The first thing Iron felt was a rupture in geometry.
Inside his mind, which was accustomed to operating with precise vectors, velocities, and masses, something had broken. He felt less like a human and more like a collapsing blueprint, where lines no longer met at angles, and parallel lines intersected, warping into infinite curvature.
In this state, time did not exist. There was only entropy.
A low hum echoed in Iron's head. Every heartbeat resonated through his mind like a heavy, dull electrical discharge. Thump. Pause. Thump. Glitch.
He saw darkness, but it was a grainy darkness, saturated with static. Through the interference, numbers occasionally broke through. They flashed red before his inner eye: Critical Error. Vessel Integrity: 12%. Environmental Resistance: Undefined. He tried to close the windows, but he had no hands.
He had nothing at all.
At some point, he felt gravity. It was wrong. It felt as though he were being pulled in five different directions at once. The weight of his own body felt like an entire planet pressing down on his chest, choking the breath out of him.
The gravitational constant... altered? a dormant part of his mind thought sluggishly, still trying to analyze. But the response came instantly: No. You are the one who is altered.
Then came the sounds. They leaked into his personal hell in thin, distorted trickles. A screech. Long and drawn out. A wagon wheel. Iron could feel that wheel with every cell of his body. He felt the wood grinding against the axle, felt every grain of sand catching in the grease, creating microscopic friction. The friction made him physically sick.
He heard voices. They sounded as if people were speaking underwater, or from the far end of an infinite tunnel.
"...temperature is dropping again," that was Mortis. "Galt, hand me another blanket."
"Master, it's useless," Galt's voice was thick with suppressed irritation and fear. "He's bleeding too much energy, it feels like I'm about to pass out just standing here."
"Just do as you're told."
Iron wanted to tell them he could hear everything, wanted to scream at them not to touch him. But instead of words, only a raspy, barely audible wheeze escaped his throat.
His consciousness plummeted again.
Now he saw a forest—or rather, a forest of formulas. Every tree was a complex variable, every leaf a microscopic vector. The entire world around him was a mathematical model that had begun to self-destruct.
He remembered Klop's face. In his delirium, Klop's face began to warp, fracturing into triangles and polygons.
Klop... Iron called out into the void.
Error. Object not found, the void replied.
His brain feverishly tried to reconstruct the logical chain of events. Weissburg. The contract. The Dead Forest. The plains. Inertia.
Nerve fibers were thickening, bones turning porous and heavy. It was accompanied by an indescribable pain.
"We're entering the forest zone," Mortis's voice reached him across eternity. "Dornheim is very close now."
Another creak. Another jolt.
Every time the wagon jolted over a tree root, Iron felt his brain rattle against his skull. He lost track of time. Days and nights bled into a single strip of gray noise. Sometimes he tasted water on his lips—Mortis trying to get him to drink. The water tasted bitter as bile and heavy as mercury.
In his hallucinations, he relived the attack on the plains over and over. He saw the blade raised over his head. And each time, he tried to activate the Skill. But there was no button. Only a jagged hole remained.
The caravan crawled forward at a snail's pace. The oxen, exhausted from crossing the plains, now barely dragged their hooves over slick roots and thick mud.
Mortis sat on the driver's seat of the first wagon, refusing to let go of his crossbow. His eyes were bloodshot from sleep deprivation.
"Galt, check the second wagon," he barked without turning around.
Galt, who now served as both driver and guard, reluctantly jumped down to the ground. His boots sank into the mud with a squelch.
"Checked, Master. The bodies are still... well, you know. Your mixtures are working. They don't smell. But I still feel like they're staring at my back through the tarp."
"What about the swordsman?" Galt asked, drawing closer.
"Alive. If you can call it life," Mortis replied. "An hour ago, he started having seizures. I injected him with mandrake extract so he wouldn't bite his tongue off. His right arm... Galt, I saw the metal on it start to melt and then solidify again, reshaping itself. I don't know what kind of technology this is, but it's changing."
Galt spat into the mud.
"We should have left him there. Along with those riders. We'd already be in the village, sitting by the fire..."
"Stop whining," Mortis cut him off. "Clear the branches, there's a blockage ahead."
