Chapter.5 Fragmentam The God That Bled
There was no wind.
No sound.
Only silence — so deep, so complete, that it felt like the realm itself was holding its breath.
Ethan lay sprawled across a jagged slab of stone, his fingers twitching against its cold surface. His chest rose and fell rapidly, but his breaths felt shallow. Thin. As if the air didn't want to enter his lungs. His body trembled — not from pain, not from fear, but from something deeper. A wrongness he couldn't name.
The Rift was alive.
And it knew he was here.
Above him, the sky convulsed — a mass of churning black and crimson clouds that twisted in unnatural patterns. Gravity shifted with each pulse. Stone debris floated, then dropped again. The ground beneath his back hummed like a dying heartbeat.
He sat up slowly, his vision swimming. The golden-blue stripes along his arms were active, glowing faintly beneath the skin like smoldering veins. They felt… tighter now. Like they were wrapping around his soul.
"Where… where the hell am I?"
He didn't remember falling. Only the collapse. Emilia screaming. Then the light no, the dark. And now—
The pull.
Not a physical one, but something spiritual. Ancient. It tugged at the base of his spine, behind his eyes, inside his blood.
He stood, barely, and followed it.
The terrain was impossible — floating chunks of broken marble and obsidian architecture suspended in void, stitched together by invisible pathways. Cracks leaked streams of dying mana, bleeding like open wounds across stone.
Time did not move forward here. It folded.
He didn't walk far before he saw it.
---
It was a throne.
Black. Colossal. Cracked down the middle like it had tried to contain something too big, and failed. Chained to it was a body — not quite living, but not at peace either.
It was Aetherion.
Even in decay, even with ribs exposed and half the skull caved in, the corpse radiated pressure. One of its eyes was missing. The other had gone milky white. Horns broken. Crown shattered. Every inch of it spoke of suffering, of betrayal, of power too sacred to die cleanly.
And Ethan's heart began to race.
"I've seen this face before…
I just know it."
He tried to reach out to it.
The stripes on his body suddenly pulsed, hard — a blinding flash beneath his skin. He cried out, staggering forward, clutching his chest. His breath hitched. His vision blurred with static.
And then—
Visions.
Aetherion roaring in agony as his followers pierced his flesh with silver pikes.
A spark — glowing, trembling — breaking free from his dying form.
A bleeding Rift howling open over a crying infant.
That spark entering Ethan's body, unnoticed, during a Bleeding Season long ago.
"No…" he whispered.
"I'm… is this?"
He fell to his knees.
Aetherion's dead eye twitched.
The Rift reacted like a cornered beast.
---
Everything screamed at once.
The sky tore open above him. Chains snapped from the throne, whipping violently in the air. The void itself growled — deep and echoing — and the stone beneath Ethan's feet cracked violently.
The realm began to collapse.
"What is going on damit?!"
But the Rift didn't answer in words. It answered in judgment.
A spiraling red-black void opened behind him. The gravitational pull hit instantly, yanking at his body, his bones, his soul. Tendrils of unstable energy wrapped around his waist and shoulders, dragging him upward.
He fought it — teeth gritted, muscles straining — but the stripes across his skin flickered erratically, like they were trying to leave him.
"Let me go! I'm not—"
"You're not ready," something whispered through the collapse. "But you carry what belongs to us."
Then Ethan screamed — and the world swallowed him whole.
---
He landed hard. Stone and dirt exploded beneath him.
He gasped, coughing violently, blinking against bright amber light.
This sky was new — copper-orange, sun-stained, too bright. The air was dry, laced with ash. Jagged cliffs surrounded him, towering like crooked teeth.
The Rift was gone.
And for a moment… there was peace.
Then the bush behind him rustled.
A low growl slithered into the air.
Ethan turned his head, slowly. His limbs were numb. His vision hadn't recovered. But in the edge of his sight he saw something.
Something watching.
It emerged from the rocks like a nightmare on muscle and bone. A reptilian beast, tall as a warhorse but hunched like a predator. Its scales shimmered with a wet, black sheen. Two tails lashed the air behind it. Horns curled around its jaws. Its tongue forked — tasting Ethan's scent.
Its eyes locked onto him — glowing yellow and hungry.
"No…your kidding me" Ethan whispered in disbelief.
It charged.
He rolled just in time — barely dodging claws that tore into the dirt where his head had been. The beast roared, acidic drool splattering the rocks.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" he shouted, forcing himself to his feet and running.
His legs screamed. His ribs burned. But adrenaline screamed louder.
The beast gained fast.
Ethan jumped a log, then dove behind a boulder. The creature slammed into it — and him — shattering it on impact. His shoulder cracked against stone. Blood smeared the ground.
" I'm going to die"
He could barely move. The beast pinned him down, its jaws yawning open above his neck, steam rising off its fangs.
"Please—please—not like this"
The stripes on his body burned hotter. They began to spread, forming new lines across his chest, his legs, his back. His eyes glowed faintly.
Then—
Something ignited.
Ethan roared and pushed.
The air cracked.
The beast was launched backwards as if hit by a battering ram, crashing into a dead tree and snapping it in half. Splinters flew. The ground trembled.
Ethan gasped for air. His hands were smoking. Raw mana leaked from his palms in curling wisps of gold and blue.
"What… was that?"
But the beast wasn't done.
It staggered up — ribs broken, bleeding and yet it charged again, wild with rage.
A sudden gust screamed through the valley.
And then — wind exploded through the beast's chest.
It froze mid-step. A hole the size of a fist was now punched through its torso.
It wheezed.
It turned.
Ethan looked too.
She stood on a hill of stone, cloak whipping in the wind.
---
A woman. Mid-to-late twenties. Silver hair bound tight, loose strands fluttering around a stern, striking face. Dark bronze skin marked by pale wind tattoos that shimmered like living script. Her eyes — emerald green with veins of light spiraling in the iris.
She didn't blink.
She didn't hesitate.
She raised her arm and grasped the air itself, pulling back as if stringing a bow.
"Wind blades!," she commanded.
A ripple tore the air. Transparent blades formed and launched.
They tore through the beast — slicing its legs, ripping its belly, impaling its skull. Flesh and blood sprayed across the clearing. Bones snapped. The creature collapsed mid-scream, skidding to a twitching halt.
It didn't move again.
---
Ethan dropped to his knees.
His vision blurry.
The woman rushed down the slope. Her footsteps were light, practiced, deadly.
She reached him. Grabbed his shoulders.
"Hey! ...Are you hurt?! Talk to me!"
Ethan blinked, mouth moving, but no sound came out. The world slowed. Her voice warped — muffled and far away.
"Too much. I can't. Not again"
His vision darkened.
And then he fell.He lost consciousness.A few hours had gone by and he slowly started to wake up.
Warm sheets. A soft surface. The scent of herbs.
Ethan stirred. Light hit his eyes — soft and unfamiliar.
A ceiling. Wooden. Painted white.
He sat up too fast. Pain shot through his ribs. He gasped, clutching his side.
A nearby girl — a maid — turned, startled. She dropped a folded towel.
"He's awake! He's awake!" she cried, darting out the door.
Moments later, footsteps pounded the hall.
The door burst open. Seven people entered guards, an older man in robes, a tall woman in armor.
And her.
The wind-wielder.
Ethan stared at them all, wide-eyed.
His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper.
"Who… are you people?"
"Where am I?"
"And how… did I get here?"