Having landed in this misbegotten world, Alric looked around to see if there were other abnormalities in his new surroundings, and found a world misshapen at the very level of conception.

  Too large in some areas, too long in others. The floor resembled the bed of a restless sea, dipping unnaturally, shallow one moment, then needlessly steep the next.

  The room he stood in, looked more like a patchwork of recollections from some half-remembered dream waiting to be brought back to life.

  I’ve stepped into some gods-abandoned place through that despicable sorcery.

  The environment? Calm.

  My body? Disjointed, slowly adjusting.

  My mind? Intact, but clouded. Something foreign’s in there.

  Can I flee? No. I’m in no state to command my limbs properly. This damnable realm’s still too alien. Most I can manage seems to be moving my head around.

  Having assesed his condition, Alric slowly swept the broken and distorted room with his eyes, trying to find any possible clue, or danger, the place might hold.

  His gaze caught the outline of the long, wooden table at the centre of the chamber.

  On its outer rim, beside a chair ever so slightly turned to face him, he found something.

  What in the gods’ name is that thing doing here?

  A serathian-etched ring, scorched by flame at its edges, was resting unbothered, as if it was meant to be there.

  Left by someone, as if intending to come pick it up after returning to the seat.

  He breath hitched; his gut coiled. He needed to know if it was the same gold he dreaded remembering.

  He moved.

  The first few steps were unbalanced and unsteady, like the ones of a toddler discovering how to walk for the first time.

  But with each stride he found a rhythm, adapting to the wrongness of this place.

  Just as a rider learns to trust and adjust to the horse’s sway, so did Alric start to find his footing.

  He reached the table in a hurried, uneven gait.

  His fingers coiling around the band of gold, softly scraping against it, producing a faint, hissing screech.

  His heart locked in his chest, thumping blood to the beat of the war fiends inside his memories.

  He didn’t want to look. But he had to, the raging sea in his soul would not rest until he knew.

  Turning his hand around, he saw it.

  A venomous flicker of burning madness descended upon him, slow and gentle, caressing his heart with malformed hands.

  Grief and agony twisted grotesquely within him, poison blooming in his chest.

  His blood boiled with the rot of a wound never healed.

  The shallow, rapid breaths barely escaping his maw were a simple prelude to what came next.

  An implosion of sense and perception where all life lost meaning.

  What had been physically immobile, froze still in his eyes.

  Muffled sounds collapsed into nothingness.

  Silence remained in its wake.

  The world closed in around him, and then…

  “IS THIS SOME SICK JOKE?! HOW IS THIS HERE?! COME OUT AND FACE ME!”

  Nothing answered at first.

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  But then, a slight shiver of the air ruffled Alric’s hair from the right.

  He turned.

  There, behind the chair at the far side of the table, he glimpsed something.

  A blur given form, as if wind had become flesh for a split moment of time.

  It resembled a child darting away from chastisement, hiding away from its father’s reaching voice.

  Alric stood still, his breath a low tremor.

  Then he saw it—movement behind the chair, shy and unsteady. A small head peeked over the backrest’s edge.

  Through gritted teeth, Alric snarled, “Come. Out… now.”

  It hesitated, unsure of what to do, but gave in soon after.

  It stepped out of its hiding spot with timid strides and fidgeting hands, playing with the hem of its frayed tunic.

  It looked no more than eight years of age, slim and supple, like one raised in daily training.

  Its gaze remained downcast, avoiding his eyes, as a child would if caught in an act of mischief.

  Alric, still fury-bound spoke in a low, barely restrained voice. “Come. Here.”

  The child glanced up at him in visible embarrassment, and began to walk forward in slow, small steps, each one trying to delay the inevitable.

  It stopped a few paces from him. Then looked up, straight into his eyes.

  Alric answered this gaze with his own, laced with disgust and revulsion.

  With a cold and cracked voice, he asked. “What. Are. You?”

  The child, tilting its head in confusion, asked gently.

  “Father?”

