Beyond the Labyrinthine Tomb Abyssal Zone, the Obsidian Woods sprawled in every direction, forming a vast natural border between the Forwin Kingdom and the Merchant Republic of Ulder. Its towering trees, their bark as dark as polished obsidian, rose high into the sky, their thick canopies casting deep shadows over the uneven terrain below. Though the forest was dense and its paths winding, it was not a place of great danger—at least, not in comparison to the horrors lurking within the Abyssal Zone.
Few Demonic Beasts roamed near its well-worn trails, and no lurking horrors waited in the shadows. The Obsidian Woods were vast, isolating, and difficult to traverse without a horse, but they were nothing more than a forest—a barrier of trees and uneven terrain separating civilization from the cursed abyss beyond.
Yet, the journey through it had been long and punishing.
Orion had abandoned his horse the moment he fled the Labyrinthine Tomb.
There had been no thought behind it, no rational decision—only pure, uncontrollable panic. By the time clarity had returned, by the time his mind had caught up with his body, he was too far gone. Turning back had not been an option. The idea of retracing his steps, of walking toward the place where everything had fallen apart, had sent a sickening wave of dread through his chest.
So, Orion had walked.
Through mud-choked paths, across jagged terrain that strained his already battered body. Through vast, empty fields, where the wind carried nothing but the weight of his own footsteps.
He had walked through exhaustion, through hunger, through the suffocating weight of silence.
And with every step, he carried the unbearable weight of memory.
He could still hear the screams. The clash of steel. The sickening tear of flesh giving way beneath monstrous strength.
He could still see Paxion’s expression when he realized they were doomed—the fleeting moment of disbelief before Lucian’s claws tore through his armor, rending through flesh and bone, puncturing straight through to his spine.
The horrible, wet sound of his commander’s body giving way haunted him, looping endlessly in his mind.
And then came the silence.
The silence that had been worse than the slaughter.
Orion had survived.
But he wasn’t sure if he had truly escaped.
It didn’t matter.
Because in the distance, through the thinning trees and rolling hills, Forwin awaited.
Beyond the thinning treeline, stone walls loomed in the distance, marking the first sign of civilization he had seen in what felt like a lifetime.
He should have felt relief.
Instead, he felt nothing.
His body moved not because he willed it, but because it refused to stop.
His armor, barely clinging to him, hung in ruined, bloodstained tatters. The weight of it pressed down on his shoulders, digging into bruised flesh, but he barely felt it. His boots, worn and cracked from the relentless journey, scraped against the dirt with every step, threatening to fall apart entirely.
None of it mattered.
One thought consumed everything else.
I need to tell them. I need to warn them of what he saw.
Orion stumbled forward, the world around him a hazy blur of muted colors and indistinct shapes.
Forwin’s gates loomed ahead, tall, unyielding, and distant. His body ached, but his mind was far worse—fractured, fragile, slipping. Thoughts drifted in and out of his grasp, scattered pieces of memory and sensation crashing together in a chaotic storm.
Blood.
Screams.
The sound of flesh being punctured through metal armor.
His hands twitched. Not from exhaustion.
The armored figures at the gate stiffened as he approached. Their hands drifted toward the hilts of their weapons, and their postures shifted.
“Halt,” one of them ordered.
Orion didn’t respond.
Orion blinked, finally focusing on their faces. The guards were young—too young. They weren’t knights, just gate sentries. They had never seen war. They had never seen monsters.
Another guard stepped forward, his brow furrowed in suspicion. “Who are you? Are you okay?”
His lips were parted, dry, and cracked, but the words came out in a ragged whisper.
“I… I have to…” His breath hitched, his words falling apart. “They need to know… I have to… I have to—”
He tried again, but the words refused to come out.
Everything was wrong. His mouth wouldn’t work. His thoughts wouldn’t line up. His body was shutting down.
One of the guards hesitated before stepping forward, his brows drawing together in concern. "Do you need help?" he asked, his voice more cautious than kind.
