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“What now?!”
Aisling could barely make out more than indistinct shadows in the thick fog that wrapped around their group. They had continued eastward through the vast ruined city, moving cautiously between the carcasses of crumbling buildings and streets warped by time until a grayish, clammy shroud fell over them. The air, heavy with moisture and an odd density, seemed to weigh down every movement.
“Is this normal weather for Earth?” Idris asked, his voice slightly muffled.
He cast nervous glances around, tightening his grip on his sword’s hilt as if that could give him some sense of direction in this supernatural pea soup.
“No… definitely not,” Strife growled. “I’m not even sure this is fog.”
He stopped abruptly, placing a hand on his chest.
“Am I the only one having trouble breathing?”
Aisling exchanged a worried glance with Idris. They also felt that oppressive sensation tightening around their lungs—a subtle but insidious suffocation. There were pockets of normal air… then zones where the oxygen vanished entirely, leaving them gasping for a moment.
The young woman tried to take a deep breath to adapt, but an odd, metallic taste immediately filled her mouth and nose. She grimaced, her heart racing, as if she were inhaling iron or dried blood.
“Damn it, I can’t see a thing!” Strife cursed, angrily pulling off his helmet.
He ran his gauntlet inside, as if he could wipe away the opacity that rendered his senses useless, then put it back on with annoyance.
“Can’t your Watcher try to guide us through this mess?”
“Nim?”
“On it…”
The small specter shot out from his ring, hovering above them like a spectral flame
“See if we’re anywhere near getting out of this stew or if we need to climb,” Strife ordered.
She nodded briefly and spiraled upward, trying to find a path through the suffocating fog. Aisling kept her head raised for a moment, her eyes searching for the glowing figure…
Then she suddenly sprawled out on the ground.
The impact left her momentarily stunned, her palms slamming against the rough floor. A cold shiver crawled up her spine when she felt a spongy texture beneath her. Lifting her head, her gaze met that of a dead creature, its hollow eye sockets frozen in an expression of agony.
A scream rose in her throat, but she stifled it just in time, scrambling back hurriedly. Strife was faster, grabbing her firmly by the arm to pull her to her feet. In one smooth motion, he slid her behind him and drew one of his pistols, pointing the barrel toward the darkness.
“Damn…” Idris had approached, his sword drawn, his face twisted in a grimace.
Aisling felt her stomach clench as she realized what she had tripped over. In front of them lay the corpse of a mutant, half-decomposed, its monstrous body twisted into an unnatural position. Irregular bony protrusions covered its long, skeletal limbs. Deformed horns jutted from its skull, and its mouth, filled with far too many teeth, was locked in a grotesque grimace.
Though it didn’t seem to be exactly the same type of creature as the ones brought back by Strife and Idris, it looked similar enough to send a chill of horror through Aisling. Like a failed sketch, an aborted version. Despite the lack of oxygen, the smell quickly became unbearable—a stench of rotting flesh mixed with that strange metallic note clinging to the air.
“How many of these things are there, for crying out loud?” Idris asked, squinting as he tried to peer through the fog.
Aisling didn’t dare to move closer. She just crossed her arms over her chest, her breathing growing more erratic and difficult.
“What killed it?” The young warrior crouched beside the corpse, studying the creature’s dislocated skull.
Strife slowly circled the body, inspecting the scene with care. He eventually stopped a few steps away and pointed at something.
“Him,” he said.
They followed his gaze. In the mutant’s hand, clenched with an almost desperate strength, was a large piece of stone covered in blackish blood. Idris frowned.
“It… killed itself?”
“Seems like it,” Strife sighed. “Doesn’t make much sense…”
A heavy silence fell between them, disturbed only by the distant sound of the wind whistling through the ruins. Aisling glanced around, her unease growing.
Something was deeply wrong with this place.
