Adrian and Eric continued walking side by side. The silence of the darkness had returned. The more they walked, the more it felt like the past meeting with the little fawn was nothing more than a dream Adrian had lived through.
But the coldness of the darkness kept reminding him how real it was.
The garden faded into the dark behind him, the way childhood does — gone so gradually that you never notice the exact moment it ended, only that by the time you look back for it, it's already too far away to reach.
Adrian stayed quiet for a long while. His grip on Eric's arm loosened by degrees, not from forgetting his fear but from something steadier replacing it — a small, hard-won confidence built one lesson at a time. He turned Eric's last words over in his mind, finding more in them the longer he sat with them.
Ahead, silver-furred rats scurried in a steady stream toward a field thick with the smell of blood.
Adrian recognized them. The same rats he'd seen outside the formation, picking at the guard's body in the dark.
"Do you think a beast tide happened here?" His voice came out plain and hoarse, the first thing he'd said in some time.
"Possibly," Eric said. "But everything we've encountered so far suggests it's unlikely—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
His left hand rose sharply. Adrian froze in place before his mind even caught up to why.
The darkness pressed in differently now — heavier, closer, deliberate. Something settled on the back of Adrian's neck, a gaze he couldn't see but felt with total certainty. A chill crawled down his spine and refused to leave.
Then came the breathing.
Light, slow, and far too close — right behind him, close enough that Adrian swore he could feel warmth against his neck. Every instinct screamed at him to look down, to turn, to run.
It took everything in him to hold still.
Eric slowly lifted his head and looked off to his left, into the dark.
A shape stood there — barely visible, almost entirely swallowed by the black around it. Only its eyes gave it away, two points of glowing purple, and a faint matching glow tracing the ridge of its spine.
Eric didn't move. The Stalker didn't move. Neither of them blinked.
The silence between them stretched long enough that Adrian's lungs began to ache from holding his breath.
Then, finally, something in the creature's posture shifted — small, almost imperceptible—a decision made.
It turned, the purple glow sliding sideways through the dark, and calmly decided they weren't worth the trouble, disappearing without a sound.
Adrian gulped his saliva. "What... was that?"
"It was a Voidman Stalker. They are humanoid creatures who linger in the dark and stalk their prey. attacking when the target lets their guard down. They mostly stay alone, but each one is ferocious and strong, but they rarely take any risk." Eric explained, lowering his left arm, as he continued walking with Adrian.
Adrian's grip on Eric's arm had once again tightened.
They continued walking.
The darkness around them suddenly seemed to intensify, as if something huge was towering over them, making their surroundings darker, increasing the grip of Adrian's hands on Eric's arm.
Suddenly, a slow and low symphony started to play around them; it was smooth as silk, bringing them warmth and immense joy, slowly attracting them to its source in the darkness.
Adrian slowly forgot all his worries as he let go of Eric and started to walk away from the light, but Eric grabbed his shoulder with a tight grip and brought him back.
Eric's steps gradually stopped before coming to a complete stop. He looked around and saw multiple patches of shadows in the lamp's light as he held onto Adrian.
"Get out of it," Eric said as he broke one of Adrian's fingers. Adrian screamed in pain at his broken finger, which was quickly healed by Eric.
Before Adrian could complain or scream at Eric, he noticed him slowly look up. Adrian also followed his gaze, and what he saw left his body trembling.
There were multiple figures, mostly humans, some wolves, some weirdly structured beasts, big and small, of all kinds, hanging in the darkness by black strings.
They were like meat hung to dry.
Just as Eric was about to take Adrian and get out of the place, a cold wind passed by them. Eric quickly let go of Adrian and jumped back. Adrian hectically looked back, seeing a black spear made up of black strings pierce where they were standing.
The spear untangled into multiple black strings and shot itself at them both. Eric disappeared in the darkness as silence appeared again. Adrian quickly got up and ran, trying to save himself from the black strings.