He reached out, hand open, fingers extending toward Orion’s arm.
Orion barely noticed.
His mind was spinning, looping, collapsing in on itself. Thoughts tangled together, breaking apart before he could hold onto them.
A hand—stretching toward him.
A weight pressed down on his shoulder.
It was meant to stop him. To steady him.
But Orion didn’t see it that way.
Because at that moment, he didn’t see a guard’s hand.
He saw something else.
Something that had torn through Paxion’s knights like wet parchment.
Something that had killed without hesitation, without mercy, without effort.
A hand. Rotting. Twisted. Blackened. Nails sharpened like claws.
It was reaching for him.
Just like before.
Everything snapped.
His mind fractured under the weight of the memory, the world around him collapsing into a tunnel of fear and blood.
He was back there.
Back in the Abyssal Zone.
Back where he should have died.
A choked noise tore from his throat—a half-formed cry, broken and guttural. His body locked up, his breath turning shallow and erratic, his chest heaving like a man drowning on dry land. His vision blurred, not from exhaustion this time, but from the overwhelming terror crashing down on him.
His knees buckled as his balance gave way, the world tilting beneath him in a dizzying lurch. A sudden warmth spread down his leg, followed by the unmistakable sting of humiliation as the sharp stench of urine filled the air. The guards reacted instantly—one took a cautious step back, while another recoiled, muttering something Orion couldn’t register over the deafening rush in his skull.
The hand on his shoulder twitched, a small movement, almost insignificant.
But it was enough.
The fear choking him shifted, twisted, ignited. Panic gave way to something hotter, something sharper.
Rage.
They didn’t understand.
They stood there in their clean uniforms, safe behind their walls, their swords drawn against the wrong threat. They had no idea what was waiting beyond those woods, what horrors had already spilled from the Abyssal Zone.
And now, in front of them, he had shown weakness.
Orion shoved the guard’s hand away with a forceful jerk, his expression twisting into fury. His lips curled back as his breathing evened out, chest heaving from something far greater than exhaustion.
His fingers snapped forward, grabbing the front of the guard’s armor and yanking him forward.
“Are you so fucking stupid that you don’t understand what I’m saying?” he snarled, his voice raw with anger. “I need to give a fucking report.”
The other guard reacted instantly, hands shooting to their weapons.
Orion didn’t care.
His grip tightened, knuckles white. He could feel his pulse hammering in his skull, could hear his own breath coming out in uneven, ragged bursts. The urge to hit something, to break something, to lash out boiled beneath the surface.
Then, in the tense silence, one of the guards hesitated.
The anger in his posture wavered, the tight grip on his weapon loosening just slightly. His brow furrowed, not in irritation, but in something closer to confusion.
His gaze drifted lower.
And then, it stopped.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Orion felt the shift before he even fully processed it. The subtle break in the guard’s stance, the way his expression flickered—not in fear, not in hostility, but in something closer to realization.
The man’s breath hitched, his lips parting slightly, as if forming a question that never made it out. His fingers twitched at his side, no longer hovering near his sword, but not quite falling away either.
The hesitation was small, but it spread.
The second guard, still bristling, still waiting for an excuse to retaliate, caught the shift. His anger faltered just enough to make him pause. His eyes followed his companion’s, tracing the path downward—
And then, he saw it too.
Silver and blue.
A pair of outstretched angel wings, barely visible beneath the grime and torn fabric of Orion’s cloak.
For a moment, no one moved.
Recognition dawned slowly, painfully. The pieces clicked together in their minds—this man, this wreck of a knight, was not just some deserter. Not just some raving lunatic at the gates.
He was a Knight of this Kingdom.
The insignia, though smeared with filth, though barely distinguishable against the ruined cloth, was unmistakable.
And the realization hit them like a blade to the gut.
A second ago, they had seen nothing but a madman—a threat, someone who needed to be put in his place.
Now, they saw a soldier.
A man who shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t look like this, shouldn’t be alone.
The shift in the air was palpable.