Strife and Idris continued to examine the mutant’s corpse, exchanging tense murmurs as they tried to figure out what could have happened here. But Aisling’s attention was suddenly drawn to a fleeting glint—a silver light that flashed briefly at the edge of her vision.
She spun around abruptly, her heart pounding, expecting to see Nimue descending from above, floating in the mist. But there was nothing. Nothing but the thick, clammy shroud that trapped them.
A shiver of unease crept down her spine. Her eyes searched the surroundings, looking for the source of the light, trying to see where it had vanished. An illusion? A mere reflection in this unnatural fog? Maybe. Yet a nauseating feeling settled within her—a visceral certainty that she wasn’t alone.
She exhaled slowly and turned back toward Strife and Idris—
But they were no longer there.
Her breath caught abruptly. In front of her, there was nothing but emptiness. The fog stretched out like an opaque, suffocating wall, concealing everything beyond.
“Idris?? Strife?!?”
Her voice was swallowed by the dense mist, absorbed instantly. No echo. No response. She felt her pulse quicken, her legs stiffening. A brutal, irrational fear took hold of her.
She spun around, hesitant. Move forward? In which direction? Anxiety crushed her chest. She closed her eyes, straining to hear, hoping to catch even the faintest sound—a breath, a step, anything.
Nothing. Not a single sound reached her. Not the slightest rustle of fabric, not the faintest vibration from the ground. A silence… too deep, too unnatural.
Then, once more, she caught sight of that silvery, ghostly glint. Something moved around her. She swallowed, suppressing a sob of panic. Strife? Maybe it was just a reflection on the Horseman’s armor?
She forced herself to move. One step. Then another. Soon, she could hear nothing but her own body. The friction of her clothes against her skin. Her breath, too loud, echoing like a wave in her head. The dull pounding of her heart.
Then, worse still… The rustling of her blood coursing through her veins, liquid and oppressive. The gurgling of her digestive fluids, an organic strangulation that made her feel sick. And the roots of the seed nestled within her, slowly, inexorably wrapping around her bones. A faint crack, like the soft groan of dry wood under invisible pressure.
The sounds grew so deafening that she finally clasped her head in her hands, unable to bear them any longer. Silence had turned into noise, an unbearable, violent, omnipresent noise.
She didn’t dare to breathe anymore, terrified by her own breath. She swallowed a sob, holding back her tears.
Then the visions began. At first, indistinct. A wave of echoes, almost subliminal, blending with the silence. Then, little by little, they took shape. Voices and distant images, yet so close at the same time, like projections on the curtain of fog.
A warning cry on Nimrach. A pleading voice.
“Run, run, they’re coming!”
A crash, flames, the scent of ashes and blood.
“Why are you leaving us?!”
The clattering of weapons, the clash of metal.
“You could have saved us…”
The Burning Lakes. Fire, infernal heat. Angels, demons, their screams echoing against the red cliffs. Her hands, their flesh, the blood spurting in black jets on the burning ground of the fortress.
“You started the War.”
And then, colder, darker. The absence of cries and a silence so deep it froze her to the core.
Newborns, with empty eyes. They didn’t cry. They didn’t scream. They breathed, yes, but that was all. Soulless.
“They are empty. You couldn’t save them.”
Aisling pressed her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut, her breathing growing erratic.
“No… no, no, no…”
But the voices and images didn’t stop. They hissed, they whispered, they accused. They were there for her. And she couldn’t escape them.
The whispers suddenly ceased.
As if a veil had been violently ripped away, the fog, the suffocating silence, and those terrifying voices vanished all at once, leaving her gasping, as if expelled from a too-real nightmare.
“AISLING!”
The sound exploded in her head, violent and tangible, pulling her out of her trance. Two strong hands suddenly grabbed her, wrenching her own hands from her ears with a force that made her stumble. Burning fingers gripped her face, forcing her to open her eyes.
Idris was kneeling in front of her, his face just inches from hers, his brows drawn together in anger barely masking a visceral fear. His stormy gaze burned with worry.
