Nero stood frozen, his senses heightehe rustling tinued, relentless, like a whispered taunt in the air around him. Nero’s chest tightened, his breath shallow, and shaky. There was something out there. He could feel it—too quiet, too intrusive.

  He turned slowly, sing the sea of tall grass, his eyes narrowing, trying to make out any movement, any shape. But there was nothing. The grass was empty, swaying in the wind like a livihere was no fao form to grasp onto. Only shadows, shifting and bending in ways that didn’t feel natural. Was it his fractured mind splintering even further? Or was that damned Sinthos pying tricks on him?

  A fsh of movement in the er of his vision made his heart lurch. He spun towards it, but there was nothing—just the same endless expanse of swaying grass, undisturbed, mog him with its stillness. His mouth went dry and he swallowed hard, trying to force the bile that rose in his throat to back down.

  Focus, Nero. Focus.

  But it was hard to trate. The overwhelming sense of being watched g the back of his mind, like a cold hand creeping up his spine. He could feel it—something—moving in the endless grass that surrounds him. What disturbed him the most wasn’t just the sensation of being observed, but the fact that this thing wasn’t anything he could hope to uand. It wasn’t breathing, pulsing, or shifting with the rhythm of life. It existed beyond those rules. It wasn’t alive—at least, not in any way he could prehend.

  A ripple of movement in the grass. A Shift. There. Just There.

  He snapped his head towards the disturbance, but nothing was there. A tremor ran through him. He dug his fingers into his palms, grounding himself with the faint pain, the only thing that felt solid right now.

  And then, the buzzing came again. Faint at first, then growing, deepening, until it thrummed against the inside of his skull. His legs trembled beh him, and for a brief moment, it felt as if the world itself were quaking, trembling in unison with him.

  Then, he heard it—a low growl. So faint, that a footstep in sand would have drow out.

  It wasn’t Sinthos this time. No, this presence was different. It felt older, deeper, ed in the very fabric of existeself. Every fiber of his being screamed iance, as if simply sharing the same world with this entity was an affront.

  Instinct took over as his body twisted, his arm extending outward and to his side. He reached out for the sky itself, and a sword—bck as the sun, materialized, falling perfectly into his grasp.

  Pain and darkness surged through him, a bck river c through the veins of his arm that gripped the sword. With no time to process it, he swung toward the source of that wrongness, guided by an instinctive sense of its location.

  The bde cut through the air, a dark arc of energy shot out, slig through the grass. It left a line of devastation, cutting down a rge swath that extewenty feet ahead.

  Nero paused, his eyes sing the devastation he had wrought, searg for the source of the wrongness. But as his breath slowed, and his chest stilled, the sense ness vanished entirely, leaving only the same emptiness he had felt when he first awoke.

  As his adrenaline faded, the state of his arm became quite arming. He fell to one knee, hastily releasing the sword from his grasp. His arm throbbed, veins running pitch bck beh his skin, and he could feel each heartbeat pulsing through the darkhat ed him.

  But as quickly as the darkness found root in his body, it retreated, leaving behind his familiar veins.

  What the hell is happening to me? hought, his mind rag, as though even his thoughts were struggling to catch up.

  “Well, ’t say you did too good a job there. Not surprising though—you aren’t very good at anything, after all” Sinthos sneered in his mind, the words ced with venom.

  Catg his breath, uro look at the sword that he had summoned—how had he dohat, anyway?

  The sword looked perfectly ordinary, as least by Nero’s vague recolle of what a sword should look like. Although the dark metal it was made out of seemed different, somehow. Its sharp edges were unmarked, as if untouched by time or flict. The hilt was familiar in an uling way; he remembered how his fingers automatically curled around it, as though it had always belohere.

  The bde seemed to hum softly now, something vibrating deep within, a pulse that matched the rapid beat of his heart. He slowly reached for it again, his fiingling as they made tact.

  But as his hand gripped the hilt, something shifted within him. A sudden suffog weight pressed down on him, as if the sword itself had grown heavier. His chest tightehe darkness c through his veins throbbed again, but this time, along with the pain, came… reition.

  A cold, mog chuckle echoed in the back of his mind, faint and elusive. “It suits you,” the voice murmured. “Though, I would’ve doer by myself.”

  Nero’s grip tightened around the hilt, his fiingling as though the sword itself were alive, responding to his touch. It pulsed under his skin, vibrating with a faint hum that matched the rhythm of his heart. But the more he held it, the heavier it became. The more wrong it felt.

  The sword was him, wasn’t it? It felt so familiar—too familiar—as though his very essence was entangled within its bed steel. This was Sinthos. His sword. Or, rather, he is my sword.

  Whatever he was, Sinthos did not seem keen to ahe sileretched, heavy and oppressive, and the voice remained eerily quiet.

  Looking back towards the mountains in the distanero focused his mind on reag them. The jagged peaks beed to him like a promise, though the longer he stared, the more elusive their destination seemed. He had barely made any progress when he entered a stray stalking him—could he really make it all the way?

  His mind stirred with fusion and dark whispers. Sinthos remained silent, but his presened heavily, a stant pressure at the edges of his thoughts. The weight of the sword in his hands felt almost like a part of his own body.

  Bending his neck slightly to look at the sword, the a came to him without thought, and he unsummohe sword. It dissipated into the air, a sudden vanishing that left nothing but the odd, lingeriion that it was still there, just beyond his reach.

  He shook his head, trying to force his mind clear. He had to keep moving. The mountains hadn’t ged. They were still just as distant, just as far off in the horizon, and if he didn’t keep walking, they might just fade into nothing.

  At that moment of crity, something more primal surfaced within him, cutting through the fog in his mind. Water. Food. His body dema—an urgent remihat his survival hinged not on whatever answers he sought, but on the most basic of needs.

  Seeming to reinforce his sudden realization, his stomach twisted in ay, hollow ache that bellowed against the quiet of the nd. How long had it been since he had st eaten or drunk? The thought alone made his throat feel drier. He gnced around, his eyes sing the endless expanse of tall grass, but the nd offered nothing.

  “Great” Nero muttered, frustration creeping into his voice. “Just what I needed.”

  His stomach growled again, and he cursed under his breath. He could feel his body weakening, fatigue settling deeper into his bones. He decided, first, to get away from here. The ft, barren pins stretched out in every dire, empty and suffog. He couldn’t stand being here; it was too quiet, too peaceful. And that thing was still out there somewhere.

  The silence grew even more oppressive, as though it were pressing in from all sides, f him to listen to the endless hum of his thoughts. It’s too quiet, he thought. It's like the nd is waiting for something. For me.

  He shook the thought away. He didn’t have time to waste. That entity—whatever it was, had seemingly left, and he didn't want to stay for its return.

  He o leave, a destination, something to focus his remaining energy on. And the only pce that caught his mind was those far off mountains. They seemed far off, but they were better than being stuck here. If nothing else, they might offer cover, or shelter—or at least a ge from the endless void of this pce.

  With his resolve hardened, urned and started walking, his legs heavy but determined. Each step was a battle in and of itself. The grouh him seemed to resist his progress, unwilling to let him escape. As he moved, he couldn’t help but gnce over his shoulder every few moments—not yet allowing himself to drop his guard.

  Get away from here, he told himself. Find something—anything—to keep moving forward.

  His feet dragged through the grass, each step a slow but steady itment to escape. The mountains were still far, but they were a goal. And with every step, they seemed to inch just a little bit closer.