  As soon as he heard that blasphemous thing speak its fake, detestable words, he reached for his blade and struck as hard as he could, clumsiness be damned.

  The sword flew like rumbling thunder, but without its signature awe or fearsome beauty.

  The edge misaligned; the swing was messy.

  The result was a butcher’s mark, not a swordsman’s etiquette.

  The child’s torso split with a crack of bones and a spray of blood, viscera staining the floor red with humours.

  The masquerading abhorrence was flung backward, crashing against the chairs by the table, toppling them over with a wet, splintering sound.

  Alric stood over the body heaving shallow breaths.

  He stared down at it. Then, threw the ring onto it, as if sickened by its mere presence in his hand.

  His face contorted by loathing, nausea, and disgust.

  Revolting imitations.

  Disgusting and fake.

  Both of them.

  Still huffing, trying to regain control of his emotional and mental faculties, he began to consider his next steps.

  He didn’t get the chance.

  Something in the child’s blood caught his eye.

  A shimmering reflection, distorted at the edges, as if seen through a fractured glass.

  A vast expanse of sun-warmed stones struck by two pickaxes side by side.

  Then, a chopping block stained red by a fresh execution, blood rushing to the rain-stained soil, transforming the ground in crimson sludge.

  Lastly, a war slave, barely equipped for battle, locked in formation with others of his kind.

  Shield to shield. Spear to spear, advancing towards an enemy city under incessant arrow fire.

  What is this place? Why these visions?

  Mocking him, the scarlet drained of its color, becoming one with the stone beneath, vanishing completely.

  Alric remained motionless, unable to fully process what he had seen.

  Still unrelenting in its dogged pursuit to unsettle him, the room’s uneven floor trembled slightly as its doors slammed open, crashing against the walls with the violence of siege fire.

  Without understanding why, he began to walk towards them in haste.

  Each step carried a forbidden sweetness, laced with the ache of almost-belief. Every pace felt earned. Desired.

  He longed to leave.

  To finish what he started.

  To fight alongside his men.

  To taste sunlight again.

  To feel his home anew.

  These hopes spurred him on.

  As he neared the doors, unease settled in, and a subtle friction of the mind overtook the daydreams.

  A stilled wrongness rose from the pit of his soul.

  The doors stood before him, drained of majesty.

  He lifted a heel... then halted.

  That cloudiness is still here.

  Its stirring and calling now.

  Something in me is mimicking my wants.

  A mind hex is probably polluting my thoughts.

  Having judged his plight for what it was, he did what every part of him was begging not to.

  He summoned what he thought to be his true will, and thought:

  No, I refuse.

  Nothing happened at first.

  The realm, unperturbed by his silent defiance, seemed to retreat into deeper stillness.

  The conviction with which he defied its temptation was his only companion in this suffocating quietness.

  Just as he began to think of what to do next, the doors shimmered, and then crumbled inward into bare stone, as if made of wind-led ash.

  Then, he felt it.

  A presence behind him: mournful, hopeful, juvenile.

  He turned.

  And there he saw the child.

  Broken, yes. But peaceful.

  Eyes closed. Arms folded.

  It lay on the grey stone tiles.

  No longer torn, or bloodied. Only a pale-skinned boy remained.

  Some kindness, it looked like, had visited him in Alric’s absence.

  A parting gift perhaps.

  Alric’s breath caught. His heart stilled in its cage; the weight of memory too great to bear.

  There was no illusion here now. No counterfeit to unmask.

  Just a lifeless body… and a father undone.

  He approached the child, one deliberate, measured step at a time, each taken with sacred reverence.

  All the while his mind howled: illusion. Hex. Trap. Sorcery.

  But his heart, broken and battered, was seeing something else.

  Alric reached him, and knelt beside the child.

  His grip loosened on the sword, and with it, the rage.

  He unfastened his scabbard.

  Sheathed his blade.

  And laid it gently at the boy’s side, a peace offering to the slain.

  Then, he lowered himself prostrate, head to stone, and whispered:

  “Here I am, my son.”