"My leg? What's wrong with my leg?"
The red-haired youth's voice trembled as he jerked his head down.
He hadn't felt anything.
Not a sting. Not a cut.
Justâsilence.
Then he saw it.
And something inside him snapped.
His legsâhis fleshâhad already rotted away.
The skin was gone.
The muscle was gone.
All that remained were wet, blood-slick bones standing where his legs used to be.
And stillâhis body hadn't caught up.
His mind was frozen.
Stuck between panic and denial.
The blood and pus that oozed from his ruined limbsâ
sank into the ground silently.
The dark-gray stone of the Mourning Depths
drank the fluid like thirsting soil.
And thenâ
it changed.
Beneath him, the ground turned a deep, hellish crimson.
As if the blood itself awakened something buried beneath.
"AhhhhhhHH!"
He screamed.
This time, it was human.
A sound of someone who just realized they weren't dyingâthey were being unmade.
He fell backwards, collapsing to the stone floor in a frantic sprawl.
And as soon as his hands touched the groundâ
They began to rot.
Instantly.
Skin sloughing off like wet cloth.
Flesh liquefying, sliding off bone like hot wax.
His fingers dissolved.
His wrists followed.
Then the blood started bubbling.
Dark. Thick. Sickly sweet in its stench.
"No⊠no⊠noâŠ"
He gasped and gurgled.
Hands clawing at air, eyes wide and unblinking, as chunks of his body dropped off with every motion.
He tried to crawl away.
But with every inch, he left behind bloody trails of half-melted muscle and shredded organs.
His thighs turned to pulp.
His waist slumped, barely held together by torn sinew.
And yetâhe was still alive.
Still aware.
The smell was unbearable.
It wasn't just deathâ
it was corruption made manifest.
"SAVE ME! SAVE ME!!"
Finally, he remembered.
Old Man Grey.
The guide. The only one who might know somethingâanything.
He reached out a rotting, skeletal hand, palm out, shaking with terror, dripping blood and strings of meat.
"Please! Help me!!"
But Old Man Greyâstepped back.
Twice.
Eyes wide.
Face pale.
Voice hoarse.
"No one approach him!"
His words cut like a whip.
And no one disobeyed.
Not because of respect.
But because they were already backing away.
Kacha!
His bones crackedânot with force, but with a sound like ancient wood splintering in a storm.
His legs collapsed inward.
The femursâonce proud, strongâcrumbled into fine gray dust, as if they'd aged ten thousand years in seconds.
And it didn't stop there.
The rot was no longer just a physical thing.
It had entered the marrow.
It had seeped into time.
His spine curved, caving in.
Shoulders sagged.
Every joint popped and cracked and then shattered, like glass under pressure.
Thenâhis hair paled.
Not slowlyânot graduallyâ
But in two breaths, it turned into dry, brittle hay, the kind that would crumble at a touch.
His faceâŠ
Once youthful and proudâbecame tight, wrinkled, and hollow.
Skin turned to bark.
Eyes sank, vanishing into deep, black pits.
His cheeks hollowed out like a mummy pulled from its tomb.
He reached out.
His left arm stretched, tremblingânot toward a person.
Not toward salvation.
But toward nothing.
A meaningless, pitiful reachâas if trying to grasp existence itself before it slipped through his fingers.
A groan slipped from his throatâlow, wet, full of despair.
And thenâ
Crack.
His arm shattered, breaking into dust and chunks, raining onto the blood-soaked stones.
The last thing anyone sawâwas his torso melting, his ribcage folding in, his organs liquefying, turning into a thick, black-red syrup.
His whole body collapsed into a puddle of blood, rot, and gore.
Slosh.
It all slumped down.
A heap of viscous, stinking fluid, where a man once stood.
Even that didn't last long.
The ground drank it in.
Every drop.
Every shred.
And the bones?
What remained of themâ
turned to ash.
A moment laterânothing remained.
No bones.
No body.
No clothing.
No trace.
Just a small pile of red ash, barely enough to fill a hand.
That was all.
Everything elseâ
His pride, his fear, his ambition, his voiceâ
Had been erased.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
They just stood thereâfrozenâstaring at the crimson ashes where the red-haired youth had vanished.
Not died.
Vanished.
Like a page torn from existence.
Even the most ruthless among themâthose who had killed in cold blood, who had crushed enemies, who had spilled blood for gloryâ
They said nothing.
Because this wasn't battle.
This wasn't poison.
This wasn't a fatal wound.
This was decay. Erasure.
A slow, grotesque unraveling of life⊠that none of them could stop.
Or even understand.
Even Maxâwith his calm mind, steady heart, and will like tempered steelâ
Felt it.
A sharp chill, climbing from his lower back, shooting upward along his spine like a spear of ice aimed straight at the heavens.
His fists clenched.
Not out of fear.
But instinct.
That was not a natural death.
It was a message.
Old Man Grey, who had seen horrors most couldn't dream of, stood with a trembling breath stuck in his throat.
He swallowed hard.
A bead of sweat rolled down his weathered cheek and dripped to the blood-red stone below.
He had survived dozens of expeditions into the Mourning Depths.
He had seen bodies explode from within.
People driven mad by cursed echoes.
Men who aged a century in a minute.
But thisâ
This kind of death?
He had never seen it.
The wind no longer blew.
The infernal mist around them⊠felt heavier.
Thicker.
As if the Mourning Depths itself
was waiting.
Watching.
Tasting their fear.
No one dared to speak.
No one dared to exhale too loudly.
Weapons remained unsheathed.
Eyes scanned every inch of fog.
Max stood stillâ
Body tensed, breath shallow.
His sensesâusually sharp as blades, capable of detecting a flicker of killing intent from hundreds of metersâfelt numb.
He hadn't seen it.
Hadn't sensed it.
Hadn't felt a thing.
And yetâŠ
He'd just watched someone die in the most horrifying way imaginable.
He had come ready.
Mentally. Physically.
Prepared for battleâ
For swords and claws.
For explosions of mana and deadly strikes in the fog.
He thought the danger came from the infernal beingsâthat if one died in the Mourning Depths, it would be in combat, struggling against some abomination twisted by infernal energy.
But nowâ
He had seen a death with no attacker.
No claws.
No curse.
No warning.
Just⊠decay.
Rot that crept silently through the soul, and devoured everything.
And that, to Maxâwas more terrifying than any monster.
Because the scariest thing in this world was never the strongest.
It was the unknown.
Ghosts? Gods?
Those were titles.
Names.
Geniuses like them had long since stopped fearing superstition. Even the so-called "gods" were just mortals who stood too high. Ghosts? Just another class. Another trick.
But this?
This had no name.
No shape.
No origin.
And that made it impossible to prepare for.
In that momentâ
Max understood something chilling.
They weren't geniuses here.
Not now.
Not in the face of this place.
They were mortals again.
Walking through a cursed night, surrounded by shadows that didn't speak, didn't move, but watched.
The kind of fear that crept into the chest, settled in the spine, and made a man question if even blinking too loud might get him killed.
They had only crossed 5,000 miles.
Still 3,500 to go before reaching the 1,500-mile zone.
This wasn't even the deep end.
This was the edge.
And alreadyâ
Something unexplainable had claimed a life.