Chapter 2 (Part 2): Blood on the sand

Beyond Exilium's gates, darkness swallowed the horizon. Amid the howling winds and swirling sands, a single figure sprinted forward, plunging directly into the tempest.

Agito ran—straight into chaos. The world blurred around him, sand and darkness twisting into an endless spiral. His pulse thundered in his ears, muscles burned, but he pushed through it. The wind lashed his face, carrying blades of sand that bit into his skin. He clenched his teeth, spat the grit from his mouth, felt it grind against his tongue like broken glass. His vision burned. His breath scraped down his throat like smoke.

Everything fucking hurt, everything annoyed him.

Part of him wanted to stop, lie down, and let it all fade away.

"Come on, Agito, come on," he muttered under his breath, mocking himself. "People need saving. Gotta be the hero. Let's save everybody."

He snorted. Fury bubbled in his chest—not at the storm, not at the monsters—but at himself.

"Why the fuck are you still doing this?"

The wind carried something more than sand.

Screams.

Not wind-whistles. Not metal shifting in the heat.

Real screams.

Fear.

Death.

"Focus," Enma whispered inside him.

There you are again. Right when I start to feel something.

He snorted again.

"You're awfully chatty for a goddamn curse."

He took one more breath—and sprinted faster. Toward the flames. Toward the carnage. Toward war.

The air thickened with smoke and something worse—iron and rot. The sand beneath his boots was damp. Sticky. Red.

The nomad camp was chaos incarnate.

Fires blazed, casting long shadows over shattered barricades as smoke curled like claws through the sky. Somewhere amid the chaos, a woman screamed.

A Grinder pinned her to the dirt, claws raking across her forearm as she tried to shield her face. Her mouth opened in a silent, desperate plea. The beast raised its arm for the final blow—

And a shadow dropped from above.

Agito.

He came down from a half-collapsed wall like a blade of judgment. Gravity did the rest. His katana pierced the Grinder's skull with a sickening crack of shattering bone. Crimson sprayed across Agito's face. He didn't blink. Didn't pause.

Another flash.

Another beast lunging. Agito stepped—barely—a fraction of a second sooner, the incoming claw slicing past his ribs instead of through them. His katana arced upward, opening the monster's throat clean. It gargled, convulsed—and collapsed into the sand.

No time to breathe.

A third Grinder leapt. Agito twisted, drove his blade under its ribcage as it descended. Momentum carried the creature to its own death. The blade tore upward, splitting organs and spine. It hit the ground already dead. Scarlet splattered his boots.

His katana danced with lethal precision, guided purely by muscle memory.

Beneath the patch, something pulsed. Saw everything. Dodge. Slash. Bleed.

His body knew exactly what to do. His mind? It lagged far behind. His heart thundered. His arms shook. Fatigue crept in like frost. Every move was clean—but each one cost him.

And still, more came.

A sudden blur from the side. Too fast.

He wouldn't make it—

THUD.

The Grinder's body shattered in mid-air.

Korven's lance stood where the creature fell.

"You know I could've handled that," Agito muttered.

"I wasn't in the mood to gamble," Korven grunted, swinging his weapon through another beast.

They fought back to back, side by side. Agito's blade carved through tendon and sinew. Korven's lance crushed skulls like melons. Black blood sprayed in arcs, soaking the sand, but the swarm didn't thin. If anything, it grew.

Korven growled, stepping forward aggressively. His eyes flashed with focused fury.

"Enough of this shit."

"Sōzanpū!"[1]

Korven hurled his lance with practiced precision, the weapon spiraling fiercely through the Grinder swarm, slicing a brutal, clean line through bodies and limbs. The spinning lance tore through creatures effortlessly, returning to Korven's waiting hand with a magnetic hum.

Agito snorted lightly.

"Fancy."

Korven glanced back, lips twitching faintly.

"Your turn, hero."

Agito smirked slightly, eye narrowing sharply as another Grinder lunged toward him. He whispered softly:

"Jiretsuzan."[2]

Reality trembled. Time itself seemed to stutter and bend. In a blink, Agito moved—faster than sight, blade shimmering in distorted air. The Grinder froze mid-leap, confusion flickering briefly across its twisted features. An instant later, it collapsed neatly in half, Agito already past it as though he'd never moved.

Korven raised an eyebrow.

"Show-off."

Agito simply shrugged, smirk widening, blood dripping from his blade.

And then—he heard it.

A voice. Loud. Fanatical.

Standing in the shadow of the ruined tower, wind clawing at his robes, the traitor had arrived.

The sky above him bled.

Bled light.

Bled silence.

Beneath his feet, the corpses of Nomads steamed in the heat. Some fresh. Some still twitching. None worth saving.

Veyrath lowered to one knee and touched the dirt—red, black, rusted with ash.

He whispered softly.

"They never understood."

The blood responded. It always did. It pulsed beneath his hand, slow and steady—a second heartbeat that didn't belong to him.

Or maybe it did.

He smiled coldly. It didn't reach his eyes.

"They called me priest," he muttered bitterly.

"but I was always the offering."

Voices murmured inside his skull. Too many to count. Too many to name.

Some were his.

Some were not.

Drink.

Lead.

Burn.

The Noroi coiled through his body, wrapping around his nerves like living barbed wire.

He felt the others—the Grinders—crawling through the camp.

But they weren't listening.

Not all of them.

Not yet.

He climbed.

Step by step, until the metal scaffold groaned beneath his weight.

He rose above the flames. Above the chaos. Above the heresy.

He opened his arms wide to the bleeding sky.

"UNBELIEVERS! HERETICS!" he roared.

They turned.

There, above the madness—perched atop twisted metal—stood a man.

Tall, gaunt, with eyes blazing scarlet in the night. Around his hands, crimson tendrils twisted like snakes, pulsing hungrily.

The dead floated in the air behind him—limp Nomad bodies, suspended like broken marionettes.

Veyrath.

Agito's gut twisted.

The traitor had arrived.

"THEY REJECT OUR FUTURE!" Veyrath bellowed.

"MAKE THEM BLEED FOR IT!"

The entire camp froze. For a split second, even the Grinders hesitated.

A ripple.

Some of the beasts turned toward Veyrath. Others… kept tearing into corpses, as if deaf to his command.

Veyrath's stare hardened.

"Come on…"

One of the Grinders lunged—straight at him.

He didn't flinch. Merely raised a hand. Scarlet energy swirled.

"Ketsudan."[3]

A compressed sphere of crimson burst from his palm, piercing the Grinder's skull like a sniper round. The creature dropped with a whimpering thud.

Veyrath glanced down at the corpse with disdain.

"Mindless filth."

He raised both arms once more.

"THE REST OF YOU—KILL THEM ALL!"

This time—they obeyed.

[1] Lancewind Severance

[2] Chrono Slash

[3] Blood Bullet