“Kahm—”

Then the pleas of the helpless soldier turned to a wet gurgle as Osias's spear pierced their throat.

Two more hands gripped his spear in an attempt to claw for a miracle to save a punctured neck… but all the man grasped was the blood unnaturally flowing upwards as horror overtook the last sights of war.

In the next moment, the nameless man let go of Osias’s spear and dropped lifelessly as the final embers of life were forcefully taken through Blood Reave.

Shaking his head… Osias realized the soldiers spoke a different language. But the words were undoubtedly of the man begging for mercy. For their lives.

If the act of killing was evil… then the battlefield was hell. Osias knew not of the state of this war, nor did he know anything aside from two unimaginably large forces battling in a gruesome melee.

…That pleading man with untold fear in his eyes was Osias's first kill. His first time killing a person. But he swallowed down what little remorse he had as he thought of his promise to return. His need to reunite with Kiran.

Again, he quickly inspected his body as the immediate threat was taken, and he found that it was exactly as it was before he entered the Ordeal, except for the armor he donned.

His boots, wrist wraps, and tattoos were the same under it though.

And oddly enough, although his essence reservoir was full as usual… it wasn’t continually being raised and fed through his tattoos.

‘My tattoos… they are empty.’

Suddenly, his ears perked within his tattered helm and he dodged a thrust of another soldier's spear — another Ordinary. Then he used a hand to pull the man's weapon and he ripped the man's helm off, exposing the sweaty rugged man.

He didn't look like a soldier, a warrior. His eyes… were full of fear and fright. The type he’d hear from the cruel tales of returning Blood Warriors.

Osias narrowed his eyes in dark contempt and he severed the arm as the stricken fighter cried in agony. Staggered to their knees, Osias stared down the enemy who sensed their looming end.

“Ma…Maria—”

‘I don't… want to hear anymore.’ Osias dismissed as his hand moved with an impossible speed and gripped the man by the throat, silencing another series of pleas and begging before they began.

Osias was a little more than four times as strong as any other Ordinary his size if Kiran was accurate back then, and his iron-clawed grip was enough to hold the pitiful man at bay, suffocating him.

More clawing from the lifted dying man ensued, but through the tight vices of Osias’s hands, he used Blood Reave ferociously while the man was suffocating.

Eventually, the man died in his clasps, their single arm falling limb at their side with the name of someone precious to them coating their last words.

But the misery of nothing but figments of Osias’s Ordeal couldn’t shake him. Though… the woman’s name did leave a bad taste.

Shaking his head, he once more buried the useless thoughts.

‘Indeed… the blood-born fight best amidst wars of many.’ He reflected, tossing the husk at a pair of foes who rushed past what should’ve been his fellow… bannerman. Glancing down at his aged leather tunic and the small sigil of a red feather above his heart.

‘Even this armor is odd.’ He inspected.

It was leather without a doubt, but it looked like the scales. Plates woven together make a crude-looking lizard skin.

However, he lifted his gaze and poised himself, leaning forward into a lunge with terrible speed. He wasn’t used to a spear, but he stabbed and cut enough to know the basics of a weapon so prevalent among those beginning to step onto the battlefield.

After all, that was who he was facin—

In the next moment, something flung above the heads of the approaching soldiers and battered at his chest.

‘Fast!’ He thought as he skidded from the blow.

He jammed the butt of his spear down against the earth caked in blood and gore, eventually wedging under a sizable litter of armored corpses — some of the enemy and some of his comrades.

“A stone?” He gruffed, but it was nothing more than a whisper amid the madness around him.

Then from the small clearing a few meters ahead came a giant the size of Kiran. Soldiers on both sides were pummeled and pushed aside, nothing more than rats hounding below the man almost twice their height and many more in weight. A beaming metal sigil of a Golden Hawk was decorated at its left chest plate.

‘First Ordeal.’

More soldiers of the same banner surged ahead, the few who chose not to be stricken by the terror. Their blades met the savage armor but bounced off. The few that met the gaps and chink were pummeled into the very earth that birthed them...

Though the giant man did slow down a little, Osias took the opportunity, grabbing another spare pike off a nameless corpse and throwing it straight for the face hidden between the twisted black crown that donned the giant.

