The ceremonial dagger did not fall from my hand.
It softened.
At first I thought my vision was failing, that the heat rising from my core was warping what I saw. The blade shimmered, its sharp edges losing definition, the red sheen dulling as if it were being breathed upon. Then it sagged, bending like wax held too close to a flame.
I tried to let go.
My fingers would not open.
The metal flowed instead, sliding over my palm with a slow, deliberate intent. It was cold, impossibly cold, yet it moved like something alive. I felt it seep between my fingers, threading itself along my skin, searching, learning the shape of me.
"No…"
The word barely left my throat.
The dagger pressed into my flesh without breaking it. There was no pain, no tearing. My skin accepted it, yielding as if it had always been meant to part this way. The sensation was wrong, deeply wrong, like being touched beneath the skin by something that knew exactly where to go.
It spread upward.
Across my wrist, along my arm, thin lines of chill tracing paths beside my veins. I could feel it slipping into every hollow and curve, filling spaces I had never been aware of. My heartbeat echoed inside my skull, each pulse answered by a faint tightening as the metal wrapped closer around my bones.
I felt invaded.
Defiled.
The cold reached my neck, creeping along my jaw, brushing the underside of my chin before flowing across my face. It slid beneath my skin, not covering it, but sinking into it, mapping every contour, every muscle. My breath came shallow as the sensation crawled near my eyes, my temples, my lips.
I could feel it everywhere.
Inside me.
The metal gathered, coiling inward, drawn toward the burning pressure in my chest. As it neared my ember, the heat flared violently, not in rejection, but in recognition. The cold and the heat met, and for a brief, terrifying moment, my body felt stretched between two absolutes.
I dropped to my knees.
My hands clawed at my chest, but there was nothing to tear away. The dagger was no longer a thing that could be removed. It had become a mark etched beneath my skin, woven into my veins, pressed against my ember like a brand that could never fade.
The sensation settled, leaving behind a lingering weight, as if something had claimed its place within me.
I was still breathing.
Still whole.
The corruption gauge beeped again.
57 percent.
The sound was small, almost polite, yet it thundered inside my skull. My body tilted forward as if gravity had doubled, my limbs dragging against the stone floor. Every movement demanded permission from something deep inside me, something that whispered it would be easier to stop moving altogether.
A thought surfaced, uninvited and smooth.
Maybe it would not hurt to end it here.
The idea did not arrive with panic or despair. It came gently, wrapped in reason. No more fear. No more running. Just quiet. Just rest. My own thoughts frightened me more than the numbers climbing on the gauge.
My vision blurred, refusing to sharpen no matter how hard I blinked. The edges of the temple melted into shadow, statues stretching and breathing in my periphery. My eyelids felt weighted, pulled downward as if invisible hands were pressing on them, urging me to sleep, urging me to let go.
Another beep.
60 percent.
My chest felt tight, not from pain but from pressure, as though my ribs were being slowly bound together. The warmth around my ember twisted into something feverish, pulsing in uneven rhythms. With every beat, a surge of foreign emotion spilled through me. Hunger. Resentment. A yearning to crush something fragile just to feel solid again.
No. This is not me.
The corruption needle. My bag.
I tried to reach for it, but my fingers shook violently, missing the latch, scraping uselessly against stone. My hands felt distant, as if they belonged to someone else. The temple hummed softly, the snake crucifix seeming to watch, its gem eyes glowing faintly brighter with every second.
The gauge beeped again.
65 percent.
My breathing became ragged. Each inhale felt shallow, incomplete. The air tasted thick, metallic, clinging to my tongue. My thoughts began to fracture, overlapping voices speaking in tones that sounded almost like my own.
You are weak.You are tired.You are already halfway gone.
I forced myself to crawl, nails dragging against the floor until I reached my bag. My vision tunneled as I fumbled it open, hands slipping over familiar shapes that suddenly felt foreign. The needle. Where is it.
70 percent.
The walls seemed closer now. The statues no longer felt still. I could swear I heard stone shifting, chains tightening, a low vibration that resonated with the throbbing in my skull. My heart pounded so hard it hurt, each beat threatening to burst through my chest.
There.
My fingers closed around the corruption needle.
Another beep.
75 percent.
My thoughts screamed at me to stop, to hesitate, to consider how peaceful it would be to simply lie down and let the darkness finish its work. My arm felt unbearably heavy as I dragged the needle free, its surface cold against my palm.
My eyes refused to focus. I stabbed blindly at my thigh, missing once, then again, panic surging as the gauge ticked higher.
78 percent.
I bit down hard on my lip, the sharp taste of blood snapping me back into myself. With a trembling breath, I pressed the injector firmly against my leg and forced my thumb down.
The needle plunged in.
Cold flooded my veins, sharp and invasive, spreading outward from the injection site like ice water poured directly into my bloodstream. I gasped, my back arching as my body convulsed against the floor.
80 percent.
The gauge screamed.
For a heartbeat, I thought I was too late.
Then the climb stalled.
The whispers turned into angry static, clawing at the edges of my mind. My vision flashed white, then dark, then slowly, painfully, began to clear. I lay there shaking, muscles locked tight, sweat soaking through my clothes as the corruption fought the purge coursing through me.
The number trembled.
79 percent.
78 percent.
I laughed weakly, the sound breaking into a sob halfway through. My body felt ruined, hollowed out and scraped raw from the inside, but I was still here. Still breathing. Still myself, at least for now.
I stared up at the crimson-veined sky through the broken roof, heart hammering as the temple fell silent again.
That was too close.
The question would not leave me alone.
Why did it spike so fast?
Just moments ago the gauge had been steady, barely shifting, almost obedient. Then the moment the dagger fused with me, it surged like a living thing that had finally been awakened. That was the truth I did not want to accept.
Corruption was not random.
It reacted.
It fed on moments of weakness, on contact, on choice. The ignition of my ember was not a shield. It was an opening. I had exposed myself, willingly or not, and Arkael answered by reaching back inside me.
That realization settled heavy in my chest.
Another danger to track. Another invisible enemy.
I stumbled out of the temple, one hand braced against the dark stone as I adjusted the weight of my bag on my back. The air outside felt harsher than before, dry and biting, carrying the scent of ash and old blood. The red valleys stretched endlessly, their surfaces cracked and uneven, as if the land itself had been wounded and never allowed to heal.
Where would I even go?
There were no landmarks that promised safety. No sun to mark the passing of time. The sky remained stained in the same bruised red, unmoving, oppressive. I could not tell if it was noon or night, if hours had passed or only minutes. My body clock felt useless here, instincts dulled and confused.
That uncertainty frightened me more than the terrain.
I kept low as I moved, choosing paths between ridges of hardened ash, careful not to silhouette myself against the open sky. Every step sent a soft crunch beneath my boots, the sound far too loud in the stillness. I paused often, listening, watching, forcing myself to breathe slowly despite the lingering tremor in my hands.
Along the way, I began to notice them.
Corpses.
Some were human, or close enough to make my stomach twist. Torn armor half-buried in ash. Skeletal hands reaching upward as if frozen mid-plea. Others were clearly not human at all, their forms warped, bones bent at unnatural angles, hides fused with stone or crystalized residue.
None of them looked like they had died peacefully.
Marks of claws. Burned impressions. Bite wounds too large to belong to anything familiar. Whatever hunted here did not bother to hide its kills.
This was not abandoned land.
This was a feeding ground.
The thought tightened my grip on my weapon. Every shadow felt alive. Every distant shift of ash made my pulse jump. I kept moving, slower now, quieter, acutely aware that I was no longer alone in this place.