But no matter how fast he ran, he couldn't run from the strings before one string caught up to him and inserted itself into his nape.
A cold feeling spread in his spine as Adrian's body started to feel like it was made up of metal and had started to rust. His movements were slow, and his thinking speed decreased by the second.
He willed his Destruction Aura to surge from his body, frantically wrapping it around the black string, but it was like throwing rocks at steel without the knowledge of any weak spot. Adrian was randomly using his aura, but the string seemed to be indestructible.
In the end, he was too weak.
He was losing control of his own body and even his Aura; the situation was hopeless, and there was no light around him in the darkness to get hope from.
Slow tears started to drop down his cheeks. But even those tears had started to slow down. Adrian tried to open his mouth and scream for Eric. But it was too late.
Just as Adrian was about to join the marionettes above him, the light of a lamp appeared in his vision. Eric quickly walked to Adrian, in his hand was the head of a hideous creature, looking like the mixture of a fish and an elephant.
Eric put the head near Adrian as he took the string into his neck and pulled it out of his body. Adrian's body trembled before he slowly regained control of his body.
He could again feel the warmth of the lamp, and tears trickled down his face as he jumped and tightly hugged Eric, crying his eyes out.
Eric didn't say anything; he slowly stroked Adrian's head and waited for him to stop crying.
After a few minutes of crying, Adrian got back on his feet and wiped off the last of his tears.
Eric knew what Adrian was gonna ask, he showed a very small but noticeable smile on his face as he pointed to the head of the beast and started to explain, "This is a Hollow Puppeteer, they lure their prey with music before using their innate abilities, which are these strings to slowly turn them into a marionette." He pointed up, "Like the ones above us."
"I have already killed it, let's go." The marionette hanging above slowly fell onto the ground with a thud as the black string disappeared.
Eric collected the ones and stored them in his Domain of Emotions as he left the others for the other beasts, which were lingering in the dark. He didn't want to provoke them for taking away all of their food.
They kept walking.
In the way, they passed through a field of rosewood roses, shiny and showing others their way to safety in this darkness, acting as the guiding light. Adrian found a fruit that tasted like an apple but had the appearance of a red papaya. It made Adrian laugh for a long time afterwards.
A garden of gloomy shrubs, they were small plants that inhabited the souls of people who had once gotten lost in the darkness. They talked like innocent kids and moved their bodies around fluidly.
Adrian talked to them for two hours straight, while Eric was given nothing but weird gazes, when asked they said that his eyes seemed too dead.
A forest of Limping Light Trees. They were a special type of trees who could walk a few kilometers every year, like the walking palm trees on earth, except that they glowed in a shiny blue light. They didn't like anyone coming close to them, shooting their leaves like blades when Adrian tried to get close.
As they walked, more beasts and areas were discovered and explored by them. Adrian sometimes gets scared, sometimes laughs around, and runs freely. With Eric by his side, most beasts stayed away from them.
The ones like the Hollow puppeteer paid the price for their bravery.
As they walked, A giant figure appeared in front of them in the darkness. Adrian tried to walk up closer and saw what it was, but Eric grabbed him and brought him back, this time more tightly than he did with the puppeteer.
Adrian didn't question why but what.
"What is that in the dark?"
Adrian shook his head, "That is a Greymantle Sovereign; it is better not to disturb." With that, he took Adrian and walked a wider route around the beast.
The darkness was now suffocating; Eric and Adrian could barely see the next few steps ahead of them, even with the lamp with them.
Eric noticed the appearance of black veins on the ground that have slowly started to become numerous as they reach the center.
"Is this?..." Just as Eric was thinking about what the black veins, Adrian suddenly stopped and pointed at something in the dark ahead of them.
Eric raised his head and looked at the black figure of something that looked like a humanoid reindeer, which was standing on its own two feet.
It seemed to be in pain and was wailing loudly. It suddenly looked at Eric and Adrian, its red eyes became bloodshot as Adrian took the lamp, ran back, giving Eric space. He had learned this along the journey.
