Obsodian Masks

A rusted tea stall sits forgotten at the edge of Quorva's southern district, where the cobbled roads split and spill into dirt. The air carries the sour stench of rotted offerings, piled beneath shrines no one tends anymore. Not even the desperate pretend to pray.

This part of the city used to sing — bells, laughter, haggling voices in half a dozen tongues. Now it whispers, low and wrong. The god Quorix had descended that morning, cloaked in celestial pomp and flanked by smoke-born priests.

And when he left?

The fear stayed.

RIO SITS ALONE.

A chipped clay mug sits before him, untouched, its contents still warm — though no one had seen him order anything. He's wrapped in thick, sun-bleached robes, the kind worn to survive deserts where the wind carves bone. A black mask veils his face. Smooth obsidian, cracked once across the cheek like a scar no one speaks of.

He leans into shadow.

He watches the city.

The tension here isn't loud — not yet. But it builds beneath the skin of things. Like the moment before a fever breaks. People scurry quieter now, keep their heads down. Doors close early. Markets shorten hours. Even the birds fly wider circles over the temples.

"I've never understood why people kneel to gods. Even less why they call it faith."

"What do you call it, when you offer up your own blood to something that never bled for you?"

"This city's already a corpse. Just doesn't know it's been eaten yet."

"When it falls — and it will — that's when I move."

His hand rests lightly over the mug. Steam curls up and disappears into the gloom.

A breeze slithers through the narrow alleyway. He doesn't react. But something in his posture tightens.

He smells it.

First copper. Then smoke. Then that distinct, poisonous scent of burning oil soaked into cloth.

Charred hunger.

He exhales once, shallow and sharp.

The world begins to fold inward.

Color bleeds out of the air. The mug in front of him becomes a dull grayscale. The alley grays. The sky above turns the color of a shuttered memory. Sound doesn't vanish — it flattens, as if pressed beneath water.

His vision no longer tracks light.

He sees emotion.

He hears intent.

Fear sharpens like vinegar in his nose. He tastes adrenaline in the dirt. The vibrations of the street drum through his bones — not sound, but pressure. Heat. Hunger.

The city breathes around him in spectral tones. People are outlined in smudges of emotional residue — some dim with apathy, others bright and sharp in panicked streaks.

Then something tears across the skyline.

It doesn't move like wind or light — it carves. A jagged pressure spiral, almost invisible to the living, twisting in slow motion through the upper air. To any ordinary eye, nothing yet exists.

But Rio is no ordinary man.

He narrows his gaze.

The spiral curves. It shifts. Then it locks.

A single, cruel trajectory. Not random. Directed.

South sector. Edge of the slums.

Impact in five seconds.

He doesn't need to move yet.

Then, faint and high—

A child's scream splits the air.

"MOM—!"

Rio's head lifts.

In his vision — the outline of a small figure, fear bleeding off her in waves of silver. She's darting through alley gaps, barefoot, holding something limp in her arms. A ragged bear, missing one ear. Her aura flickers with every step — terrified, desperate, too fast, and far too close to the blast path.

"Small."

"One second more and she won't even leave ash."

He doesn't run.

He doesn't leap.

He vanishes from time.

The mug on the table trembles as if flinching.

The dust at his feet coils upward into spirals, then collapses.

The sound of the world pulls away behind him — not silence, but absence, as if the moment he'd been sitting in simply stopped being real.

The girl stumbles through a broken street, crying out again, voice ragged from smoke.

Her stuffed bear bounces in her grip, dragging mud. She doesn't see what's in the sky above her.

But Rio does.

To him, it isn't fire.

It's hunger made form — a crimson and gold spiral, bending physics as it descends, heat yawning open like a beast with no tongue, only appetite.

It curls downward, fixated, attracted to her fear like flies to fresh blood.

He lands in front of her without a sound.

He's nothing more than a shadow at first. And for a moment, everything stills.

The girl stops.

The bear drops.

And in the sky, the spiral uncoils — furious, unnatural, precise.

She reaches for her toy. 

He lunges.

Faster than instinct. Faster than reason.

He grabs her collar, pivots in mid-air, rolls with her wrapped in his cloak just as the explosion swallows the ruin behind them.

The sound returns as a roar.

Ash bursts outward in thick waves. The ground fractures. Heat races in all directions — a tidal wave of warping air. But Rio's aura detonates outward, a violent ripple of force and presence.

Crimson pulses throb along the black veins of his arms as his Soel floods his body. Hunger, ancient and bottomless, gnashes beneath his skin — not to consume the girl, but to shield her.

