Kiran didn’t arrive until an hour later. An entire leg was missing as he hobbled to where Osias sat in wait.

As for why Osias sat, he came to understand, or at least guess what occurred. If… if the creature of the mist that pursued them for so long happened to retreat then it must’ve sensed something they couldn’t.

If it was the same beast who dared to test the might of the Ashen Maggot all that time ago, a Fourth Ordeal as Kiran said, then for it to retreat…

Osias didn’t want to think about the cause of his cold dread.

Kiran must’ve known well before they came upon it. They didn’t encounter a single beast the entire time they fled their pursuer. Eventually, Kiran must have expected something. Perhaps not exactly what it was, but what could they have done?

Osias didn’t know what happened, nor how Kiran survived, and was able to send him to safety, but they survived.

They survived and that was it.

So Osias didn’t ask, uneager to satisfy his morbid curiosity. They marched and marched just like they’ve always done — despondently and miserably.

Kiran’s leg regrew in silence as Osias watched from behind, and their pace quickened.

They didn’t stop until they came upon a small group of Path Beasts, finally able to know that they’d left and put a sizable distance between the horror behind them.

Osias felt dead on his feet — exhausted after their long sleepless march.

But he forced himself to fight. Kiran told him so, that they couldn’t avoid this group.

Even if he could only barely kill one, he fought desperately to prove he had a little control somewhere under the mist.

Kiran didn’t seem to care as he delved in to scramble with a First Ordeal beast, a hideous being that looked to be the union of the demons depicted in children’s tales with a foul rodent. An innumerable amount of legs crawled as he wearily brought his sword down on it.

His blade cleaved through its snout, but it flailed and knocked his blade out of his hand. However, Osias pounced on the beast with a growl and jammed his armored hand through the open wound, and used something he hadn’t had the opportunity to do in such a long time.

Blood Reave pulled and vast amount of blood out of the screeching rodent as he gleefully took it. His other hand battered the rest of the rodent's head and snout. Through his hammering blows, he stopped and forced his hand into the beast's small black eye.

He fought viciously as if the beast was the source of all his woes.

But all of a sudden, Osias blinked, and then he found himself thrown on the rugged stones as the mismatched rodent pounced on top, its hefty weight fell in its entirety as he was tightly pinned to the ground. He felt strange, something was amiss. It was too hard to breathe, and he tasted steel against his mouth. It was blood. Blood pooled against his throat as he thought he was drowning.

He loathed this feeling of suffocation.

Blood seething through the gaps between his teeth, he spat out what he could, wishing he could spit out the memory of the two hundred paces he took whilst choking under the air.

And through the small slits that fashioned his helm, he saw the grotesque rodent eager to finish him off.

He tried to move. Anything. His legs. His free hand. He'll just ravage its eye. Pull its tongue bloody. Anything! But his body wouldn't listen, his limbs wouldn't yield to his will. His thoughts trudge through, striving to force his arms to move. Instead, he found a broad blade cleaving through the air towards the opened maw by his neck.

He lay there, strewn atop the rugged ground as he breathed heavily.

The heavy, but headless corpse weighed down on him for a few moments before he saw through the slits of his helm, Kiran kicked and rolled it off.

“You fight like a fool. Have you forgotten the difference between crude and fierce?” Kiran darkly scolded.

He didn’t say anything in response, his mind unable to pierce through the fog that slowed it.

Eventually, he closed his eyes. It was too long since he last slept.

He was battered. Tired. Dirty and covered in grime and blood.

He wanted to sleep right there — beside the headless corpse of the large mismatched rodent. With faint light of another day began to break through from above.

But Kiran kicked his side and picked him up.

“Get up! Keep moving if you want to live and be of use.” Kiran yelled.

But Kiran quickly grew tired, pulling him over his back, and began running.

He felt like a corpse as he dangled off the familiar shoulder.

This continued for a few minutes until Kiran came upon some obstacles — Path Beasts.

But it seemed these ones were something Kiran could evade and fight off as he barrelled past them.

Fleeting glimpses of their maimed bodies flashed through his sights, the work of Kiran’s spear.

It felt like they left the beasts to be devoured by what they were running from again.

But their luck ended. And for the first time… he saw something through the slightly illuminated mist. He couldn’t tell exactly, but through drooping eyes, he saw the mist billow from something gigantic approaching.

In the next moment, a nearly indescribable sound bellowed, ripping through the distance.

Shattering pain that pounded his head to bits as the sound wailed on and on.

And then Kiran staggered, dropping him as they both rolled onto the ground…

Collapsed, the pain emanating from his ear spread to his body. He rolled violently as the piercing sound continued to blare. The wretched noise ravaged his hearing as his hands tightly pressed against his temple and his fingers clawed against the skin surrounding his ears.

Between his reeling throbbing he felt warm blood flowing out his ear, his hands and fingers slicked wet, probably staining the ground as he rolled as well.

In the next moment, a thundering crash sounded and the vile sound ceased, but he was still direly affected.

He blinked violently to ground himself in reality and to wave off the haze of pain that clouded his thoughts. But as he opened his eyes, he found that the mist was much thinner than before the harrowing wail sounded.