“Why did you wander off?! What were you thinking?!”
He shook her roughly, his voice charged with nervous rage, and it took Aisling several seconds to reconnect with reality. Everything seemed abruptly real. Too real. The air against her skin, the biting cold, the rough texture of her coat, the dull pounding of her heart against her ribcage.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She stared at Idris as if struggling to believe this wasn’t still an illusion.
“Idris, stop, you’re hurting her!”
Strife intervened, pulling the young man back with a firm gesture. Idris clenched his jaw and straightened abruptly, stepping away a few paces, his breathing still rapid. He ran his hands over his forehead, through his hair, visibly trying to regain his composure.
Aisling had never seen such a flash of intensity in his eyes. He was trembling slightly, from the adrenaline. Strife, meanwhile, remained crouched in front of her, one hand on her shoulder, forcing her to focus on him.
“Did you hear something? Like yesterday?”
Aisling nodded, still in shock. Idris pointed at her sharply, his finger aimed as if he wanted to shoot her on the spot.
“She wandered off and panicked! You saw it too—there was nothing! I’m taking back what I said in the Twilight Realm: we should never have brought her, it’s too dangerous for her!”
His voice cracked through the air like a whip. Strife didn’t reply immediately, simply observing the young woman, assessing her condition.
“War explained to us that she might be capable of premonitions, kid. She might have just had a waking vision.”
“All the more reason to take her back,” Idris hissed through clenched teeth, his jaw tightening and his fists clenching. “She’s putting herself in danger—and us with her. She’s compromising the mission.”
Aisling remained frozen, stunned by the brutality of Idris’s words. Never before had he spoken to her like that. Never had he looked at her with such cold distance, as if she were a stranger.
Was that really what he thought of her? Had she, without realizing it, crossed an invisible line that now separated them? Or… had she truly become a stranger to him?
“Idris, SHE is the mission,” Strife reminded him, his tone calm but tinged with irritation. “And I’ll say it again—this fog isn’t normal, and you’ve breathed in plenty of it while looking for her. It might be affecting your…”
A sudden flash of light cut through the fog, falling from the sky with urgency.
“There you are!” Nimue’s voice trembled with relief. “Where did you go? I’ve been looking for you for hours!”
Strife straightened up, bewildered.
“Hours?” He exchanged a puzzled glance with Idris, then turned back to Nimue, frowning
“You’re losing it, flame. You left not even twenty minutes ago.”
“No, Rider… the sun is already setting toward the horizon. You’ve been in there for hours.”
A tense silence fell over them. Strife exhaled slowly before shooting Idris an ironic look.
“Hmm… still convinced everything’s normal?”
The young warrior didn’t respond immediately, his expression hardening even more. But instead of admitting or arguing, he simply gritted his teeth and held out a hand to Aisling to help her up.
“”Come on, dove,” Strife said, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. “You stick with me, and it’ll be fine. Where to now, little ghost?”
Nimue floated a bit higher above them, scanning the area before answering.
“The fog stretches for miles to the east, like an ocean from above. The only way out would be to turn back, but… I think I found the source.”
“The source?” Strife narrowed his eyes.
“Fog doesn’t have a source.” Idris huffed in frustration.
“This one does. A massive tower that rises above the clouds. I couldn’t see what’s on top, but the fog is pouring out from there.”
“Damn it, I’m getting an even worse feeling about this,” Strife muttered, tapping Idris’s shoulder as he passed him. “Alright, stop sulking, kid. Flame? Lead the way.”
Aisling followed mechanically, still shaken, more by Idris’s words than by the visions. Strife walked behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder—a gesture meant to be reassuring, but to her, it felt more like she was a lost child being watched to keep from wandering off again.
She couldn’t blame them. She didn’t understand what had just happened either. She turned her head slightly, casting a lost glance toward the fog.
Nothing. Just a suffocating, impenetrable gray wall.
