Wind bit at his exposed cheeks. Rudeus pulled the coarse fur collar higher, a futile gesture against the Northern Continent's relentless chill. Every breath frosted in the frigid air, mirroring the ice around his heart. He sat hunched, a gaunt silhouette against the muted, grey landscape. Soldat, a man carved from granite and grit, knelt a few paces away. His large, calloused hands worked with brutal efficiency. A snowhare, freshly snared, lay limp before him. Steel flashed, slicing through muscle and sinew with practiced ease. Blood, a stark crimson against the pristine snow, pooled briefly before solidifying. Rudeus watched, a dull ache settling in his chest. Soldat’s grimy fingers expertly gutted the creature, removing its entrails without a wasted motion. Efficiency. Something Rudeus used to possess. Numbness spread through Rudeus’s own hands, not from the cold, but from disuse. Once, those hands commanded Emperor-class magic, weaving intricate spells of destruction and defense. Now, they mostly fidgeted, or clutched at the empty space where his staff should be. Emptiness echoed within him, a vast, echoing cavern. It was a hollow born of profound failure, a gaping wound that refused to heal. Each day was a testament to his inadequacies, a cruel reminder of the people he’d failed, the lives he hadn’t saved. He pushed the thought down. Shoved it deep into the dark corners of his mind where the perverted fantasies usually resided. Roxy’s scent, Eris’s fiery passion, Sylphy’s gentle smile – these ghosts of intimacy, twisted into crude imagery, were his pathetic shield. Anything to avoid the real monsters: his abandonment of Roxy, his utter helplessness when Eris left. Those memories were sharp, unforgiving blades. Better to think of something… softer. Something he could control, at least in his head. Soldat grunted, tossing the cleaned carcass into a sack. “Still brooding, kid?” His voice, rough like gravel, cut through Rudeus’s mental fog. “Just admiring your technique,” Rudeus mumbled, not meeting his gaze. He traced patterns in the snow with a numb finger. “Such skill. I could learn a thing or two.” Soldat snorted, standing up. He wiped his hands on a clump of snow. “You could learn to hunt, yeah. Or you could keep staring at the ground. Your choice.” It was always his choice, wasn’t it? And he always chose the wrong one. He always chose to retreat, to wallow, to run. His fear of confronting those monumental failures was a lead weight, tethering him to this desolate existence. He pictured his old self, the powerful mage. A phantom limb, that feeling of confidence. Here, he was just… Rudeus. A burden. A man whose greatest skill now seemed to be self-pity. And fantasizing. A lot of fantasizing. Slowly, he pushed himself up, his joints protesting with a dull ache. The cold seeped into his bones, a constant companion. It was better than the heat of shame, the burning humiliation that always followed any attempt to reclaim his former self. Days here blurred into a monotonous cycle of survival. Hunt, gather, trek through endless snowfields. Each sunrise brought another grey sky, another opportunity to fail, another reason to drown himself in the depths of his own mind. Soldat moved ahead, his heavy boots crunching rhythmically. “We need to make good time. Storm’s coming.” He gestured vaguely at the horizon, where the distant mountains were starting to blur. Rudeus squinted. The sky, usually a uniform dreary grey, seemed to deepen in color. A strange hue, almost a sickly green, tinged the edges of the cloud cover. He shivered, but not from the cold. An instinct, long dormant, pricked at him. A sense of wrongness, of something unnatural. He dismissed it. Probably just a trick of the light. His magic senses were mostly gone anyway, dulled by months of disuse and despair. Still, he glanced around. The familiar, barren expanse of ice and rock suddenly felt… different. Taut. Like the air itself was holding its breath. Even the wind seemed to quiet, replaced by an eerie stillness. Soldat paused, turning his head, his sharp eyes scanning the sky. “Hm.” It was a noncommittal sound, but Rudeus knew Soldat. That ‘hm’ meant something was off. Soldat didn’t ‘hm’ for nothing. “What is it?” Rudeus asked, his voice rough from disuse. He hadn’t spoken much beyond grunts and mumbled responses in weeks. “Don’t know.” Soldat’s brow furrowed. “Sky’s… acting weird.” He pointed a thick finger towards the north, where the strange green tinge was growing more pronounced. Minutes crawled by, each one stretching, distorting. The silence intensified, oppressive and heavy. The only sound was the distant groan of ice shifting, a sound that usually went unnoticed, but now felt like a prelude. Then, a low hum started. Not a natural sound. It vibrated in Rudeus’s teeth, a deep, resonant thrum that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The air grew strangely warm, an impossible warmth in this frozen land. The green light pulsed, growing brighter, more aggressive. It wasn’t a cloud. It was a wound in the sky itself, tearing open. Rudeus stared, his mouth agape. His mind, usually so quick to retreat, was frozen in shock. Soldat let out a curse, his hand instinctively going for the hilt of his blade. “What in the…?” His gruff voice was laced with genuine alarm, a rarity for the hardened adventurer. The hum escalated into a shriek, a sound that scraped against Rudeus’s eardrums, threatening to shatter them. The green light flared, blinding him for a moment. He threw an arm up, shielding his eyes. A blast of heat, impossible in its intensity, washed over them. The snow around them hissed and melted, creating small puddles that instantly froze again in the residual cold. Rudeus stumbled back, disoriented. Lowering his arm, he blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. The sky was ripped open, a gaping maw of emerald energy. It pulsed and swirled, like a living, impossible vortex. It defied every law of nature he knew. Objects, indiscernible in their size and shape, tumbled out of the fissure, disintegrating into dust before they reached the ground. Cosmic debris, perhaps. Or something far stranger. His mage brain, dormant for so long, screamed *anomaly*. Soldat grabbed Rudeus’s shoulder, his grip like a vise. “Get ready, kid! Something’s coming out of that thing!” His face was grim, his eyes wide with a primal fear. Rudeus didn’t need the warning. He saw it. A shape, coalescing in the heart of the emerald tear. It was vague at first, then sharper, clearer. It was falling, tumbling end over end, growing larger with terrifying speed. A figure. Humanoid. But impossible. His mind reeled. The emerald light around it intensified, casting an unearthly glow on the snow. It was almost here, almost on them. Fear, cold and sharp, finally pierced through his apathy. This wasn’t a failure he could run from. This was something entirely new, entirely terrifying. He didn’t know what to do. His hands still felt numb, useless. Just as the first snowflake touched the ground, a blinding, emerald fissure tore open the sky above them, spitting out a figure that looked horrifyingly, undeniably, like Rudeus himself, but adorned with curves and a knowing, lewd smirk.

Chapter 1: Scarred Land, Shattered Soul