The mist seemed to open as they looked ahead. As if it was once folded and collapsed upon itself, used as a shroud by this… hideous creature.

If the Heron looked as close to heaven, then this profane Maggot of the mist was the closest to the underworld they’d came upon.

Squirming as it wrapped around what seemed like a towering tree — the heights of which were beyond anything he had seen before. The rest of its slithering body was burrowed below the ground at the tree’s base.

Enormous, its ashen head has a flower-like mouth of three bulbs with small, thin teeth around its maw.

Osias couldn’t even tell if the beast had eyes. But despite that, its head faced them.

However, Kiran was already moving, he grabbed Osias and bolted north. This wasn’t something they could face. Together with whatever pursued them, they cannot remain here.

Perhaps they were too weak and insignificant, but the Maggot of the mist continued to face the direction they once were, disregarding both him and Kiran as if they were small as ants. Because they simply were.

But suddenly, the same indescribable sound once again tore through the mist from behind them over a vast distance. It seemed whatever was pursuing them had entered the territory of this Ashen Maggot.

‘Is it… is it looking at what was chasing us instead?’ He thought between heavy breaths as he ran for his life.

In the next moment, the Maggot halted its eerie stillness. It began to unravel itself slowly from the lofty tree through wave-like squirms. Even the way it moved, it was disgusting to look at. As if his mind and body refused to think such a thing could belong in this world.

But then through the fleeting glimpses from behind Kiran’s lead, he saw it.

What he thought was a towering tree was revealed through the moving segments of the Maggot.

It couldn’t possibly be natural he thought. It couldn’t be something that had simply risen above the very earth, no matter how corrupted the land seemed by the mist. No — it was constructed, like a foul creation of the Maggot’s doing.

Carcasses, grey and withered, but not like the remains of Blood Reave. They looked hard as stone. All of them were hardened husks, all their vitality turned to stone upon death.

These felled beasts were all different in size. Some were titanic beings who formed much of the base of the tower whilst some were smaller and were smothered atop. All stacked in a mismatched web into a towering spire fit for the Ashen Maggot.

But most harrowing was what perfectly fit the odd gaps between the fallen titanic beasts.

People. An innumerable amount of them, their faces permanently warped in torment as they bent and contorted their bodies to fit the staggeringly tall structure. Scattered between the disfigured carcasses of Path Beasts.

Forsaken to forever linger in a foul structure made in the land of the mist.

‘Was… was there such an expedition done by the Tailed Brothers?’

Agonizing deaths, they suffered, Osias was sure of it. Just his fleeting glimpse was enough to tell him that.

…If he had but a single wish at this moment, it would be for Kiran to run just a little faster.

The ground below them quaked and tremored as the Path Beasts fought. Roars that trebled the world sounded, yet Osias never caught a glimpse of what chased them as the all-encompassing mist devoured his view and hid the clashing horrors.

Kiran let go, but they continued to run.

Run, and cover as much land as they can in the time they had. Perhaps the victor of the battle will pursue, they didn’t know what demented thoughts lay behind the minds of beasts, much less than beasts so warped and disfigured from their Path.

It was a blood-curdling thought. For those twisted and depraved beings to possess intelligence, perhaps even better than humans as Kiran once said fleetingly.

“Halt!” Kiran whispered.

Osias immediately drew his sword as soon as the word escaped Kiran’s lips. No matter how weak he was in the face of all they encountered so far, he’ll continue to try, futile as it is.

They studied their surroundings for a few seconds before Kiran turned his head and hurriedly ushered him to the side.

The mist here was dense and thick, unlike the odd patches they came across before — Osias was practically blind. But they came across an outcropping of raised stones surrounded by ashen trees and crudely hid.

They remained absolutely still in the wake of whatever Kiran sensed. Yet Osias couldn’t hear a thing aside from his short ragged breaths and pounding heart, and even then he tried his best to quiet them.

He stretched his breaths longer and tried to calm his head. His arms felt weak and his feet felt as though he had been wading through muddied battlefields for days. But he was alert as he warily joined his brother in peering at their surroundings from behind a large cover of a fallen ashen tree’s trunk.

His eyes followed where Kiran was wearily looking, though he couldn’t find anything.

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But then a small part through the mist… he saw it too. A figure darkened its surroundings as it got bigger as it approached — not directly at them. It slowly paced and wandered, weaving between what he thought were the tall obscured shadows of more ashen trees.

It looked like a deformed cross of a myriad of creatures that came together and formed into a beetle of sorts, the likes he found in the forested foothills of the Red Sky’s Great Mountain. The mist clung to the beast like a blurry cloak, heavy with the scent of decay, and the silence of its steps was unsettling.

Though it was smaller than the other creatures of the mist, it was as larger than Kiran. It was a bulbous mass crawling slowly across from them. It’ll pass them if it continues on its way.

And it did, ever so slowly.

But as its side came upon their sights, Osias saw a pronounced wound that struck its thick chitin. A humongous bite of sorts, something titanic took a large piece of its body, exposing what was inside.

Once more the ghastly sight reminded Osias how fearsome those of the mist were as he clutched the crimson armor — his lifeline in this shrouded hell.

As they waited for the beetle-like vagrant to pass, his gaze inadvertently turned to Kiran.

But what he found was a blood-thirsty glare smothered across Kiran’s face, his flint eyes locked in onto the gaping, bloody impression where a beast helped itself to the beetle's flesh.

‘No way…’ Osias realized as his eyes raised alarmingly.

“I’ll kill it. Third Ordeal blood… I’ll take it for my own.” Kiran darkly whispered as if he already knew that Osias was looking at him.

