Chapter 6 : Just Aki

Chapter 6

"Just Aki"

STAND BACK!" Aurelia barked, shoving Aki behind her with one steel-clad arm.

"Everyone—

Blades and glyphs, now!"

The room ignited. Steel hissed from sheaths. Sigils flared alive on arms, cheeks, chests. The Order agents surged into position.

But the Shadow Fiend was already here.

It crashed into the ceiling, limbs cracking backward like broken ink-brushed puppets. A dozen tendrils slithered from its back — twitching, jagged, twitching — hungry. Its head was nothing but a bleached skull smeared in wet black lines, as if someone had drawn its face in a nightmare and never finished it.

Aki's legs refused to move. His heartbeat thundered, drowning the screams.

The Wrathborn was on his knees, eyes bleeding, mouth open in wild ecstasy. "TRUE AUTHOR!! I HAVE PROVEN MY LOVE!! TAKE THIS GIFT! DO NOT TURN FROM ME—"

Then the Fiend lunged, and another Shadow Friend burst him whole.

The Wrathborn didn't scream. He just looked at us as his body disappeared, emerging a Shadow Fiend.

And then, all hell broke loose.

The air turned foul.

Then came the second one.

It dropped from the ceiling ,a malformed creature with twitching limbs and a throat that pulsed like it was choking on screams.

And the cellblock —

The cellblock was too small.

"GLYPHBOUND, HOLD THE FLANK! PULSEBEARERS FRONT!" Aurelia's voice cracked like lightning across a storm. Her blade flashed as she lunged through blood and stone. "CIVILIANS TO THE REAR—MOVE!"

Too late.

One of the younger Order agents froze when the first Fiend lunged. His blade clattered to the floor. The creature's hook tore into his chest and yanked, splitting him open like wet paper.

"NO!" a woman screamed. She charged in desperation. Her glyph ignited.

The Fiend snapped her spine with one arm and used the other to fling her remains into the wall. Her head rolled twice before stopping against a bench leg.

Blood pooled. Bone cracked. Screams began rising like a second storm.

"Fall back—!"

"We're boxed in—"

"There's too many—!"

Aurelia moved through the chaos like a god of war, cloak torn, sword soaked, emotionstone pulsing a furious red. She parried a tendril, spun, and decapitated a Fiend with one brutal upward slash. Black ichor splashed across her boots.

But the space , the space was fucking impossible.

The cellblock corridors weren't built for war. They were built for control. Too narrow, no height, no mobility. The Fiends were crawling across the ceiling now, dripping ink onto the faces of agents who couldn't even raise their weapons in time.

One Fiend pounced on a wounded soldier. Bit through his thigh. Tore the rest away.

A second rook stumbled backward, shaking, teeth chattering. "This isn't what they said, it's not like training—

They're —"

A tendril took off his face. Just his face.

Aurelia felt the heat rising, the deaths stacking, and then—

There.

The boy.

He was still frozen.

Curled up near the collapsed furniture, his hands braced against the floor, shaking like he was trying to hold himself together with bones alone. Blood soaked his wrists. His mouth was open, but no sound came.

Not fear. Not shock.

It was deeper.

He was drowning in something she couldn't see.

His face was pale. Eyes wide, dilated. His mouth twitched as if he were whispering to ghosts only he could see.

Aurelia's necklace glowed violently, her pulse skipped.

Guilt. Grief. Rage. Horror. Despair. All of it at once.

And then… he moved.

His fingers smeared across the floor in blood.

It wasn't spellwork. It wasn't glyphs. Just lines, frantic, broken scratches, like a child trying to draw through tears.

The air went still.

And then it buckled.

A rift opened. Not in space, in feeling. The world shuddered, like the Tapestry itself flinched from what was happening.

The boy's back arched. His scream tore free at last, not from his throat, but from something beneath it. It was raw. Damned. Inhuman.

Blood leaked from his nose and ears. His arms shook violently. And from the crude drawing etched in blood and dirt, a shape rose.

Not a summon.

Not a spell.

A beast.

Clawed, faceless, made of spiraled bone and tar-like ink, its ribcage writhing like it held screams inside.

It lunged.

The first Fiend didn't even react before it was torn apart, split in three by jagged jaws of manifested grief.

The creature didn't roar. It howled.

Aurelia staggered back. "That's not—"

Another blood-shape rose. Misshapen. Ripped through the floor like it was paper. It snarled as its limbs cracked into place.

And then she saw it. The way he moved. The ink. The blood. The draw.

Her gut dropped.

"That's an Inkshaper Path…" she breathed. "But no sigils. No anchor. No rite…"

"He tore it open. By himself."

The thought made her sick.

Nobody survived Raw Wovening. Not like this. Not clean. Not… sane.

Her sword arm trembled , not from exhaustion. From instinct.

This wasn't awakening.

It was birth through agony.

She looked back toward the boy.

