The atmosphere in the abandoned watchpost was a miasma of dust, neglect, and the profane energy left by Milos. While Orpheus and K occupied themselves with the pragmatic task of reconnaissance and defense – Orpheus sniffing out invisible dangers, K moving stones with a strength that seemed to drain her – Zack sank into an isolation that transcended the physical. It was an inner abyss, carved out by the nauseating proximity to the Void and the heavy, watchful presence of Black Moon.
The nightmare, or whatever that intrusion into his sleep was, still haunted him. The distorted image of his wife, the cold voice hissing about the blade's endless song. The sword, leaning against the cold wall where he tried to find a semblance of rest, seemed to pulse in sync with the phantom pain in his chest. It wasn't steel; it was a dead weight, an anchor dragging him into dark depths. He felt its empty gaze upon him, a silent hunger that seemed to suck the very light from the room.
"What... what have you done to me?" The question escaped like a hoarse whisper, directed at no one and everything at once. The need to understand was an itch beneath his skin, an incipient madness.
Ignoring K's worried glances and Orpheus's tense silence, Zack dragged himself to the darkest corner of the post. The Boy, after a period of staring at the symbols on the walls with disturbing intensity, had been led away by K to a more distant corner and now slept, or pretended to sleep, a small, still figure in the gloom.
Zack sat on the cold floor, Black Moon placed before him. Not as a weapon, but as an accusation. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air felt thick, rancid. Anger and fear bubbled, threatening to overflow. He didn't want to understand the sword; he wanted to silence it, to rip from himself that feeling of being watched from within.
He closed his eyes, not in meditation, but in desperation. He focused on the blade's coldness, on the almost imperceptible vibration that traveled up his arms when he was near. He extended a trembling hand, not to touch, but to feel the icy aura enveloping it. And then, unintentionally, he stumbled. His mind, fractured by exhaustion and chronic pain, slipped, falling into the gravitational pull of the sword's darkness.
The transition was a vertiginous fall into madness. The real world dissolved into static and silent screams. He was in a darkness that pressed, suffocated, filled with echoes of agony. Fragments of images – not his, he felt they weren't his, but they hurt as if they were – spun chaotically: a golden sun extinguishing, small hands trying to reach for something, the sound of shattering glass, a soul-tearing scream. They were flashes of pure, disconnected, unbearable pain.
At the center of this psychic cacophony, a cold, ancient presence manifested. It wasn't a defined entity, but an absence, a conscious void that seemed to use his own fragmented memories against him. It was the feeling of something missing, of a crucial piece of himself having been stolen and replaced by... nothing. Or worse, by her.
"Quiet..." The voice was an icy whisper in his mind, a command that brought with it a sharp pain, as if trying to erase the very fragments that floated. "Forget. Pain is sustenance. Oblivion is peace... our peace..."
Zack fought against the drowning sensation, against the cold apathy the voice promised. "Who are you? What do you want from me?" His mental voice was a desperate cry in the void.
"We are... what remains. We are... your strength. Your pain sustains us. Your oblivion frees us. Do not fight... just feel... just suffer... and forget..."
The promise of power was there, implicit, but now it felt different. It wasn't an offer; it was a condition of existence. Power came from pain, from the loss of self. He felt the sword's energy trying to seep in, not to strengthen him, but to numb him, to deepen the void, to make the oblivion permanent.
"No!" The fleeting image of the golden sun, even distorted, gave him a foothold. The memory of pain was horrific, but the prospect of total oblivion, of becoming an empty vessel for that cold presence, was even more terrifying. "Leave me alone!"
The presence retreated, not defeated, but... satisfied? There was an instant of icy silence, and then the sensation of being watched intensified, now coming from within and without. The darkness seemed to solidify for a moment, and he felt as if childish, cold, ancient eyes stared at him from that abyss.
With the force of a spasm, he was spat back into reality. He fell backward, gasping, trembling uncontrollably, the bitter taste of bile in his throat. The watchpost was as before, but Black Moon in front of him seemed to have grown, its darkness deeper, more... personal. The connection between them was an open, infected wound.
