive.
It didn't hit anything vital… just flesh and muscle.
"Coagulate," he rasped, voice raw. "I've gotta stop the flow or I'll be a top donor at this rate." A weak, gallows smile tugged at his lips despite everything. "Mum would be proud—finally using those endless lectures."
The thought steadied him, a small anchor of warmth in the freezing horror. Knowledge was still his weapon.
Skin, muscle, nerves—they can wait. Blood first.
He reached inward. No fancy healing spells, no external aid—only himself.
His Vitalis circuit surged restlessly, reacting to the crisis like a living thing. He focused it with brutal precision.
Concentrate. Five entry points. Compress.
He visualised the same technique he used when compacting air or water—but this time on his own body.
Focus the circulation. One wound at a time. Condense. Slow. Apply crushing pressure from within.
A faint shimmer bloomed beneath the torn skin. The area flared hot; pain sharpened to white fire. Moments later the bleeding slowed to a sluggish drip, then thickened, then stopped.
The sensation was utterly alien—like performing blind surgery on himself while still locked in the world's longest, deadliest staring contest.
He felt the flow shift, sluggish now but obedient. Heartbeat thundered. The smell of iron hung thick and close.
…
Breath evened out, shaky but controlled. Cold sweat soaked his clothes; blood stained them dark and heavy. Hair plastered to his forehead in wet strands.
I… I think that did it.
Pressure held. Flow crawled to nothing. Coagulation in effect.
He let out a shaky, half-delirious laugh.
"J… just f… four more to go," he murmured, voice cracking.
The statue stood motionless—maw still open, arm outstretched, stone claws glistening wet with his blood.
Time ticked away, one drop at a time.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Each breath rasped dry and painful through his throat.
Eyes burned as though filled with sand. Limbs felt heavy, distant, no longer fully his.
He leaned harder against the plinth, cold stone biting into his palm, posture slowly collapsing under the combined weight of fatigue and blood loss.
F… flow's stopped.
He lifted one bloodied hand into the extreme edge of his peripheral vision—never risking a full head turn that might let instinct win.
The hand was stained dark, already drying at the edges. The sight finally hammered home what his body had been screaming for minutes. Nothing screams injury quite like seeing your own blood drying on your skin.
It's dry. Good…
He kept staring—wide-eyed, unblinking—at the nightmare inches away.
"So… You just gonna stand there?" he said, voice hoarse and awkwardly loud in the silence.
No response. As if he had expected one.
"Seriously, the silent treatment is getting boring, real quick."
Gods, I want to blink so badly. How the hell did that poor bastard last an entire day?
He resisted the crushing urge to glance toward the decomposing body only paces away.
Maybe… maybe I can do one-eyed blinks?
Hesitant, knowing the creature could strike faster than thought at this distance, he tested it.
Blink.
He closed one dried, crusted eye. His entire body recoiled with sheer, desperate relief—a basic bodily function he had been denying for what felt like hours.
Okay… t-that worked. Now the second one… haha, easy.
He closed the other while reopening the first. A refreshed, glorious blink. He could keep going.
But the open wounds still needed sealing.
He coaxed the Redox Spark off his shoulder with trembling fingers. The little flame glided into view, wavering as though it too feared the horror behind it.
"Hey, buddy… I need your help one last time, okay?"
The flame danced above his fingertip, faint but steady, ready despite everything.
He studied it, mind racing through calculations born of desperate necessity.
Heat density has to spike fast, not linger—sear, seal, and stop the flow. If I'm too slow I'll cook muscle; too fast and the clot will burst.
He steadied his breath, pulling Vitalis to his finger and linking it to the Luminary Essence sheathing the ember. He focused until the flame shrank to a white-orange pinpoint of pure fury.
Pressure, not size—that's the trick.
The air around it trembled violently. It pulsed against his control, straining like a living thing fighting its leash.
"Alright… quick and clean."
Don't make it bigger—make it denser. Small, viciously hot, and fast. Ugly, but effective.
"Haha… no biggie," he whispered with blind, shaking faith, sweat pouring down his face and stinging his eyes.
He freed his other hand and leaned fully back against the plinth. Feeling blindly along his side, he found the first puncture and pinched the torn flesh together with numb fingers.
"Mmhhff!" Teeth clenched until they creaked, eyes widening even further despite the burn.
This… is going to hurt like a bitch.
