As the armored man wrote, he chanted words in a language Lokus had never heard before. It sounded as sweet as honey, as calming as a lover’s embrace, even with the gruff medium of the speaker’s voice.

A thin trail of smoke wafted up from the thyme set nearby, and the smell of burning hair assaulted Lokus’ nostrils.

Not pausing his words, the armored man placed the wooden block down and grabbed the thyme as the embers from the burning hair singed it. He set it gently down on the wooden block’s face, on top of the writing he had made.

From where Lokus kneeled, he spied the shapes of crimson letters on the wood right before the armored man set the thyme on the block. It was hard to make out from this angle, but it looked like… a name?

The embers soon caught on the wood, and a small fire sparked to life on top of the block. If it weren’t for the current circumstances, Lokus might have been worried about setting such a fire on top of a wooden platform, but as it was, he could hardly contain his dread.

A gentle breeze blew through the courtyard, scooping up the pile of dirt the armored man had brought out and sending it flying over to the deranged man, who somehow thrashed even harder than he had been before as his bones cracked and his teeth gnashed. A hollow pillar of brown swirled around the man, encircling him and floating directly above the green circle that surrounded him.

As the armored man’s chants continued, the fire grew and grew, and as the fire grew, the sigils glowed so bright that they rivaled the sun above. Then, in an instant, everything seemed to reach a crescendo.

The wooden block crumbled to ash, the fire that had lit it vanishing in a puff of smoke. The dirt fell to the platform, muddling with the green powder, and the sigils lost their luster so abruptly that the onlookers had to blink rapidly to readjust to the new levels of light.

When they could once more see, the deranged man was gone.

Lokus’ eyes widened, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Where had he gone?

Lokus, in his entire two years in this city, had never seen anything like this. He had seen this platform before while buying food and clothes and the like, and had wondered what it was for. But in the two years he had been here, it had never been used. Everything that was happening now was entirely new to him.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

He didn’t have the luxury of thinking on this for long, because now, it was his turn.

The armored man rose solemnly, leaving the ashes and other remains of the ritual behind as he knelt in front of Lokus. The gazes of the two met, and a shudder shook Lokus’ form as he saw what lay within those blue orbs.

There was no disgust, no fear or hatred, nor any other emotion. Only sheer, undiluted indifference.

To this man, Lokus’ life was little more valuable than a stone on the side of the road.

“Tell me your name,” the man said quietly.

“Why?” Lokus snarled, trying to put on a brave front. However, his words came out as a squeak as he watched the man dutifully twist the hair around the thyme stem. “So you can do what you did to him?”

“Yes,” the man replied.

“I refuse. Just kill me.”

“Your life is not worth bloodying my hands,” the man said simply. By now, he had finished with the thyme and had picked up the feather and the wood.

“Won’t I just go the Aldark anyway? What difference does it make to you?”

“There is a difference between arriving in the Aldark as a spirit and arriving as a living being. We are not so cruel as to condemn you to such a fate. Now, tell me your name.”

“No.”

The armored man looked up from the block of wood in his hands, giving Lokus a stare filled with the first emotion he had seen up until now: annoyance.

“All your resistance does is waste my time.”

His expression hardened, a formidable aura seeping out of him as the sound of a sword being drawn was heard.

Like a cheap string sliced apart by a sharp sword, Lokus’ entire body went slack as all of the tension left him. A sense of profound peace filled him, and without even thinking, he mumbled his name.

Even after realizing what he had done, he couldn’t find it within himself to worry. And when Lokus saw that the armored man had written his name on the block of wood while chanting, he still felt only peace.

It was only a minute later, when the dirt swirled around him and the sigils glowed as bright as the sun, that the peace left him, and his mouth opened as he shouted a protest.

“Wait! You can’t-”

In the blink of an eye, his worldview changed. The crowd, the armored man, the sun, all of it disappeared, replaced by a dreary forest with trees of stark crimson.

“-do this!” Lokus finished, only to pause as he noticed the sudden change in scenery.

He stood, and realized that his chains were gone almost as an afterthought as he looked around.

Just as before, the sun shone high above the trees, its light peaking between the leaves above and casting everything around him in a dim light that stopped after around ten meters in each direction. Everything after that point was as dark as night.

‘Is this… the Aldark?’ he wondered. It was brighter than he thought it would be.

He squinted up at the sun above, marveling at its eerie green appearance before a growl startled him out of his reverie.

His yellow eyes darted to a certain spot in the shadows of the forest, where an indistinct, massive blob slowly shuffled forward into the light.

A four-legged beast, no, a demon, emerged from the trees, bearing a terrifying appearance that could shake even the most courageous of men to their core.

Lokus took a single step back, and the demon lunged forward.