Unraveling

The resounding cry of both Zayne and the female guard echoed across the valley, a piercing note of clarity in the thickening tension. For a fleeting second, there was a stillness—an illusion of time stretching, allowing those present to grasp the weight of their proclamation. But reality was not so kind. What felt like a minute to Zayne was, in truth, a mere instant, and the world took their joint declaration as an invitation to unleash its fury.

The cracks littering the mountain, once mere glowing fissures of orange and red, ruptured with a deafening roar. The earth itself seemed to bellow in rage as molten fire burst forth, cascading in violent arcs, searing the night air. A wave of unbearable heat swallowed the valley, turning the once crisp and cool cavernous pass into a blistering inferno. The air thickened, tainted with the acrid scent of sulfur and the stifling choke of smoke. It clawed at their lungs, stealing their breath, replacing it with the sickening burn of scorched earth.

The lead guard did not hesitate. Her voice, sharp and commanding, sliced through the rising panic as she barked orders.

"Abandon your chest plates! Drop any weapon that forces you to grip metal! Now!"

The guards, despite their initial shock, did not falter. The clang of armor striking stone rang out as they swiftly discarded the metal that now threatened to cook them alive. Weapons that could no longer be held were thrown aside, their steel hilts glowing with the intense heat radiating through the valley.

But the prisoners—many of whom had no grasp of what had been declared—were slower to react. At first, confusion held them frozen in place, their minds struggling to piece together the escalating nightmare around them.

But then, they saw the guards move. They saw the panic in their eyes, the urgency in their actions. That primal survival instinct, long dulled by imprisonment and resignation, awoke in them like a beast prodded from slumber.

The valley erupted in chaos. Some prisoners stumbled back, desperate to move but shackled by the weight of their chains. Others collapsed entirely, overtaken by heat or suffocated by panic.

The noble boy, Dayne, wide-eyed and trembling, was yanked forward by the prisoner ahead of him, his body slack with terror. He tripped, falling hard against the scorched stone, only for Tamir to rush forward, gripping his arm in a frantic attempt to haul him up.

Zayne observed it all, his once-languid demeanor dissolving into something far more rigid—calculating. The realization struck him like a hammer.

How could I have been so blind?

The signs had been there.

The shifting landscape. The random rising of temperature. The subtle warping of their surroundings.

This wasn't sudden at all.

He had been warned about the signs of an Unraveling before, and yet he had ignored them.

But why?

What the hell got into me to forget something this important?

The ground beneath him trembled violently, cutting off his spiraling thoughts. His gaze snapped upward, and what he saw solidified the grim reality of their situation.

The mountains were splitting apart.

Jagged lines of molten rock cut through the stone, widening with each passing second. Sections of the mountainsides erupted violently, sending torrents of lava cascading downward like fiery waterfalls, their crimson glow illuminating the nightmarish landscape. The very air shimmered with heat, twisting their vision into a feverish mirage.

Zayne wasn't the only one to take notice. The female guard's eyes swept over the scene, her sharp mind already forming a plan amidst the chaos. She turned, voice booming over the cacophony.

"We move! NOW! The valley is our only path forward—if we don't reach the end before the lava does, we're all dead!"

Another tremor rocked the ground, and the prisoners screamed as the chains between them rattled with the force of the quakes.

The guard continued, wasting no time. "Get the weaker prisoners up! If you can't run, prepare to reign them to the beasts in my crystals! We don't have time for hesitation!"

Zayne's fists clenched. This was no longer a march through the valley.

This was a race against their impending doom.

The guards immediately sprang into action, their discipline overriding any momentary hesitation. Moving with precision, they rushed to the prisoners who had already collapsed from the unbearable heat and thickening air.

Though the sheer number of unconscious bodies was daunting, they did not waver. Each reached for a device on their belts, activating it with a sharp click. Instantly, the chains binding the prisoners to each other expanded, giving them more length to maneuver. It was clear now: they were preparing for an escape—whether the prisoners could keep up or not was of little concern.

The lead female guard wasted no time, swiftly tossing five glowing blue crystals into the air.

As if answering a silent command, the crystals exploded in a burst of light, revealing five monstrous beasts shackled in wire-carved metal. The creatures, each standing at least eight feet tall at the shoulder, had powerful, sinewy frames built for speed and endurance. Their eyes glowed an eerie cerulean hue, their shackles humming with restrained energy.

Without a word, the guards moved in unison, looping the excess chain around the creatures' necks, fastening them securely as if they were warhorses preparing to charge into battle.

The female guard mounted the largest beast, a towering behemoth of muscle and fury, and barked a single command: "Charge!"

With a deafening roar, the beasts surged forward, dragging the prisoners along like ragdolls caught in a tidal wave. The force was immediate, brutal. The ground was unrelenting, its jagged rocks and coarse sand raking flesh from bone. Screams of agony filled the air as prisoners felt their skin torn open, blood painting their path in streaks of crimson.

Some managed to twist their bodies instinctively, trying to shield themselves, but most were left at the mercy of the unforgiving terrain.

The noble brat, who had just managed to scramble to his feet, had no time to react before his chains yanked him forward. His face slammed into the ground with a sickening crunch, his scream muffled by dirt and gravel. Tamir, by sheer luck or divine providence, had just barely managed to stay upright before he was forced into a desperate sprint to keep from being dragged.