He shook his head, and a little blood trickled down from his ruptured ears onto his arm and sword. Raising his head off the ground, he found Kiran on his feet, poised as if he had just thrown something — likely the source of the impact.

His brother turned slightly to say something, but he couldn’t understand… no he couldn't hear him.

It was too muddled as if the words couldn’t reach his damaged and bloodied ears.

Then Kiran took an arm to shake him slightly, but he just nodded.

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With a heavy grunt, Osias stood up with Kiran's support through the dazed struggle.

Suddenly Kiran shook his own head in fury as he drew his spear and looked ahead once more.

Kiran quickly motioned for him to follow, and so he did.

Enough running…

They rushed toward the giant figure, still slightly obscured and shrouded by the cold mist, and he tightened his grip despite the growing weakness and unease.

Through the now thinned mist, the figure was now mostly revealed as he stifled his disgust at the sight.

It was as though a handful of weathered trees came together into a wood-like body. Its ghostly figure was surrounded by shimmering haze as though its bark blended with the sunless mist, as it eerily moved like wafting wind. The surroundings seemed to twist as the mist danced with it.

As the vast figure turned he found more than a dozen dead-looking branches curved and twisted into sickly chains. The wood fettered something familiar — the dead hounds of a time’s past. But it also bounded many other sickly beasts he didn’t recognize.

With a slow wind from the lumbering beast’s movements, the nearest decayed corpse twisted on its wooden bindings, ever so slightly. They were all desecrated and partly eaten by something. They’ve been ravaged upon death. Throat and chest had been torn asunder, sickly glistening grey-red entrails and ribbons of ragged flesh dangled from where the belly had been opened. The exposed bones were picked and cracked as they were gnawed upon.

Some were left with almost nothing but a single leg, still tangled in its wooden chains, swaying with each breeze.

However, his eyes traced towards a faint spear that pieced a hound's carcass, penetrating deep into the wooden beast's side. But as he noticed it, the spear already dispersed and flowed away from the beast, towards Kiran.

“Above!” Kiran bellowed as he threw something at Osias.

Osias tried to pierce his gaze into the sky, but it was too dark, practically black even though it should’ve been the break of dawn.

However, this black seemed to get even darker and closer.

In the next moment, whatever Kiran threw at him crashed against his torso, and dispersed, stretching to his limbs and covering his head as it flowed into his armor, seemingly strengthened more than before as he surmised in a quick wave of his sword.

The fogged sky seemed to fall onto him and Kiran, dense and heavy as if all the mist collected and collapsed onto them.

‘Birds?’ He immediately noticed as it came into view. He slashed at what he could the moment they eclipsed him, Kiran, as well.

They came in vast droves, diving and swiping at them in numbers that could’ve been in the hundreds. But together, Osias and Kiran continued to pursue the great beast in bark — it was slow, and Kiran must’ve had a plan if he chose to attack.

In unison, they both decided that they had no means of slaughtering the drove of birds and pushed to the lumbering wooden beast.

As the onslaught of numbers crashed into him again, he got a closer look as he beheaded a few with a swipe of his sword.

Black-skinned, but featherless birds. Each possesses a sharp beak that cuts through the mist. The number of them battered into his armor and through the small slits of sight, to his horror they picked bits and pieces of it off, already beginning to strip him.

In front of him, Kiran burst ahead with an inhuman speed and leaped toward the sluggish bark beast. He thrusted deeply into its side and pulled a thick deep-orange liquid out of its body.

But from behind the corpses of the hounds, they opened up from their decayed flesh, and more birds added to the onslaught, intent on devouring Kiran as he once more pursued the wood beast.

However, these ones were different. Pale bone white in color, they were larger than the others, and how they fit inside the defiled hounds was a mystery.

They looked forsaken in appearance, dreadful protrusions stretched from beyond their bodies it was impossible to imagine such beings could fly.

Yet they did. Barreling towards Kiran, Osias watched despite being battered and sent tumbling by the other black ones — Kiran’s flesh was ripped apart as merely brushed sides against them.

But before Kiran could retaliate, two thick branches extended from the wood beast’s side, one reaching for Kiran in a cruel crescent shape, and another towards himself.

He quickly let the innumerable amount of birds to push him as he used their dreadful dive to pummel him to the side away from the impossibly quick branch that aimed for his neck and ankles.

Luckily he avoided it as he borrowed their strength. But he was now too far away from Kiran to rest.

He shot to his feet, not allowing the swathe of birds to hold him down.

‘They have to be of the First Ordeal…’ He thought between his hastened chase.

The birds were probably not natural beasts who had undergone an Ordeal. Probably profane thralls made or corrupted creations of the wood-like beast. Whether they were made, corrupted, or taken, it didn’t matter as their vast numbers threatened even his strengthened armor.

For the wooden beast to have these birds as thralls for its use, it must be at the very least the Third Ordeal. Perhaps the Fourth, but Osias couldn’t tell… the immense air of death remained all the same.

Hundreds of First Ordeal minions and perhaps dozens of the Second. It was like a mist-corrupted brood mother as he thought of the hounds that were displayed on the wooden beast's side.