His mind was cold and full of murderous intent. Nothing more was important than returning with the strength of his ascent. Even as the giant quickly swatted the pike before it met its face, Osias's spear flashed through the war-torn air, cutting deep into the gaps of its armor with a spray of blood that was taken into his tattoos.

'If they aren't full when I come to... I'll fill it up. All this blood is mine for the taking.’ He thought with a baleful sneer.

The giant staggered, and more soldiers of the opposing banner hindered Osias, but then he warded them off enough to stab deep behind the giant’s knee.

‘If only Blood Reave wasn’t so slow.’ He thought, taking more blood essence from the lumbering hunk of black steel.

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Ducking under another wild swing from another, he slammed the nameless man and pilfered a lusterless knife from a hidden sheath.

‘I’ll take this.’

Dancing between blades and spears, Osias let some of his bannerman aid in conquering the giant of the First Ordeal. It seemed that his small display was enough to rile up the weak fools to forget the others turning into a paste of blood, flesh, and armor under the force of the giant’s gauntlets.

But it was enough, the few seconds the large bastard was occupied, Osias mounted him and pried the helmet of crowns from the neckline to no avail. But it was enough to tell where the gap was.

A sickly lurch of the giant and then his mount was staggering, but before the lumbering hands could even come upwards, Osias took the small knife and stabbed it deeply, embedding it into the neck of the giant before leaping off in a roll. The giant scrambled after him, but he continued to advance through the thicket of soldiers, using the giant as nothing more than a ruinous hammer for those he passed.

‘The Blood Warriors fought fiercely.’

Picking up another spare curved sword he wasn’t accustomed to, he evaded another onslaught of soldiers before the edge met their throats in a fountain of blood he gleefully took for his own.

The giant bashed and pounded whoever dared hinder its mad chase as he bled out. Banners didn’t matter to it anymore.

‘The Red Sky's War Art… the accumulation of all. To be used on a single foe or an uncountable amount of them.’

The Red Sky fought with the straightforward, yet violently insidious resolve of warriors who bled their enemies. Osias couldn't fight as they did, making necessary sacrifices to further plunge his blade into his enemies, but he could adopt much of the style — the barbarously cruel yet efficient path to survival and triumph. Killers, raiders, reavers... their very existence and birth were fraught with taking from others, even from kin.

So he fought as a mere shell of a true blood-born... until he succeeded this can he advance an enormous step towards that ideal state — The War Art of the Red Sky. The dance of violent death and brutality.

…His essence flared and invigorated him, and the rapture of Blood Reave only led to more necks being opened. Limbs are to be severed at the joint. Chest plates to cave in as their ribs poke into their own lungs and hearts.

Whether it was by sword, axe, spear, or gauntlet, the Ordinaries fell in droves. Each swing sang with a wicked whistle as he continued to fight indefinitely. This was where a blood-born was made for!

All that mattered was that he passed the Ordeal.

There was no running, no hiding.

His life was fraught with moving along the wind of evading death. Always… always moving. Looking forward to the next thing as he allowed it to happen.

This was not to be one of such times. He refused to waver in his ascent. Whatever happens… as long as he survives and returns, he’ll do anything.

Another swipe of his sword hit swift and true, and another stream of blood essence fed into his tattoos. He was rapidly draining his stock despite methodically and intricately manipulating his essence as he learned from the beginning to now. All those times he trained and spar and fought… his control and strength was the accumulation of his dreadful experiences.

His ears perked and then he dodged an unnaturally strong throw unfitting of a mere Ordinary coming from his side. He glanced behind him to find that it was a throwing spear that he narrowly dodged, nevertheless, he made a mad dash towards the thrower.

He dashed through the battling men, weaving delicately past those individual battles like lightning stained in blood. When he met opposition, he tore right past the storm of steel with his attacks, taking another stream of blood with him as their lives were reaped.

‘He’s running away.’ Osias thought with narrowed eyes, spotting the turn tail who was eagerly pushing through mounds of men.

But his blade was seeking the audacious spear thrower, as though cursing the man to the ends of the battlefield.

‘Too late.’ He thought, picking a spear from the ground and throwing it with a thunderous might that was practically the same as the one Osias almost got hit with.

A wet thud sounded, and the spearhead hit true, sinking deep into the man’s torso as it broke through the tattered leather armor.