He brought the white-hot pinpoint close. The hiss began before contact, drying the edges instantly. The smell hit first—iron, salt, scorched cloth. Then the fire bit.
Touch. Off. Then breathe.
Teeth locked, focus straining through white-hot shock. Sharp, sudden agony—the kind that steals sound and leaves only convulsion and a muffled curse behind clenched teeth.
He pulled away quickly, then re-applied without letting the seal cool. Each pass burned new layers of iron and salt into the air. Each hiss sounded different—tissue shrinking, sealing, surrendering.
He swept a sliver of Vitalis around the fresh seam, stripping away excess heat, cooling it just enough to hold without cracking.
…
After several more precise passes the first wound was sealed. He took a long, shuddering breath.
"Fuck!"
"Mum, you seriously undersold how much that part hurts."
Sealing a handful of claw-holes in his own side had shaken what little composure he had left.
C'mon, Arion. Four more. Then we leave this hell-hole.
His voice cracked halfway through, raw from grit and smoke and pain.
Somewhere in the sanctum, stone settled with another hairline crack—closer this time.
One of the candle flames in the alcoves guttered sideways for a heartbeat, then steadied again.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
The flame trembled, no larger than a flutter of moth wings. Its once-bright core had dulled to a weary ember fighting for existence.
Arion held it steady, the heat barely kissing his skin. The air around it shimmered weakly; Luminary bled from its heart in thinning strands, fraying apart faster than he could hold them together.
He felt it—the little flame weakening under his grip, fading with every second he kept forcing it to burn. His own Vitalis reserves were critically low; the journey back would have to be made on stubbornness alone.
"…You did good, buddy."
The words came out hoarse, cracked, but the little flame seemed to hear. It flickered once—a final, brave heartbeat—before collapsing inward. Light folded into nothing. A soft curl of grey smoke rose from his fingertip and twisted upward until the ruin swallowed it whole.
Darkness rushed back, heavier somehow. The stench of burnt blood and scorched flesh lingered far longer than the warmth.
Four wounds now sealed with ugly, blistered scars. The air hung thick with the copper reek of blood and the acrid bite of charred skin.
Eyelids barely functional, two bloodshot eyes remained narrowed on the same nightmare statue.
For one long, terrible moment there was only the soft hum of cooling stone, the wet drip of residual blood somewhere on the floor, and the faint, stuttering glow of the ceiling shard.
He wasn't sure if the silence meant safety or if he had simply gone deaf to fear.
He pushed himself upright from the plinth, legs threatening to buckle. One hand lifted; the Quarterstaff of Recall answered instantly, slapping into his palm with reassuring weight—a walking stick.
He started moving.
Eyes locked on the statue, the staff tapping ahead to feel for anything that might trip him, he edged backward toward the corridor. One careful step at a time. Making sure the hell-spawn of living stone did not follow.
"Fun first date… but we don't really gel too well, do we?"
A nervous chuckle.
"Definitely wasn't you. Not the stone skin or the huge wide maw. That's for damn sure…"
Yeah… I'm going to be having sleep-paralysis demons because of this bloody statue for the rest of my life.
And the trauma. Gods, the trauma.
He tried not to shiver, knowing even that tiny motion might trigger an accidental blink.
The corridor behind him seemed to widen with every retreating step, like a black maw opening wider to swallow him whole.
It wasn't silent—low, steady breaths of draft flowed through the ruin, as though the temple itself was breathing in time with his fear.
Tap.
Step.
He caught fleeting glimpses of old carvings between flickers of shard-light. Something about their symmetry felt wrong now, as though the lines were watching him too.
Tap.
Step.
Shard-light skated across dark corners, carving fleeting shapes of shadow that existed for a single second before melting back into blackness.
Was it real—or just pareidolia? His fractured, paranoid mind could no longer tell. At this point he was taking no chances.
Arion was making decent progress, all things considered—especially for someone who had just pulled living stone claws out of his own side. The staff took most of his weight, giving him a third point of contact with the ground.
Step.
Then—silence.
No staff tap. He had not lifted it.
He had reached a spot where light from a ceiling ornament spilled down, slightly blinding—not enough to slow him.
What froze him solid was the reflection on the metal fitting at the top of the staff.
White.
Silent.
Complete stillness.
Only then did the madman's final warning scream through his mind.
'THEY'RE ALIVE.'
Shit…