Orion could see it in the way the guards stiffened, the way their aggression melted into something uncertain, almost uneasy.
They had been so sure. So ready to strike him down if needed.
And now, they didn’t know what to do.
Orion didn’t give them time to figure it out.
Without waiting for their voices to catch up to their thoughts, he shoved the guard aside and pushed forward.
The guards hesitated, struggling to process the situation. A Knight of Forwin member—alone, in this state?
Impossible.
They didn’t pursue.
They didn’t even call for him to stop.
They just stood there, watching as he staggered forward, a broken man carrying the weight of something they would never understand.
One of the younger guards swallowed thickly, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword as he stared after Orion’s retreating form. “Was he really… a Knight of the Kingdom?” His voice carried doubt, uncertainty creeping in as the weight of the moment settled.
The older guard hesitated before answering. “The insignia was real.” But even as he said it, something about it felt wrong.
The younger guard shook his head. “Then what the hell did he live through?”
Silence stretched between them.
They had seen battle-worn knights return from skirmishes, men who had stared death in the face and walked away changed. But this was different. Orion’s armor wasn’t broken, his body wasn’t torn apart—yet he looked like a man who had been through something far worse than any battlefield.
His movements had been stiff, almost mechanical, like his body was acting on habit alone. His eyes were hollow, distant, lost somewhere the rest of them couldn’t see.
The older guard clenched his jaw. Whatever that knight had witnessed… it had shattered him.
And if a Knight had been reduced to that?
Then maybe it was better they didn’t know.
For Orion, the trip back to the castle was easy.
At least, compared to the harsh, grueling travel through the Obsideon Woods.
The roads here were paved, even. There were no tangled roots to trip over, no endless fields of dirt and uneven paths stretching endlessly ahead. Every step felt lighter.
And yet, the weight in his chest hadn’t lifted.
The moment he stepped past the gates, the murmurs started.
Passersby turned their heads, their eyes lingering too long, their voices hushed but sharp. Orion could feel their gazes—curious, wary, disgusted.
He didn’t blame them.
He looked like a man who had crawled out of his own grave.
His armor was torn, rusted with dried blood, and barely holding together. His boots scuffed the cobblestone with every dragging step. His hair—once neatly tied back—hung loose, filthy and unkempt.
To them, he wasn’t a knight returning from battle.
He was a disgrace.
A soldier who had lost everything and returned with nothing.
He heard their whispers, the way people leaned in close to murmur behind their hands.
"Is that a knight?"
"Gods, what happened to him?"
"He looks half-mad..."
None of it mattered.
Orion didn’t care.
Not in this moment.
His mind was locked on one thing, and one thing alone.
He had to get to the castle.
He had to tell them.
He had to warn them.
With each step forward, the whispers faded into background noise.
The towering gates of the castle loomed ahead.
And he did not slow down.
The castle gates loomed ahead, but Orion barely saw them. His vision swam, his body running on nothing but instinct as he forced himself forward, step after unsteady step.
The climb up the stone steps felt endless. The weight of his exhaustion bore down on him, pressing into his limbs, making every motion feel sluggish, distant.
By the time he reached the castle interior, his world had narrowed to one thought.
Find Draeven.
He stumbled through the hallways, past servants who recoiled at the sight of him, past guards who hesitated but did not stop him. He looked like a man possessed, like something half-dead dragging itself toward its final resting place.
His vision blurred, flickering between cold torchlight and the memory of fire.
He could still hear the screams.
Still see the blood.
Still feel those eyes watching him from the dark.
He reached the training hall before he even realized where his feet had carried him.
The sound of clashing steel, barked orders, and booted feet moving across stone filled the massive chamber. The scent of sweat, metal, and exertion lingered in the air. Knights trained, sparred, honed their craft with the discipline expected of Forwin’s warriors.
But the moment he entered, all of it stopped.
The clash of swords halted.
The murmurs faded.
The entire hall turned toward him.
Dozens of knights—men who had fought beside him, men who had trained with him, men who had once looked to him as a lesser knight, a mere 6th-rank among their ranks—stood frozen, staring.