"A brown-furred Cinder Penident? No wait, this one doesn't seem right."
The cinder penident screamed and charged at Eric without a warning, its speed was something that shouldn't be physically possible for it.
Eric wasn't in the least bit afraid. He was just about to charge at it using Repulsion Charge, but when Eric activated his Abyssal Eyes and saw the soul of the beast, he saw multiple throbbing black veins just like the ones on the ground, covering almost all parts of his body.
"This is... corruption!" Eric realized what he had been suspecting was true.
He didn't charge and rolled to the side before using his Aura to throw back the cinder, making it collide in a huge boulder, but it just screamed louder and charged again.
Eric knew he couldn't waste his Aura on this weak beast and used gravity press and imploded its head, a fountain of blood appeared.
Eric avoided the blood like the plague.
Adrian slowly appeared from the darkness and stared at the dead body of the beast. There was still disgust in him, but it was far lower than when he had seen the steel mole rats eat the guard's body.
Eric slowly approached the beast, telling the gravity around him to push the blood away from him and Adrian.
Eric slowly investigated the body. There were clear signs of corruption in it.
"No wonder this calm-natured creature suddenly became so berserk." Eric thought. He stood up and took the lamp from Adrian.
"Let's continue, we are close to the centre."
Adrian stayed quiet as he followed behind Eric, but his steps somehow seemed more mature than when they had just started this journey.
As they went, black veins began creeping across the ground beneath them, threading through rock and soil like something growing slowly from beneath. Eric pointed them out without slowing his pace.
"Don't step on those," he said. "Walk around. Always around."
Adrian didn't ask why. He simply obeyed, watching his footing with newfound care.
The path tilted gradually upward until a massive, rough-hewn wall rose out of the darkness ahead of them, vanishing somewhere above into black they couldn't see the end of.
Eric found a grip in the stone without hesitation and began to climb, calling instructions back to Adrian as he went — where to place his hands, how to test a hold before committing his weight to it, when to rest, and when to push through the burn. Adrian fell more than once. Each time, a quiet pulse of Eric's Aura caught him before he could drop far, lifting him gently back to where he'd been.
By the time they reached the top, Adrian's hands were raw, and his arms trembled with exhaustion — but he had made it. Entirely on his own legs, however many times he'd needed help along the way.
They kept walking.
And slowly — so slowly that neither of them marked the exact moment it began — the darkness around them started to thin.
Then, with one final step past the outer edge of the layer, the world opened up to them.
It took Adrian's breath away before his mind could even process what he was looking at.
The ground beneath the black clouds stretched out endlessly in every direction, the same dark soil as the path behind them now unfurled into something vast — forests standing in still, silent rows; jagged mountain ranges cutting black silhouettes into a blacker sky; oceans of water so dark they looked less like water and more like the absence of it; canyons and valleys carved deep enough to swallow light whole.
Lightning forked silently through the clouds above — not white, but a deep, bruised black-blue, illuminating the land for half a second at a time before plunging it back into shadow.
And above all of it — vast, patient, impossibly close despite hanging somewhere far beyond the clouds — hung the black moon.
It didn't glow the way a moon should. It pressed. Its surface held a strange, dark sheen, like polished obsidian catching light that didn't exist, and somehow, against every law Adrian thought he understood, it illuminated the land beneath it — not brightening the dark, but giving it shape, giving it edges, painting the entire central land in shades of black on black on black, beautiful in a way that made his chest ache and afraid in a way that made his skin crawl, both at once, neither one winning.
It looked less like something in the sky.
It looked like something was watching.
Eric stopped beside him, his gaze following Adrian's up toward it. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Eric said, quietly, without any of his usual weight or instruction —
"Welcome to the central land."
Unbeknownst to them, A black eye with black pupil was staring at them from the dark, its eyes reflecting both of their figures clearly. The floating eye slowly closed before disappearing into the darkness.