The blast fades.

Ash swirls where flame once roared. Silence falls again — but not peace. Not quiet. Just the breath held between tragedies.

Rio straightens, cloak brushing ash off his shoulder. The girl clings to him, still trembling, eyes red and wide.

Then she lets go.

She doesn't speak. She doesn't need to.

Her eyes glance upward — not at the sky, but into the alley to their right.

There, perched awkwardly atop a shattered crate, half-buried in dust and gravel, lies the bear.

It didn't burn.

It flew — caught in the concussive force and flung down the alley. One ear dangles by a thread, its stitched eye missing. But it's whole.

Alive, in the way that children's things are.

The girl's breath catches.

Rio follows her gaze, then walks to it. He crouches, lifts it carefully. For a second, he just stares at it — the dirt, the broken seams, the memory it carries.

Then he walks back.

Kneels.

Hands it to her.

She grips it tight, presses her face into it, says nothing.

Rio gently settles her beneath the broken shrine once more. His cloak still draped over her like a second skin.

RIO (softly)

"Stay out of the sky. It's hunting shadows."

No answer. Just her quiet, exhausted breathing.

He turns.

And as he does — his wrist buzzes once. A faint vibration under the bandages wrapped around his arm.

He pulls the cloth back.

There, fastened to his skin by wire-thin anchors, is a crude, rune-scored glass screen — an ancient model of communicator tech, half Soel-coded, half scavenged machine. He taps the edge once.

A message flashes on the screen. No sender ID. No signal trace. Just words, flickering in jagged white:

"All the pieces are here.

The game's already begun.

Come to the place with no sky."

He stares at it for only a moment.

Then vanishes again.

There are places even the gods seem to forget.

Beneath the southern spires of Quorva, where the buildings lean like drunk old men, one alley runs colder than the rest. Its walls are covered in black mold and rusted prayer-markings. No lanterns. No voices. No windows.

Just him. And the shadow waiting at the far end.

Rio approaches slowly.

The figure doesn't flinch.

Cloaked in midnight cloth, face obscured by a veil of mirrored glass, the stranger leans lazily against the wall as if they'd been expecting him for days. Their voice cuts the stillness like a whisper too close to the ear.

STRANGER

"You came. Thought you'd wait longer."

RIO

"I don't move until it matters."

The stranger tilts their head — something between approval and calculation.

STRANGER

"Good. You'll need that instinct. Might be the only thing that keeps you alive."

Rio says nothing — still as steel beneath his robe, obsidian mask catching no light.

The stranger gestures behind them — to a corroded sewer gate half-buried in moss and rubble. Faint carvings of forgotten scripture run along the stone.

STRANGER

"Beneath the cathedral… there's a vault. Not on any pilgrim's map. A prison built from Soel and sanctified scripture."

RIO

"Criminals?"

STRANGER

"Once. Not anymore. Quorix repurposed it."

They take a step closer. Their voice lowers.

STRANGER (cont'd)

"They call it sanctified confinement. But it's a farm. A harvest ground. Some are unstable by birth. Others… were cut from something far worse."

Rio's gaze sharpens behind the mask. The stranger nods, like they expected that reaction.

STRANGER

"The Shadow Walker. I know you've heard the name."

Rio doesn't respond — but his silence speaks enough.

STRANGER (cont'd)

"He broke into the cathedral. Killed the high priest. That was loud enough. But what matters is what he took."

A pause.

STRANGER (soft)

"The forbidden fruit. The offerings. Gone."

Rio finally speaks.

RIO

"Why tell me?"

The stranger leans off the wall. Their mirrored veil flashes with a hint of streetlight, like a blink that isn't quite human. Their voice drops again — nearly reverent. Nearly afraid.

STRANGER

"Because he didn't run. Didn't hide. He left his mark."

"He spilled priest-blood on consecrated ground. Took what was never meant to be touched."

(Pause)

"The god's not furious because of blasphemy."

They step closer. A breath away.

STRANGER (cont'd)

"He's afraid."

Silence swells between them. The kind that weighs more than words.

Then:

STRANGER

"Whoever this is… they're not looking to escape."

RIO

"What do they want?"

The stranger turns, walking toward the dark mouth of the sewer gate.

without turning

"To make a statement. One loud enough to crack stone. Loud enough the gods can't ignore it."

They vanish into shadow before Rio can ask more — leaving only dust, damp air, and the scent of rust behind.

Rio stares at the gate.

Then steps forward.

Toward the underground.

Toward the place with no sky.

BOOOOOOONG.

The second bell tolls — signaling the second sacrifice.