Not in recognition.
In disbelief.
Because the man before them was not the Orion they knew.
He was a wreck, his armor in tatters, his body trembling, his face gaunt and hollow-eyed like a man who had crawled out of a nightmare.
Orion lifted his head, vision swimming, lips parting as he forced out the only name that mattered.
“Draeven—”
His legs buckled.
The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him whole was the horrified expressions of his fellow knights as he collapsed to the floor.
Inside Forwin’s war hall, Commander Soren Draeven sat at his desk, his eyes moving steadily over the latest reports. His expression remained unreadable, but the grim set of his jaw betrayed his thoughts.
The kingdom’s forces were stretched thin.
Most of their men were still stationed in Linsom, aiding in the ongoing conflict, leaving Forwin vulnerable to the increasing number of Demonic Beasts that now roamed its borders. The number of Devils in the region had surged in recent weeks, and with so few knights remaining, their only option was to hold the line and wait until reinforcements returned.
And then, there was the Abyssal Zone.
Paxion’s squad had been sent out twelve days ago.
A simple five-day mission. An assessment, nothing more. Determine whether a culling was necessary to prevent the undead from overflowing and return with a report.
But they hadn’t come back.
Draeven already knew something had gone wrong.
But what he didn’t expect—
Was for a lone survivor to collapse in the training hall.
A sudden crash of wood against stone echoed through the corridors, the unmistakable sound of heavy doors slamming open.
The sound alone was enough to pull Draeven from his reports. His head lifted, his brow furrowing slightly, but before he could even rise from his desk, the muffled noise of shouting knights reached his ears.
That was enough to make him move.
His boots struck hard against the polished stone as he strode toward the source of the commotion. The war hall was only a short distance from the training hall, where knights sparred and drilled. The moment he crossed the threshold, he took in the scene immediately.
Orion lay collapsed on the ground, unmoving, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps.
A dozen knights stood frozen, their sparring matches abandoned, the tension in the air palpable. No one spoke, no one moved.
Draeven’s gaze flickered over Orion once.
His armor was intact, though caked with dried filth and dust from the road. His body bore no fresh wounds, no signs of combat. He was breathing, but his hands twitched slightly, like a man still trapped in whatever nightmare had brought him back to Forwin.
His return had already answered one question.
Paxion’s squad wasn’t coming back.
Draeven exhaled slowly, then turned to one of the nearby knights.
“Take him to the infirmary.” His voice carried through the hall, cutting through the thick silence. “When he wakes, I want him brought to me immediately.”
A few knights hesitated, exchanging glances, but the command was clear. Two men moved quickly, lifting Orion’s half-conscious form between them, guiding him toward the doors.
Draeven remained still, watching them go.
Twelve days.
Twelve days missing—and this was what had returned.
His fingers tightened at his sides.
Whatever had happened in the Abyssal Zone, Orion had survived it.
And Draeven intended to find out how.
Two days had passed since Orion collapsed in the training hall.
When he awoke, he didn’t scream. He didn’t gasp, didn’t jolt upright, didn’t thrash against invisible horrors. He simply opened his eyes, staring blankly at the stone ceiling above him.
It felt strange.
The mattress beneath him was soft. The sheets, though stiff and uncomfortable, were clean. The air smelled of parchment, wax, and burning candles—not blood, not rotting flesh, not death.
He was in the infirmary.
Alive.
But the moment realization set in, so did the weight in his chest. Paxion was dead. The squad was dead. And he was still here.
By the time the knights were informed of his awakening, the summons had already been sent.
Commander Draeven was waiting.
The war room was silent when Orion entered.
The air felt heavy, suffocating. The long table, usually filled with reports and maps detailing military operations, now felt like an execution chamber.
Seated at the head of the table, Commander Soren Draeven watched as Orion was led inside. His expression was unreadable—cold, impassive, studying him like one would a broken weapon to determine if it was worth reforging.