He had no answers. Only more questions, more fear, and the visceral sensation of having been violated in his own mind. The attempt to confront the sword had resulted only in a glimpse of the prison that was his own existence, and of the parasitic nature of the darkness he carried. He rose shakily, his gaze shifting between the impassive blade and the sleeping figure of the Boy in the corner. A new kind of horror, cold and incomprehensible, began to form in his chest.
The Silent Awakening
The quiet in the watchpost was a thin film over an abyss of tension. The fetid air, impregnated with the remnants of Milos's ritual, seemed to weigh heavier with each passing hour. While Zack struggled to contain the sense of fragmentation left by the mental confrontation with Black Moon – a violation that had left him exposed and nauseated – another disturbance, quieter and more insidious, emanated from the Boy.
He didn't sleep, not really. K often found him huddled, eyes wide in the gloom, fixed on some invisible point. His murmurs were disjointed, but occasionally words like "cold," "echo," and "eyes" emerged with disturbing clarity. During the day, his stillness was almost unnatural. His dark, unfathomable eyes followed non-existent shadows, and he would stop abruptly, head tilted as if deciphering a silent melody. The drawings he traced in the dust – spirals and sharp angles – vaguely resembled Milos's profane symbols, a coincidence K tried to attribute to his exposure to the place, but which left a bitter taste of apprehension.
"He's... different," K confided to Orpheus, her voice low, while Zack was lost in his own torments, his empty gaze fixed on the black blade. "He talks about 'shadow-men' and a 'cold heart' in the mountain. He seems to... know things."
Orpheus observed the boy, who at that moment was sitting quietly, watching Zack with disconcerting intensity. "The energy of this place, the proximity to Zack... it's affecting him. The question is: what is he really hearing? Echoes of the Void? Or something more directed?" There was a hesitation in his voice, a suspicion he couldn't quite articulate. "Ignoring it could be dangerous, K. But trusting..."
"He's just a child, Orpheus," K insisted, but her conviction wavered for an instant as she met the Boy's empty gaze.
Zack, for his part, felt the Boy's presence as an additional weight. The experience with the sword had left him painfully aware of subtle energy currents, and there was something about the boy – a cold stillness, an almost imperceptible resonance with Black Moon itself – that made his skin crawl. It was like looking into a distorted mirror, a reflection of his own darkness that he couldn't comprehend. The fleeting idea of having seen a golden spark in his eyes now seemed like a hallucination, a cruel mockery by his fragmented memory.
The suspicions about Milos became a grim certainty when Orpheus returned from his reconnaissance. He had found tracks of soldiers, some with royal insignia, others moving with a cadaverous rigidity, and evidence of an ongoing operation.
"He's not just here for you, Zack," Orpheus reported, gravity marking his face. "He seeks something called the 'Echo of the First Scream.' A nexus of Void power on the main peak. The ritual here was just... preparation. To weaken the barriers, perhaps. Or to call something."
"Echo of the First Scream..." The name reverberated in Zack, not as information, but as a trigger of phantom pain, an absent memory that throbbed.
At that moment, the Boy, who seemed oblivious, lifted his head. His voice was monotonous, devoid of childish emotion. "They come. Many. Red eyes. Empty eyes. The cold heart calls them. They march."
There was no fear in his voice, only statement. A shiver ran down K's and Orpheus's spines. The warning was clear, but its origin was deeply disturbing. Was it a genuine prediction or an announcement? Was the Boy's sensitivity a gift or a symptom of something worse?
"Get ready," Zack ordered, his voice choked with an urgency that masked the growing horror in his chest. The feeling of being trapped in an invisible web, manipulated by forces he was only beginning to sense, was suffocating. "He knows we're here. He'll bring his abominations. Let's... receive them."
The tension in the watchpost became electric, a mixture of fear and resignation. Weapons were checked, positions taken. K led the Boy to the safest hiding place, ignoring the unsettling passivity in his eyes. Zack and Orpheus positioned themselves on the battlements, watching the mist below.
The figures emerged from the haze like tumors growing on the landscape. Soldiers with sickly red eyes, moving with the precision of puppets. Twisted creatures, larger and more deformed than the previous ones. And ahead of them, wrapped in dark cloaks, Milos, his presence radiating cold power and unfathomable intent.
The cold heart called, and its servants answered. The ambush was about to begin, but for Zack, the real battle was already being fought in the shadows of his own mind.