…But like the brood mother, his sword could take the lives of the weakest of minions.

His head was still dazed and damaged, but he still continued to keep moving, he couldn’t allow himself to be pinned down again. Even worse was the risk of the wooden beast trying another attempt to bind him under its branches of chains.

Cutting through a few black birds that had flown ahead of him, barring his way to their keeper, another drove chipped from behind, eager to raze through the smaller gaps of his crimson armor.

He didn’t fall, nor did he falter, continuing his way towards Kiran in the distance.

He dodged uprooted trees from his brother’s battles and ran so direly, that he could not allow Kiran to be fully enveloped in the mist. If he completely loses sight of Kiran and the battle, he’ll left alone…

Shaking his head, he killed another line of audacious birds fluttering in front of him. His blade moved with grace as they met their end by steel.

He barreled through the trees of the misted forest, from saplings and supple branches, pine boughs dirtied with putrid blood in his and his brother’s wake. It seemed Kiran and the wood beast bent and twisted them around and through each other in a struggle.

But just as his blade sought the necks of a small batch, they reared back and fluttered ahead of him, collecting towards Kiran’s battle.

‘What is it?’ He immediately wandered, and he picked up the pace, now unhindered by the birds.

Each step brought him closer to the thundering sounds of battle ahead, as he saw more pits of struggle and cleaved surroundings devoured by the mist.

There, he found Kiran mangled and disfigured with countless wounds littering his body. But he was accustomed to such a sight, thankful that Kiran’s wounds already seemed to close and heal within moments.

But then the black birds all headed within the wooden beast’s body — deep within the crevices opened by Kiran’s spear while the larger and more warped bone-white ones continued to assault Kiran in an attempt to slow him down.

Kiran suddenly yelled as he fiendishly cut down one of the bone white creatures — turning his head to look at Osias.

Osias’s hearing was still weakened and there was still a sizeable distance between them, but he could tell Kiran screamed a warning at him.

He obliged immediately. But as he did so, the wooden beast continued to move away from him as Kiran continued his assault.

In the next moment, the same indescribable sound roared, cutting through the blood that flowed out his ears as the earth seemed to quake in response. The mist too seemed to thin oddly enough as well.

It carried on for a few seconds before it abruptly stopped and Osias dashed ahead to meet his brother.

But to his dismay, the foothills dropped in the distance into an almost vertical cliff. The lumbering wooden behemoth jumped off the cliff and Kiran jumped as well without hesitation.

It took a few seconds for him to reach the cliff, but he froze before joining them.

A harsh cacophony of screeches and wails, something so out of place as he recalled earlier in the mist sounded.

As if all the silent black birds decided to wail at once.

‘It did something… Do I still go?’ He quickly thought. He didn’t know what happened. Although he presumed the cliff dropped into another vast valley, he could barely see what occurred.

He shook his head, admonishing the thought. He cannot survive alone in the mist… this desire to survive once more welled within as he quickly descended the drop.

He even daringly jumped and relied on the hardiness of his armor to withstand some falls he wouldn’t usually take.

Quickly resuming his free dash, he once more came upon the battle.

The black birds… they were no more. Instead, a giant hideous amalgamation of white ivory bark now hindered between Kiran and the wooden beast.

Osias swallowed a heavy apprehension — It wasn’t even similar to the ivory-white birds from before.

Jagged and malformed bones of bark twisted and weaved together to form a profane web reminiscent of the very wooden beast they pursued. A twin perhaps.

Kiran recoiled from the sight and glanced back at him.

But there wasn’t a moment of rest, not for them…

Together with its ivory bone counterpart, the wooden beast turned its head and released a vast number of chains of bark to Kiran. Bloodied and mangled as it was, it still sought to bind his brother as he watched.

However, Kiran was no fool. He too quickly turned tail and bolted for Osias while he dodged the barrage of wooden chains aimed at his neck and ankles.

By now his hearing as more or less been crippled, but he understood the moment Kiran mouthed the words, ‘Run’.

He immediately ran to his side, if his sense of direction wasn’t so off then he was treading north. Kiran too ran in the same direction, eventually catching up with him.

Osias understood as he grabbed hold of Kiran's free hand, and Kiran slung him over his large frame.

He tightly clutched the neck of his brother's cloak — mostly in tatters now after all this time.

Fortunately, the wooden beast was slow, lumbering slower than Kiran despite the difference in Ordeal levels. Kiran’s exchanges weakened it, forcing the beast to rely on its other harrowing strengths.

But the equally sized ivory one didn't seem to share that weakness. The brief exchange it had with Kiran in the time Osias hesitated to descend the cliff was enough to cause Kiran to retreat.

Though… the ivory-white beast didn't pursue them as they quickly cleaved through the mist.

Despite the encroaching panic of yet another flee, Osias grimly smiled.

Osias watched the wooden beast hesitate as it violently lurched and staggered. Rich and deep orange blood seemed to flow endlessly from its terrible wounds. Deep cuts and stabs littered its body and neck. The ivory beast came to its side and helped support it upright.

‘Ah… there was that too.’

It must’ve had the ivory beast remain by its side to protect itself from the other foul creatures of the mist…