‘Hmph.’ Osias scoffed, reaching the many men before him — they hindered the way to make sure the thrower was dead. Osias wanted to make sure that he just killed another First Ordeal or if it was an unnaturally strong Ordinary.

But then a surge of his fellow bannermen followed, these men were picked up along the way. They probably saw his slaughter with how pronounced the giant was behind him. Morale beaming and vigor flowed through their veins at the blood-stained warrior who never faltered, and never tired.

Seeing another Ordinary bannermen on his side pinned below one clad in the Golden Hawk attire, Osias cleaved through the neck with his blade. Blood splattered over his fellow bannermen’s older face, but with a grunt, Osias roughly cleaned him up with Blood Reave, earning a reserved thanks and nod in response before continuing forward.

‘I wonder what’s the word for welcoming…’

By now, Osias has figured that both the enemy and his bannerman spoke the same language — a difficult discovery as cries, roars, and bellows replaced proper words here. It was madness, with no coherent leaders… no orders. Even as the men chanted behind him, he wasn’t sure if they were all sane.

“Visalros! Visalros!” They all clamored, and through Osias’s glances behind, he found the men at times pointing towards him and chanting those words relentlessly with such zeal he’d take them for the cults he had heard of in stories.

The troop of men rushed ahead in a feral roar, crashing against the small formation that formed in retaliation to his followers. Scoffing to himself, Osias took advantage of it and followed.

He was already more than a head taller than even the largest of them, yet he still jumped off the shield backs to reach the fray.

With a resounding boom, he smothered an unfortunate soldier beneath his feet and flailed his sword at the men around in a hazy blur.

But it was enough to allow his followers to break through the small formation and slaughter the disoriented Ordinaries as they chanted fervently.

“Visalros!” They bellowed as their swords met the necks of the stumbled enemies. But upon closer look, Osias found his followers a little… crazed.

Their eyes were wild, bloodshot, and wide with a mixture of fury and exhaustion, veins visible against the reddened whites. One man’s face, smeared with grime and blood, bore deep lines of fatigue, yet his movements were frenetic, driven by a madness that gripped him tighter with each passing moment. His chest heaved with labored breaths as he swung his sword, the blade slashing through the air with reckless abandon.

“Visalros!” One howled.

Each strike was delivered with a desperate force, the weapon connecting with flesh and bone, sending sprays of blood across his worn armor. His face twisted into a grotesque snarl, teeth bared in a silent scream. The exhaustion weighing on his limbs seemed to have given way to a dark frenzy, where pain and weariness no longer held sway over him.

“Visalros!” Another yelled, tackling a maimed soldier from grabbing Osias’s leg in a final struggle.

Osias didn’t react, only watching the man smother the maimed enemy in a gritty scramble. Eventually, his follower mounted the pitiful soldier and abandoned gripping their throat — they moved to gouge their eyes in a bloody mess.

“Visalros!” His follower bellowed from atop.

His follower seemed so adamant in slaying anything that possessed the gold hawk. His vision tunneled, focusing only on the immediate threat in front of him, with no thought given to strategy or survival. The madness in his eyes reflected a mind lost to the chaos of the battlefield, where the line between life and death had blurred into a singular, relentless drive to cut down anything that moved.

‘His head… he’s going to die.’

Sweat and blood dripped down his face, stinging his eyes, but he did not blink. His fingers tore at the flailing man’s eye sockets below. Until the already maimed soldier died, the chanting man finally collapsed to his side and grabbed Osias’s ankle.

“Vi-Visalros.”

Bending over, Osias closed the man’s eyes as the chaos continued to unravel around him. A nameless chanting follower… it was odd.

‘Putting his trust in me I wonder?’ Osias thought.

‘Hmph.’ He scoffed, picking up the sword of his fervent, yet dead follower's side, and he continued to fight.

He looked back at the hundred or so bannermen following him and wondered what the word meant.

But this thought couldn't linger any longer because another wave of men broke past the chaos, led by another First Ordeal it seemed.

The luxurious Golden Hawk brooch pinned to their left chest plate was larger and more decadent than the gold-colored threads woven into the leather of the Ordinaries.

‘How… how many more do I have to kill? What is the purpose of this war?’