And before Osias could react, his crimson armor faded quickly as it pooled into Kiran’s gleaming spear that appeared in his hand.

Kiran firmly reared his arm back beside Osias who was still crouched below the fallen trunk.

Then, Kiran narrowed his eyes and hurled his spear with a heavy step forward with enough force Osias could feel a cold wind blow from Kiran’s gaunt figure.

It was a clear shot, close enough for even Osias to see past into the mist. The beetle practically displayed its wounded side towards them, like a stroke of fortune that finally came after a series of escapes and flees.

And Kiran’s spear struck true.

With a wet thud it sunk in deeply piercing through the other side of its thick black chitin, and dark blood splattered out.

Flung on his side, the Osias can see its limbs flail in desperation, and even the mist seemed to warp and shift, gathering densely on the tips of its claws, its final attempts to fight for its life.

But to the beetle’s apparent appall, Kiran already dashed ahead towards it, and suddenly a dull crunching sound exploded.

Kiran’s spear changed forms in the already half-dead beetle.

More black blood smeared the surroundings in a vast puddle, fragments of its broken carapace and chitin scattered amongst it.

Whatever it was attempting to do, it failed as it died. Its mandibles stopped clicking and its legs drooped, the dense mist dispersed.

For a moment, the mist-covered forest was silent, the beetle's death throes halted.

Osias exhaled again, slower this time, feeling the tension leave his body as he observed his brother’s kill.

‘A little… reckless than he usually was. But I guess it’s needed in a place like this.’

Kiran already burrowed his arm elbow-deep into the beetle and extracted all the sickly black blood with a baleful sneer.

Then the beetle, along with its surroundings was cleared of its blood and Kiran returned to his side.

“We can’t eat it. We’ll try the next one.” Kiran curtly dismissed, motioning for Osias to get up.

Shaking his head, Osias mused with a grim smile, ‘So killing a creature of the mist isn’t impossible.’

Returning to Kiran’s side they walked, relying on Kiran’s sense of direction towards the north. They navigated cautiously despite the vast distance they put behind them in their chaotic escape from the behemoths’ clash.

Although Kiran didn’t say it outright, Osias surmised that many of the harrowing creatures they encountered used the mist in odd ways.

Many used it to further mask themselves, perhaps hiding themselves from other feral beasts. But what the beetle did… it wasn’t looking like it was planning on hiding itself.

The blurry cloak that covered it might’ve been another one of its Ordeal Abilities, but the growingly dense and dark mist that gathered at the tips of its claws? It must’ve been a means of attack or the like.

It might sound a little morbid and perverse, but Osias wanted to see what it could do. The mist itself still didn’t have any clear purpose aside from obscuring their surroundings.

Why does the mist permeate so deep into the Paths of those born of the mist…

They were strong, stronger than most they had seen in the Outer Valleys. Especially the Maggot. From the disturbed look of Kiran’s face, it must’ve been the strongest of the Third.

Perhaps even the Fourth.

But even so, Osias thought back to the many people it had slain and added to its tower of corpses. How did it come across so many people?

His only thoughts were that it was an old expedition formed by the forces under the Tailed Brothers. Yet, it must’ve been long ago.

Ever since the forming of the Red Sky, the Tailed Brothers halted all their ventures to the Outer Valleys. They couldn’t spare precious Path Finders to such duties — they were fighting a war on both ends of their lands.

‘What was it again…’ Osias tried to find the words.

A little more than a century and a half. That was how long ago Garm formed the Red Sky with the other elders.

…Osias was privy to such information due to Kiran’s position and knowledge despite his age.

So the human corpses have been supporting the tower of the Ashen Maggot for at least a century.

Osias shivered a little as he followed Kiran.

To die in such a way, and have their bodies used… as nothing but stones of a gruesome tower under the tight wreathe of the Ashen Maggot that killed them. It was dreadful to think about.

However, that led to another question:

‘How ancient was this... Ashen Maggot?’

Osias knew that as you undergo and succeed in Ordeals, the longer you live. He once heard from Kiran that the Ordeals were how a mortal proves their existence, their Path.

To force themselves on the world, the Heavens itself.

It sounded like a whimsical children's tale, those the likes of Heroes and Demons. But Osias reluctantly took it for the truth if it came out of Kiran’s mouth.

‘Gods… how many are there?’

God and the Heavens. He too heard the story of God.

The Exalted Great Blood Ancestor who ascended above the skies themselves. But they were grievously wounded upon their ascension, wounds that even becoming a God cannot heal. The Blood Ancestor was doomed to die in the heavens. However, as they bled out atop the sky, they rained down blood. And from this rain of blood that stained the sky red, the Path of Blood came about.

As for why almost all Blood Path Finders possess an Ordeal Ability to heal? The Great Blood Ancestor guided them upon the Path of Blood, free from their old mistakes. So that we can heal ourselves unlike them. And eventually, a Champion of Blood will arise, ascending above the skies themselves, and use Blood Mend to heal the Ancestor before they die.

But Osias wasn’t naive. It must’ve been a tale spun from the elders and perhaps even Garm himself. Or at least by the people of the band.

Through time, the story eventually made it to the hearts of the people, even as fanciful as it sounded.

Such tales of God were spun everywhere. As numerous as the mountains atop the Wailing Chain. He recalled listening to a few First Bloods that they slew a mountain of zealots worshipping a mountain upon a raid.

People would worship anything.

The heavens…

God…

It all seemed foolish to him. The Gods were the strong. That was all it was.

If you couldn’t run. If you couldn’t hide. If you couldn’t fight.

All one can do is pray.

After all… how many times did he pray when he was alone in that dark chamber? God didn’t exist to him.