She pressed her lips together, hesitated, then murmured to Strife, preferring that Idris not hear in his foul mood.
“I don’t think it was a premonition.”
“Are you sure?”
“I only have them when I’m asleep.”
“Sleepwalking?” the Horseman suggested, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“I’m serious, Strife. There was something in the fog…”
“Hmmm… maybe it’s related to the absence of the Essence of Air?”
“Maybe…”
The fog thickened, and then suddenly, a massive shadow took shape through the mist. A colossal metal tower loomed out of the fog, imposing and menacing. Once a human ruin, it had been roughly patched up. Metal plates of various sizes were haphazardly attached, some welded at odd angles, others covered in rust—reinforcing the structure with little regard for aesthetics.
The fog seeped slowly from grates embedded in the ground all around the tower, spilling from its depths to spread across the ruined city.
Only then did they notice the bodies. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of corpses littered the ground in front of the gaping entrance to the tower. Angels and demons piled together without distinction, some dismembered, others barely recognizable. Several bodies were hung on the metal walls like grotesque trophies, chained or impaled on twisted iron spikes.
“I love the decor,” Strife commented in a falsely cheerful tone, resting one hand on one of his pistols while keeping the other firmly on Aisling’s shoulder. “Got that nice ‘still life’ vibe… very artistic.”
Idris, on the other hand, slowly drew his sword, his gaze hard.
“It’s a warning.”
“You don’t appreciate art, kid,” Strife shot back with biting sarcasm, moving cautiously while drawing his pistol.
Without another word, he positioned Aisling behind him, and they stepped into the entrance.
The inside of the tower was no more welcoming. The vast, dark hall was nothing but a scene of absolute carnage.
The ground was slick under their boots, covered in a thick layer of both dried and fresh blood, blending scarlet and black. Body parts lay scattered everywhere—severed limbs, torn wings abandoned in the corners, broken weapons still clutched in the stiff hands of the dead.
Aisling felt her breath catch for a moment. The sight was deeply unsettling, reminding her unpleasantly of what had happened in the fortress of the Burning Lakes—the way she had slaughtered everyone present. Could this be the work of the Air essence?
“Strife… What could be strong enough to wipe out both angels and demons like this?”
She moved a bit closer to him, instinctively seeking protection. The Rider observed the scene with a cold intensity, analyzing every detail.
“In theory? Death, War, Fury, and me. But this…” He slowly shook his head. “This isn’t our work. Too messy.”
A sound suddenly shattered the heavy silence. A heavy noise. Slow, ponderous footsteps echoing through the hall like a distant rumble, accompanied by a scraping sound, as if something was dragging a massive weight behind it.
Massive shadows slowly emerged from behind the tower, tearing through the fog like nightmarish specters. Three gigantic mutants, twisted abominations defying all logic, moved toward them in heavy silence.
Their bodies were a juxtaposition of horror: hypertrophied limbs, bone protrusions piercing their flesh, distorted faces. Blood clung to their skin in entire patches, soaking their muscles and dripping from their claws. Worse still, some chunks of flesh—broken wings, shredded limbs—still hung from their talons like grim trophies.
Yet their eyes were not filled with bestial rage. They flickered, uncertain, as if they didn’t understand what they were seeing.
“Ah… I think we’ve found the interior decorators,” Strife announced lightly, though his movements were anything but relaxed.
Slowly, he raised one of his pistols toward them, ready to fire. Beside him, Idris gripped his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white, his body tense like a predator ready to pounce. The Rider cautiously pushed Aisling back to distance her from the imminent fight. But the young woman couldn’t tear her gaze away from the mutants.
There was something in their attitude… in their awkward stillness… They didn’t seem hostile. Not really. Their posture appeared hesitant, as if they didn’t even know why they were there. And in their eyes… something unexpected. No rage. No murderous instinct.
But an unfathomable sadness. A call to the void. A yearning to end it all.
