It was titanic and absolutely terrifying.
Ash had never seen anything like it in his life. Not in the worst nightmares he'd had as a child, not in the horror stories he read online, not even in his most twisted imagination could he have conceived something like this.
It was a face.
An enormous gray face, like that of a corpse that had been rotting for weeks. The skin —if it could be called that— was stretched tight over the bones, cracked in thousands of places, and from each crack oozed a thick, grayish liquid that slowly vanished upon contact with the mist. The eyes were two empty sockets, dark, deep as abysses. But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part were the hands.
All around it, as if they were holding the face in place, there were hands. Dozens of hands. Two enormous ones on the sides, one more on the forehead, and between the spaces of their fingers, smaller ones, more numerous, all squeezing, all holding.
And between the fingers of those hands, in the gaps left by their joints, there were eyes. Yellow eyes, bright, blinking slowly, observing everything with ancient and malevolent intelligence.
Ash felt the terror.
Not the normal fear, the kind that quickens your heart and sharpens your senses. No. This was another kind of terror. It was pure, physical, absolute. A terror that penetrated to the bone, that froze the blood, that paralyzed every muscle in the body.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
He could only stare.
And as he stared, a Mist Spawn —one of the many still swarming around him— took advantage of his immobility.
The blow hit him square in the side.
Ash flew several meters through the air, his body spinning uncontrollably until he crashed against the ground. The impact was brutal. He felt something crack inside him —ribs? collarbone? He didn't know— and pain enveloped him like a wave.
But the pain was precisely what saved him.
The pain broke the spell of terror that had kept him paralyzed. Ash opened his eyes —he didn't know when he had closed them— and struggled to turn on his side, gasping, spitting blood.
And then he saw Dren.
The veteran was about twenty meters away, fighting three Spawn at once. His axe moved with that deadly efficiency Ash had learned to admire, but he was retreating. His movements were slower, his blows less precise. Blood flowed from a dozen minor wounds, and his face was a mask of exhaustion and determination.
"DREN!" Ash shouted, but his voice was barely a hoarse whisper.
Dren didn't hear him. Or couldn't respond.
A Spawn managed to breach his defense. Its claws sank into the veteran's arm, and Dren screamed, a gut-wrenching sound Ash would remember for the rest of his life. But he didn't fall. He kept fighting.
Until another Spawn struck him from behind.
And another.
And another.
Ash watched Dren fall to his knees. He watched the Spawn pounce on him. He saw the blood. So much blood. Gushing, staining the ground, mixing with that gray liquid the creatures left behind.
"DREN!" he shouted again, but this time his voice was stronger.
Dren could no longer hear him.
The gray-haired woman ran toward him, trying to help, but the Spawn surrounded her too. Ash watched her fight, saw her axe tracing desperate arcs, saw how one, two, three Spawn fell before her.
But there were too many.
There were always too many.
She fell too. Her body hit the ground with a dull thud, and the Spawn pounced on her.
Ash felt something warm on his cheeks.
Tears.
He was crying.
He didn't know when it had started, but tears streamed down his face, mixing with the blood and dust and that damned gray residue that covered everything. He cried for Dren, who had saved him so many times. He cried for the gray-haired woman, whose name he had never known but who had given him his first piece of advice in this hell. He cried for Kael, for the knights, for all those who had died so he could make it this far.
He cried for himself.
For how powerless he was.
For how small he felt in the face of this cruel and merciless world that had given him no respite since the moment he awoke in it.
But then, amidst the tears, something changed.
The pain was still there. The sadness was still there. The powerlessness too.
But beneath all that, somewhere deep he didn't even know existed, something began to burn.
No, he thought. I will not die here.
It wasn't hope. It wasn't optimism. It wasn't any of those nice things people said in difficult moments.
It was something more basic. More primitive.
It was will.
Will to live.
Will not to give up.
Will to keep going even when everything was lost.
Ash clenched his teeth so hard he felt them creak. He ignored the pain in his side, in his arm, in every part of his body. He ignored the tears that still fell. He ignored the terror the titanic creature still inspired.
He grabbed his sword —his Memory, his only possession in this world— and used it as support to stand up.
His legs trembled. His wounded arm screamed. His breathing was an irregular, painful rattle.
But he was standing.
The Spawn saw him. Several turned toward him, their cold eyes gleaming with anticipation.
Ash didn't wait for them to attack.
He ran toward them.
It wasn't an elegant charge. It wasn't a calculated movement. It was a desperate onslaught, driven by pure adrenaline and that newly discovered will.
The first Spawn tried to block his path. Ash's sword pierced it before it could react.
[You have killed an awakened beast: Mist Spawn]
The spell's voice sounded in his mind, but Ash didn't stop to listen.
Second Spawn. Third. Fourth.
His sword moved, his body too, but it was no longer him controlling the movements. It was something else. Something that had been sleeping inside him and that now, faced with the threat of death, had awakened.
The Spawn fell before him as if made of paper.