Zayne, however, reacted with sharper instincts. As the chains pulled him forward, he glanced behind him and saw the old woman right in his path. Gritting his teeth, he twisted his body mid-motion, raising his arms so that the chains would yank him onto his back rather than his front. The maneuver worked; his back took the brunt of the impact, and the old woman was dragged onto his knees instead of smashing face-first into the ground.

The convoy thundered through the valley, their speed unrelenting. The heat was no longer just an oppressive force—it was a living entity, clawing at their lungs and setting their skin ablaze.

Lava now oozed down the mountainsides with horrifying speed, cutting off potential escape routes and forcing the guards to navigate through an ever-changing death trap. The terrain itself was shifting; where solid ground once stood, molten rock would suddenly materialize, searing through the fabric of reality as the Unraveling continued its chaotic spread.

One prisoner, already struggling to breathe, barely had time to register the shift before a glowing patch of lava appeared right in front of him. A single moment of misfortune—his scream was cut short as his body was instantly engulfed in searing heat. The unlucky soul, positioned at the very end of the chain, was incinerated before his ashes even hit the ground. His absence was barely noticed amidst the chaos, his death just another casualty of the Unraveling's ruthless advance.

As if the world itself had lost all sense of stability, rainbow-colored letters began appearing in the air, shimmering and shifting in incomprehensible patterns. Hundreds at first, then thousands, the numbers growing exponentially with every passing second. They swirled around like ghostly apparitions, flickering between visibility and nonexistence. Most of the prisoners were too consumed by pain and terror to notice them, their focus solely on survival. Even the guards, trained as they were, paid them no mind, their priority being the immediate crisis at hand.

But Zayne noticed.

Despite the agony coursing through his body, despite the scorching heat pressing against his skin, despite the sheer insanity unfolding around him, his gaze locked onto the letters. There was something familiar about them, something that gnawed at the edges of his mind.

It was just any random Unraveling.

It was something more.

Zayne's back was being flayed open with every brutal second of the mad dash, the coarse terrain below him raking away at his flesh like a cruel grater.

He gritted his teeth, eyes stinging with sweat and dust, but even through the pain, his mind was working. He could endure this, but the others? The prisoners being dragged alongside him were frail, malnourished, broken in body long before this moment.

He craned his neck as best as he could to glance around. The haughty noble boy, whose arrogance had been boundless before, was now nothing more than a bloodied, flailing corpse-in-the-making, his face a raw mess as it was ground against the rocky surface. The blood left a stark crimson trail behind him, a morbid signature of his suffering. Would he even have a face after this? Zayne almost chuckled at the thought, if not for the agony clawing at his own body.

Then there was Tamir. Somehow, against all reason, the servant was not being dragged in the same horrific manner. He had found an odd, desperate rhythm—his body airborne for brief moments before his feet barely caught the ground, keeping him from being utterly shredded.

It was almost unnatural, his endurance and adaptability standing out in the carnage. Zayne filed the observation away for later. There was more to Tamir than just blind loyalty; that much was obvious.

His thoughts were violently interrupted when he noticed a dark shape above him. His instincts screamed, and in an instant, he curled his legs toward his stomach just as a massive boulder crashed down with earth-shattering force.

The ground quaked beneath it, and Zayne only barely avoided having his lower half crushed. But his momentary relief was gutted when he realized who had been in the boulder's path. The old woman. She had been right where his legs had been seconds ago. Now, she was nothing more than a crimson stain beneath the stone, her frail body utterly obliterated in an instant.

Zayne felt the sudden jerk as the chains linking him to the others snapped from the impact, sending those further down the line tumbling into the distance, lost in the chaos. He stared for a second, watching as their bodies faded into the distance. "Well… at least I tried," he muttered, shaking his head before refocusing on what was ahead.

Through his raw, burning vision, he saw it—the end of the valley. The exit. It was so close now, an almost divine sight amidst the carnage. A surge of relief nearly overwhelmed him.

But then, something felt off.

The air shifted, thickened. The rainbow letters that had been swirling through the Unraveling grew in number, multiplying at an impossible rate. And then, before his eyes, the valley exit was no more.

It was replaced in an instant—a molten hill of searing rock, lava pouring down its sides like a cruel joke of fate. The one path to salvation was gone, transformed by the Unraveling into a wall of fiery death.

The realization hit all at once.

The lead female guard yanked hard on her beast's harness, trying desperately to stop the charge. The creatures, running at breakneck speed, stumbled and skidded against the burning earth, their massive bodies barely coming to a halt before they could slam into the molten blockade.

The prisoners, however, were not so lucky. The abrupt stop sent them flying forward in a violent chain reaction, bodies crashing into the ground with sickening thuds.

Zayne, despite everything, managed to twist his body mid-air, minimizing the impact as he hit the ground hard, rolling with the force to absorb some of the damage. Even then, the pain rattled through him like an earthquake, his already torn-up back screaming in agony.

As he forced himself onto one knee, he took in the scene around him.

Chaos.

The prisoners groaned in pain, many too broken to even rise. Some hadn't survived the impact, their bodies crumpled in unnatural ways. The guards, though better off, were clearly rattled, those with weapons gripping them with uncertainty. The beasts they rode let out uneasy growls, sensing the sheer wrongness of their situation.

And Zayne? He only had one thought running through his mind.

They were trapped.

The valley had become a death cage, and the Unraveling wasn't finished with them yet.