Around the room, knights stood in attendance, their gazes sharp and wary.
Orion took a breath. It did nothing.
He had been waiting for this moment since he returned.
And now, he had no idea how to begin.
“They’re dead.”
His voice cracked. Barely more than a whisper.
“All of them.”
A pause.
Draeven didn’t respond immediately. He let the weight of the words settle.
Then, his voice cut through the silence—calm, controlled, a stark contrast to the broken knight before him.
“Explain.”
Orion’s breath hitched.
“He slaughtered them.” His hands curled into fists, nails pressing into his palms. “One. Just one Witherling Zombie did it.”
A ripple of disbelief ran through the room.
Draeven’s brow furrowed slightly. “One?”
Orion nodded frantically. “It wasn’t normal.” His words rushed out now, desperate, shaky. “It—it moved too fast, it was too strong. It wasn’t like the others. It was smart. It knew what it was doing.”
Draeven folded his arms, his posture a fortress of skepticism.
“Paxion should have been powerful enough to handle even a Fiend-rank Devil,” he said evenly. “And you’re telling me your entire squadron was wiped out by a mere Spawn-rank and a zombie at that?”
Orion flinched at the words.
Spawn-rank.
It sounded so insultingly weak.
“No,” Orion shook his head violently. “You don’t understand. This thing—its stats were unnatural. Its strength, its speed, its intelligence. And it had the [Cannibal] title.”
A hush fell over the room.
This time, the disbelief shifted.
Unease settled in.
[Cannibal].
A title not just for the undead but for monsters that devour their own kind to grow stronger.
Draeven’s gaze darkened. “And you’re sure of this?”
“I appraised him. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Orion’s breath was coming faster now, his chest rising and falling like a man still running from something.
Draeven studied him carefully.
There was no doubt that the Orion in front of him was a broken man.
His hands never stopped twitching. His eyes darted around the room, unfocused. His voice wavered.
He was a coward. That much was clear.
When the battle turned, he ran.
But was he a liar?
Draeven leaned forward, his voice turning cold, measured.
“So let me get this straight. Your entire squad was massacred by a single zombie—an abnormally powerful one with an unheard-of title for its kind—and instead of fighting to avenge them, you ran.”
Orion didn’t argue.
He didn’t try to explain himself.
He just bowed his head, his shoulders trembling.
Draeven exhaled slowly before turning to a knight near the door.
“Send word to the church. This matter needs to be properly investigated.”
A ripple of tension spread through the room.
One knight hesitated before speaking. “The church?” His confusion was evident. “Commander, is that necessary? Our forces are already—”
“I am aware of our situation,” Draeven interrupted, his tone sharp but measured. “This isn’t about deploying soldiers. The church has resources, knowledge, and expertise beyond our own when it comes to matters of the Abyssal Zone. If what Orion claims is true, we need their insight.”
The room remained silent, the weight of his words settling over the gathered knights. Requesting the church’s involvement wasn’t a matter of military force—it was about understanding the true nature of what they were dealing with.
And from the look on Draeven’s face, he wasn’t willing to take any chances.
“And if he has lost his mind,” Draeven continued, “then at least we will have ruled out the possibility”.
Chapter End…
Akashic Record
Name: Lucian
Race: Demonic Beast
Species: Graveborn Revenant
Rank: Fiend
Class: None
Level: 11
Titles: Cannibal
Strength: 35
Intelligence: 50
Endurance: 32
Vitality: 36(+5)
Agility: 40
Stat Points Available: 9
Skills:
Night Vision - Lv. 8
Necrotic Reach - Lv. 1
Inspect - Lv. 8
Unarmed Combat - Lv. 8
Mana Perception - Lv. 7
Fear - Lv. 7
Detection - Lv. 1
######### of ###### - Lv. Locked (Remnant - Unusable)
Traits:
Abyss-Touched Vessel - Lv. 1
Blood Nourishment - Lv. 3
Enhanced Physique - Lv. 1
Enhanced Cognition - Lv. 1