But there were too many. There were always too many.
One managed to wound him in the side. Another in the leg. A third slashed his good arm.
Ash kept going.
Every step was agony. Every blow cost him superhuman effort. But he didn't stop. He couldn't stop.
Stopping meant dying.
And he was not going to die.
Not here. Not now. Not after everything.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the last Spawn fell.
Ash stood, gasping, bleeding, trembling. Around him, the bodies of the creatures slowly vanished, returned to the mist from which they were born.
And then, he looked up.
The titanic creature was still there. The gray face, the hands holding it, the yellow eyes blinking slowly. But now, Ash could see something he hadn't noticed before.
The creature was motionless.
It wasn't that it was still waiting. It was that it couldn't move. The hands holding it weren't to support it, but to contain it. And the eyes... the eyes weren't looking at it. They were looking through it.
Ash understood then.
This creature wasn't the enemy. It was the prison.
Or something like that.
He had no time to think.
His intuition —that silent voice that had guided him here— spoke to him once more.
Now, it said. You have to do it now.
Ash didn't ask what. He didn't ask how. He simply knew.
The eye. The only yellow eye that shone in the center of that mass of flesh and mist. That was the vulnerable point. The core. The heart of everything.
Ash gripped his sword's hilt and began to run.
The Spawn tried to stop him. They emerged from the mist by the dozen, placing themselves in his path. But Ash was no longer the same one who had entered the camp. Something in him had changed. Something that made them slower, clumsier, easier to dodge.
Or perhaps it was him who was faster.
He dodged, rolled, leaped. Every movement was perfect, precise, as if he had been practicing for this moment his entire life.
The Spawn fell in his wake, but he didn't stop to kill them. He had no time. He just ran.
Toward the eye.
Toward the creature.
Toward the end.
When he was close enough, when the yellow eye filled his entire field of vision, Ash leaped.
But it wasn't enough.
The creature was too large. His leap, no matter how high, wouldn't reach. He would fall meters short of his target, and the Spawn would devour him, and everything would have been in vain.
In that instant, Ash remembered the Memory he had obtained.
Mist Fang.
His left hand, still functional despite the wounds, felt the familiar light weight of the weapon.
And without hesitating, without thinking, without allowing himself a second of doubt, Ash threw the sword with all the strength he had left.
Mist Fang flew.
It was just a sword, an insignificant weapon of the first-level awakened rank, compared to the enormous nightmare creature. But it was all he could do.
The blade possessed an enchantment:
[Ethereal Edge]: This blade can pierce physical defenses with ease.
It pierced through.
The sword sank into the yellow eye like butter. And kept going. And going. And going.
The eye didn't bleed. It didn't explode. It simply... went dark.
For an instant, all was silence.
Then, the creature roared.
It wasn't a normal sound. It was a roar that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A roar that made the air tremble, that made the mist itself shudder, that made Ash feel as if his soul were about to tear apart.
The roar hit him like a wave.
Ash was flung backward, his body spinning uncontrollably through the air. He saw the gray sky, the mist, the ground, the sky again. He saw the titanic creature convulse, its hands releasing the face, its eyes going dark one by one.
And then he saw the rocks.
The impact was devastating.
He felt multiple bones break at the same time. His arm, his leg, several ribs, maybe his hip. The pain was so immense, so absolute, that his mind tried to shut down to protect itself.
But it didn't shut down.
It couldn't.
Something kept him conscious. Something forced him to stay there, to keep feeling, to keep existing.
And then, the mist found him.
It was the same mist from that first time. The one that had appeared in his room. The one that had brought him to this world. The one that had touched him and marked him as Child of the Void.
Ash felt his senses begin to fade.
The pain disappeared first. Then the cold. Then the sensation of his own body.
His thoughts began to scatter, like leaves carried by the wind. He remembered fragments: Kael's face, Dren's advice, his mother's smile, the day of the accident, the mist in his room.
Everything began to fade.
His "self." That which defined him. That which made him Ash. That too began to fade.
And at that moment, in that place between life and death, Ash made a decision.
He fought.
He didn't know how. He didn't know against what. But he fought.
He clung to his memories like a shipwrecked sailor clings to a plank. He remembered his name: Ashfall. He remembered who he was: a young man who wrote fanfics, who collected replica swords, who had been thrown into this world without asking for it. He remembered why he fought: to live. To stay alive. To not end up like all the others.
The mist tried to take everything from him.
He didn't allow it.
He fought and fought and fought, not knowing how much time passed, not knowing if he was winning or losing, not knowing if he even still existed.
Until he heard the voice.
A familiar voice. Cold. Distant. But also, somehow, warm.
[You have killed a Fallen Terror: Progenitor of the Mist]
[You have obtained a Memory]
Ash felt something change. The mist enveloping him began to dissipate. His senses slowly returned, like numb fingers regaining feeling.
And then, the voice spoke again.
[Awaken, Ashfall. Your nightmare has ended.]
[Prepare for evaluation...]