A slithering creature moved toward the darkness, navigating with precision.
Aaron immediately sensed something dangerous approaching. It was a primal instinct. He smeared the wolf-man's blood on himself and moved deeper into the cave.
He spotted a cluster of loose stones forming a narrow gap beneath them. Without thinking, he slipped inside to hide. The space was tight, cold, and unwelcoming, yet it was his only chance to survive. Just a few meters away lay the battlefield, a carpet of torn corpses and shattered bone.
Through the darkness, he finally saw it. A snake-like creature, its scales etched with countless human faces, each frozen in silent agony. It slithered toward the corpse, inspecting it with eerie intent. Soon it halted beside the wolf-man Aaron had killed moments earlier.
Its tongue flickered in an unnatural rhythm. It licked the blood pooled on the ground and then began to feed. Flesh tore with wet sounds as its rows of fangs pumped poison into the body, melting muscle and skin into a soft slurry. The creature swallowed everything, bones and all.
Aaron froze when he saw it. The creature looked like something pulled straight out of a nightmare. He called the system in panic, hoping it would tell him what he was facing, but again it refused to answer.His heart sank. Fear was all he had left. He prayed silently, begging the thing not to notice him.
After swallowing the wolf whole, the creature turned back toward the field of torn bodies. Its tongue twitched as it searched for something. Then it stopped. Its gaze settled on the raised stone where Aaron hid.
A grin formed across the faces on its skin. Whispering voices crawled into his mind.
Aaron's eyes widened in horror. "It saw me."
He tried to run, but he didn't even make it two steps. The snake was already on him, fangs snapping forward.
Aaron didn't pick up the doll he had thrown earlier. It was still lying on the floor.The tendril kept shooting outward, searching for something it was meant to seal, but the item was gone.
The doll convulsed, desperate to find a living heart.
And it found one.
It tore through the stitched faces of human skin covering the slithering body, reached inside, and wrapped its chains around a beating heart.
The reptilian heart was still beating as the tendril fought to seal it inside itself.
Aaron panicked, screamed, and shoved the doll back into his inventory.
A system window flashed. The doll shimmered and vanished into the air.
The snake-thing, with its body stitched with human faces screamed in unison and as now missing its heart, it was still able to managed to bare its fangs. It sank them into Aaron's shoulder. Venom spilled deep into his flesh.
For a moment, he thought he was dead.
Then another window appeared.
Foulborn: The bearer's blood becomes poison.
The poison inside him turned into an elixir instead, and he felt rejuvenated.
Suddenly, the window popped up again, this time red in color.
[A deity is looking towards you, DON′T LOOK UP. ]
A shimmering grey window followed, announcing a name.
[Mistress of Head is looking towards her servant.]
Aaron's eyes flickered. Every fibre in his muscles wanted to run as far as he could, but something cold gripped them. He couldn't move. He was frozen in fear.
{You are being dragged into Crescitlok, City of Brewing.}
A heavy mist swallowed his vision.
A cold chill ran through his skin. Aaron felt threatened as his senses screamed at him.
Sounds of insects, water, and nature infiltrated his ears.
"Where am I?" he asked himself.
For a second he thought he would hear the system answer, but nothing happened.
Instead, he saw something moving toward him through the mist, eyes crimson, wearing heavy armor, a black sun drawn on its chest.
[Blackened Knight of Sun Emperor dawns upon the realm of the Mistborn.]
[Stay alert!]
Aaron's face contorted in puzzlement as he tried to make sense of the situation.
The knight in front carried a shield and a huge sword. It was probably a greatsword meant to be wielded with both hands, yet this monstrosity held it with one.
Slowly, the mist was thinning, and Aaron was now able to see through it. Suddenly, a voice screamed at him from the other side of the mist. He could see tree branches as they penetrated the fog.
The voice yelled, "The knight bounded by the lake, run toward the land!"
Aaron didn't waste any time and moved in the direction of the sound. He didn't know if the voice was trustworthy or if he should have stayed where he was, but he felt that if he stayed too long, something bad might happen.
The blackened knight saw the rat running toward the land and bashed his shield.
A taunt?
Suddenly, Aaron's direction shifted, he was now running toward the knight itself.
"What?!"
The voice beyond the mist screamed again, "Do not get closer to the knight!"
But no matter what Aaron tried, he couldn't stop himself from running straight toward the knight.
With no way to escape, Aaron's first thought was to pull the doll out again… but hesitation stopped him. The doll already had a heart sealed inside it. He didn't know if it would help or make things worse. Would it activate again? Would it wake something? Or would it simply do nothing at all?
Every option felt like a gamble.
He reached for his inventory, uncertain, but before he could make the decision, the window appeared again, shimmering grey, the same as before.
[Mistborn is making descent on his realm.]
The voice from the mist screamed again, desperate this time,
"RUN AWAY! The mist monsters are coming! GO TOWARDS LAND!!"
But it was too late.
Aaron had already fallen into the knight's taunt, his body locked into a forced attack command. No matter how hard he tried to resist, his muscles only drove him closer to the knight instead of away from it.
The moment he got within striking distance, the knight moved with frightening precision. It shifted its shield behind its back like a door slamming shut, clearing space in front of its body. With its free hand, it gripped the massive sword, now holding it with both hands.
"So… the sword is meant to be used dual-handed…" Aaron muttered, breath trembling, his neck only inches from the edge of the blade.
He had already activated his skill, hoping for anything but against this knight, it might as well have been nothing.
It wasn't even intimidation he felt now… it was the sense of standing before an executioner who had done this countless times before.