“Strife…” She barely dared to whisper, breathless. “I’m not sure that…”
But Idris leapt before she could finish her sentence. In a fluid, relentless motion, he lunged at the nearest mutant, his sword slicing through the air before crashing violently into the creature’s chest. The blade cut deep, carving a gaping wound into the grayish flesh.
The mutant screamed. A cry of pain rather than rage, a heart-wrenching howl that echoed through the entire tower. It recoiled, bringing a trembling hand to its wound, as if it couldn’t comprehend what had just happened.
The other two mutants suddenly moved, advancing heavily, their footsteps making the ground tremble. One of them raised a massive arm, ready to crush Idris under a monstrous blow.
But Strife was quicker. In one smooth motion, he pulled the trigger. The shot rang out, a bullet slicing through the air before striking the monster’s shoulder, forcing it to stagger backward.
Aisling kept retreating. Her boots slipped on the blood-slick ground until her back finally hit the cold metal wall. Then, a clear, feminine voice suddenly broke through the chaos.
“Stop, stop, stop! Stop it, my darlings, stop!”
The mutants froze instantly, their movements locked in grotesque suspension. Slowly, ever so slowly, they lifted their heavy gazes to the top of the staircase, and Strife, Idris, and Aisling did the same.
At the top of the stairs, a silhouette appeared, backlit by the pale light filtering through the fog—a demon woman.
Enchantingly beautiful, a disconcerting blend of elegance and inhumanity, her skin—a warm brown with amber highlights—seemed almost liquid under the shifting glow of the tower. Every move she made revealed a shimmering dress that covered only the bare essentials—a bewitching fabric that rippled, changing color like a mirage, sometimes dark as the abyss, sometimes iridescent like the inside of a shell.
But beyond this alluring appearance, the details betrayed her infernal origin. Her hands and feet, seemingly delicate, ended in sharp talons covered with the same scales as a raptor’s claws. A long, serpentine tail swayed behind her, brushing the metal floor with a hypnotic rustle.
Her inverted wings folded gracefully against her back. Black horns, elegantly curved backward, held a veiled headdress in place, adding a touch of mystery to her gaze, split with a supernatural glint.
Without delay, she descended the stairs with predatory ease, her talons clicking lightly against the metal with each step.
The mutants, though massive and terrifying just moments before, retreated at her approach, a glint of fear and submission in their vacant eyes, despite the gentleness in her voice when she addressed them.
“These are guests, my darlings. You don’t crush guests!”
Her voice seemed like a song, a seductive and playful whisper flowing between them like honey. Then, she turned toward Strife, Idris, and Aisling, with an almost childlike expression of apology on her face.
“I’m so sorry. Their job is to prevent intruders from entering, and as you can see, they are… diligent. Really sorry, it’s my fault.”
But when her gaze finally settled on Strife, her expression changed drastically. Her pupils widened, and a raw emotion seemed to engulf her. She brought her clawed hands to her heart, as if seized by a deep feeling.
“So it’s true… One of the Four is helping humans reclaim their kingdom!”
An ecstatic smile lit up her features, and in an almost theatrical impulse, she made as if to approach, arms wide open. But before she could take another step, a gunshot cracked through the air.
The sharp sound instantly shattered the enchantment that seemed to have settled. Idris and Aisling flinched, as if roused from a troubled dream, while the demoness froze, her eyes slowly drifting toward Strife’s still-smoking gun.
“When you’re polite, you introduce yourself.”
His voice sounded like a warning disguised as a joke, and he spun the cylinder of his pistol in a casual yet tense motion. The demoness blinked, then let out a crystalline, lighthearted laugh.
“Oh, of course.”
She seemed to become aware of her rudeness and bowed slightly with fluid elegance. Her smile widened, revealing a hint of sharp fangs behind her perfect lips.
“I am Naamah, the guardian of this tower. And I welcome you!”