They hacked through the thorny underbrush, pushed the wagons out of ruts, and choked on the stifling humidity. And through it all, the forest remained dead silent.
Only the sound of their own breathing and the maddening creak of the wheels.
It happened suddenly.
Iron felt the world snap into focus. The noise in his head hadn't vanished, but it receded into the background, smoothing out into a steady hum. He opened his eyes.
First, he saw the gray tarp stretched over the wagon. A light rain pattered against it. The scent... A sharp, familiar smell of alchemy hit his nose—vinegar, copper, and something bitter.
Iron tried to move.
His body flared with a pain so intense he nearly blacked out again.
He turned his head. Sitting opposite him, leaning against a crate, was Mortis. His face was gaunt, his eyes sunken.
"You're awake..." Mortis's voice was hoarse. He reached for a canteen and pressed it to Iron's lips. "Drink. Slowly."
Iron took a few gulps, feeling life slowly return to his parched throat.
"Where are we?" he whispered.
"In the forest. Not far from Dornheim." Mortis pulled the canteen away. "You've been out for a week, Iron. I didn't think you'd pull through."
Fragments of memory began to surface in Iron's mind. The riders. The sword. The white light. And the figure that had thrown itself under the blade.
His heart skipped a beat.
"Mortis..." Iron pushed himself up on his elbows, fighting through the pain. "Where is Klop? And Ruth... where are they?"
Mortis didn't answer immediately. He slowly looked away, staring toward the back of the wagon, where two long bundles lay beneath a pile of sacks.
"They're back there, Iron," Mortis said quietly.
"I..." Iron began, but never finished.
A sound came, instantly filling all the space between the trees.
The sky above the forest erupted in crimson light. A split second later, a colossal sphere of black flame slammed directly into the center of the caravan, right where the main supply wagon stood.
The shockwave blasted the wagon into splinters.
Iron was thrown into the air. A violent collision with a tree trunk, then a hard fall into the mud.
He rolled onto his stomach, spitting out dirt and blood.
Everything around him was burning. Fir trees erupted in flames. The alchemists were scattered everywhere. He spotted Galt lying contorted, his clothes smoking. Mortis was nowhere to be seen.
Iron tried to stand. His legs refused to cooperate. His internal system was throwing a cascade of errors.
Warning! External energy impact: abnormal. Type: high-temperature plasma. Source...
Iron raised his head.
Emerging unhurriedly from the wall of fire was a silhouette.
He was tall—nearly a head taller than any man. His skin was the color of cooled ash, and instead of hair, thin, glowing tendrils pulsed on his head. The creature wore no armor, only strange bands of black metal grafted directly into his flesh. In his right hand, he held a long, straight blade.
High Demon, the system finished.
Reality warped around the demon; light refracted at unnatural angles.
The creature stopped ten paces away. His gaze was locked onto Iron.
The demon emitted a sound like a low vibration.
“Anomaly...” echoed in Iron's mind.
The demon slowly raised his free hand. Thin threads of black fire uncoiled from his fingers. Galt, who lay nearby trying to crawl away, suddenly froze. The threads touched him—and in the next instant, the alchemist's body dissolved into gray dust without making a sound.
Iron gritted his teeth. He felt fear trying to paralyze him.
Activate... Skill... he commanded himself.
System failure. Reservoir depleted. Critical neural network damage, the system replied.
"Come on!" Iron rasped, slamming the fist of the Centurion into the ground.
The metal of the prosthetic responded with nothing but a faint spark.
The demon took another step. His blade, forged from distorted space, hummed softly.
Iron watched the creature raise its blade. He tried to roll away, but his body was too sluggish. He watched the black blade come down. In that moment, time slowed to a crawl for him once more.
He saw every spark in the fire. He saw raindrops vaporizing an inch away from the demonic blade.
A sickening crunch.
The blade pierced the left side of his chest, just below the collarbone. Iron felt no pain, only cold. An unbelievable cold that instantly began rushing through his veins. The blade ran him through, pinning him to the forest floor.
Iron opened his mouth wide in a silent scream. His eyes began to roll back.
The demon leaned down. His bottomless eyes were inches from Iron's face.
“Not from this...” vibrated in his consciousness.
The demon began to slowly twist the blade inside the wound.
Iron's consciousness began to fade into black.
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