Chapter 2: Restoration
"Vos des!"
Mike's voice cracked through the heavy air — ragged, desperate, each word torn from a throat that had already surrendered to death. Blood pooled beneath him where his leg had been, dark and viscous, spreading across the churned earth like spilled wine.
"This must be why the cult sent us." His chest heaved. Each breath was labor. "We have to kill him before he grows any further."
"Vos," Kakarai intoned flatly, jabbing a finger toward the empty space where Mike's limb had once been.
Mike's gaze followed as the world tilted. Pure terror carved itself across his face — eyes wide, mouth slack with deep denial. His expression shattered, twisting into something broken and unhinged. Laughter spilled out, high, frantic, teetering on the edge of madness.
"Ahahahaha, Kakarai! Please…" He clawed at the dirt, dragging himself forward with nails that tore and bled. "Give me your blood! Heal me!"
Kakarai stood motionless, head tilting at an unnatural angle. Eyes gleaming with darkness, a deranged smile appeared on his face as his presence thickened.
"Why are you hesitating?" Mike's voice thinned, dragged under by blood loss and creeping cold.
"Hei!"
"Hei."
Kakarai's lips peeled back. He looked like a demon freshly clawed from the abyss — all teeth and hunger.
With deliberate slowness, he shrugged off his blood-red robe. The fabric pooled at his feet like a wound opening. Beneath, his torso was a map of ritual scars, lines carved with purpose, the centerpiece a festering inscription carved deep across his chest.
The letters writhed, moving like worms burrowing through meat, pulsing with sickly crimson light. The wound drew breath.
"Haha… so that's how it is."
Mike tilted his head back. His eyes found the sky, bruised purple and indifferent, and eternal acceptance settled over him like a shroud, heavy and cold.
"I don't want this, but it's the way of the cult." His voice was barely a whisper. "Let the world drown in blood." He coughed in a mix of denial and acceptance. "My bastard friend, do it, Kakarai… consume me."
Step.
Kakarai advanced. Bare feet silent against the gore-soaked ground. His shadow stretched long and wrong behind him, reaching toward the treeline like grasping fingers.
Step.
Mike did not close his eyes. Instead he watched, though he couldn't bring himself to wait. Kill me, kill me, kill me! he tried to yell, but he had already lost his voice.
Stab.
Kakarai's arm punched forward, clean and merciless. His hand drove through Mike's chest with the ease of a knife entering liquid. Bone cracked. Flesh parted. Mike's heart ruptured between his fingers.
Like a ragdoll, he lifted the corpse effortlessly, slinging it over his shoulder like a butcher hauling fresh slaughter. Blood poured in thick rivulets down his extended arm — not even a drop reached the floor.
It crawled toward his flesh, drawn by invisible threads, the crimson streams coiling toward the rotting inscription on Kakarai's chest. Sinking into the pulsing inscription, it slowly absorbed the trailing blood, drinking greedily.
"Vos!"
Kakarai's voice rose, ecstatic, delirious, breaking apart into sounds that had no meaning beyond madness. His friend's body began to wither and sink into his being.
Skin split as his bones reknit, grinding against each other with a sound like stones being crushed. In moments, Kakarai's right arm bloated and twisted into something grotesque, veined with black, ending in claws that gleamed wetly in the dying light.
Mike's head protruded from his shoulder like a tumor, eyes burning with sickly emerald flame. His mouth hung open, frozen in a silent scream that would never end.
From his storage ring, Kakarai drew forth a massive tome. Its binding was clearly made from human flesh; its pages seemed to breathe, and the cover bore letters that did not sit on the surface but bled into it, sinking and staining the earth.
Worship the Blood River.
He opened it with reverent care, tracing the ancient script with a blood-soaked finger. His lips moved, shaping words that had no sound, that perhaps had never been meant for mortal throats.
"Vos… Vos vos vo… Vos des."
He nodded slowly, as though the book whispered secrets only he could hear.
"Vos ehh."
Meanwhile, Dax wasn't idle.
"You almost had me," he said quietly.
He rose from the crater where the madman's blow had hurled him. Shattered rock crumbled into fine dust beneath his feet, drifting away on the thickening wind. He dusted off his robe like he was recovering from a minor inconvenience.
He lifted himself with effortless grace, meters into the air, hovering above the cultists like a scholar observing specimens beneath glass. Blood still trickled from the corner of his lips, but his eyes burned with something that wasn't pain.
What is happening down there?
He watched the madman with detached curiosity. How amusing.
Almost casually, he reached down and plucked Mike's severed leg from the ground. He examined it for a moment, turning it over, noting the angle of the break and the way the blood had coagulated.
He brought it to his lips and bit down. Every bite was deliberate, like he was savoring the taste. There was no hesitation as he swallowed, neither was it rushed. It was savage in its calmness, like a man sampling jerky on a leisurely afternoon.
"Ahh!"
The scream tore downward from the heavens — raw, anguished, laced with divine fury that made the air itself recoil. The ground shuddered. The sky cracked. Rain began to fall.
Pat.
A droplet struck Dax's upturned palm. Rain?
"It's raining…"
The scent of wet earth filled the plains. Suddenly the air felt cleaner. He lifted his hand to his face, letting it run between his fingers.
"Crimson," he murmured. "Does it rain crimson droplets in this world?"
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
A cascade of ethereal chimes rang inside his skull, clear as could be.
{Congratulations, Master. You have broken 105 shackles.}
{Restoring physical body to the Trait General realm.}
Power began to flood into him like a dam bursting — warm, familiar, intoxicating.
"Ahhhhh…"
Dax exhaled, long and low. His entire body vibrated with deep, bone-level satisfaction. Veins lit faintly beneath his skin, black and crimson intertwined, as his strength reawakened in the chambers of his being. He turned his gaze within.
Kakarai stared up at the sky at Dax, twisted face pointing at him with his malformed arm, then pointing down — but he was ignored.
With serene composure, Dax crossed his legs midair into a perfect lotus position. Behind him, reality tore open, forming a black hole yawning wide, in absolute darkness, hungry beyond comprehension. Above his head, two radiant halos materialized, stacked one above the other, light soft and deceptive in nature.
At first, the pull was subtle.
Then it became ravenous. Every drop of rain curved toward him, streams defying gravity, spiraling into the void. The black hole drank greedily, and with every swallowed droplet, Dax's presence grew heavier and more oppressive, weighing on a single point.
"Vo! Vosss!"
Kakarai staggered as his legs trembled beneath the crushing pressure radiating outward. His knees buckled involuntarily as his malformed arm scraped against the dirt, clawing for what he couldn't grasp.
"What are you doing, idiot?"
Vabon's voice erupted from the earth as he burst partially upward. His face was pale, drained of energy, covered in terror.
"We need to report back. We've failed the mission." His eyes darted toward the sky, toward Dax. "Kakarai, you better escape — you're on your own!"
Without another word, Vabon sank once again into the ground, fleeing like a bolting shadow, desperate and dishonorable — at least he was alive.
"Damn… he's an expert." His voice echoed up from the depths, thin and shaking. "Why did he let his companions die if he had this kind of strength? Did the cult miscalculate? I will not die here. I cannot."
"Halt."
Dax's voice drifted downward, but his eyes were still closed and his posture unshaken. His words carried the absolute weight of divine command, settling over the battlefield like a shroud.