He wasn't drawing anymore.

He was sitting in the blood, knees shaking, eyes glassy and wide. But he was looking at her now.

A tendril shot toward him from the left. Aurelia moved before she could think. Steel met black flesh mid-swing. She cut the limb in half and slammed her boot into the collapsing Fiend's throat.

Too many wounded. Too many rookies behind her.

And he was still glowing.

She gritted her teeth. "HEY! BOY! SNAP OUT OF IT!"

He blinked. Slowly. As if it took everything just to move his head.

And then, quietly - voice hoarse, broken — he said it.

"Aki."

A pause. Breath shallow. Eyes empty.

"Just Aki."

No bravado. No sarcasm.

Just... loss.

Like he was answering a question no one asked.

Like that was all he had left.

Because it was.

That was all he remembered of his name.

The rest had been drowned in blood... the blood of his friend.

Aurelia stood frozen, sword clenched.

There was something chilling about it. Not the way he said it, but the silence that followed.

Like the world paused, recognizing a name too fragile to bear the weight of everything it had seen.

The cellblock reeked of blood and burning glyphstone.

The screams hadn't stopped. They'd only changed pitch, from fury to fear, from war-cries to death-rattles. The air buzzed with a pressure that made it hard to breathe, like sorrow itself was thickening.

Aurelia's blade flicked crimson as she carved through another Shadow Fiend. It shrieked as it fell, tendrils thrashing like severed nerves. Ink and black fluid sprayed the corridor walls, joining the crimson that already streaked the stone.

"Hold formation!" she barked, kicking the corpse free of her sword. "Glyphbearers, reinforce the barrier!"

But too many were down.

The initial squad had thinned to barely a handful. Half-dead. Bleeding. A few still standing out of sheer terror and pride.

The beasts kept coming. The summoning had ended, she'd seen the Wrathborn's body burst like rotten fruit, but the abominations it left behind were multiplying like ruptured wounds in the world.

And in the middle of the madness, drawing with his own blood—

Aki.

Aurelia had never seen someone in that much pain still moving. His entire body was shaking, fingers curled as if forcing every line from his skin. Creatures clawed themselves free from the ground, pulled from the sketches he scrawled with hands too numb to feel anymore.

They weren't elegant.

They were raw, twitching masses of claw and shadow—snarling, barely stable. The magic reeked of instinct, not training. He wasn't commanding it—he was surviving it. And every beast born left something behind in him. A twitch. A flicker in the eyes.

"He's going to tear himself apart."

Aurelia took a hit to the shoulder, too focused on Aki. The Fiend's claws scraped along her pauldron, nearly tearing her cloak.

She spun on it.

"REND!" Her voice cracked with power.

The Verseweaver command exploded from her mouth like thunder, slicing the beast in half with invisible force. Its two halves hit the wall like sacks of wet bone.

Behind her, she heard boots stomping, reinforcements. Four more Order agents pushed in from the corridor.

"Barclay!" a voice called, Verran Kael, hard-eyed and calm in the storm. 

He was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark auburn hair slicked back and old scars running down the side of his neck like claw marks. His armor was battered but well-maintained, the crimson trim of the Order barely visible beneath splashes of black gore. Eyes like old steel—sharp, steady, and already grieving the outcome.

His greatblade shone with Wrath-channeling sigils.

"Hold the flank," Aurelia ordered. "Protect the wounded and that boy. He's—"

She didn't finish. Another Fiend lunged from the side wall. She ducked under its lunge, drove her blade into its gut, then shouted again:

"CLEAVE."

The Fiend's head twisted violently and tore free, flinging across the floor like a kicked melon.

Verran moved into place beside her without a word, hacking through the swarm like a machine of war. Blood sprayed his armor, soaked his arms. He grunted when another beast leapt from the ceiling, and with one upward swing, bisected it.

Still they came.

Lira Velst stumbled past the glyph wall, a tremor in her hand as she tried to stabilize the barrier. 

She couldn't have been older than nineteen. Short, wiry, freckles across her nose, with curly brown hair tucked under her cracked Order hood. Her hands bore the inkstains of glyph training, but her eyes were wide and too bright, like someone still waiting to wake from a nightmare.

"You okay?" Verran barked.

"I—I can still cast!" she said. But she was lying. Her hands shook too much.

A screech pierced the corridor. A massive Fiend dropped from the shadows—larger than the others, with split limbs and a spine that convulsed like it was choking.

It hit the ground between them.

Aurelia's cloak blew back. "That's the last one," she said. "It has to be."

"Then we kill it," Verran growled.

The Order charged.

Aurelia took point, her movements fluid, each strike an act of wrath and beauty. She dodged and countered, her Verseweaver spells enhancing every motion with surges of strength, her Pulsebearer aura flaring red-hot around her skin.

She cut off one of the Fiend's limbs. Verran slammed his blade into its gut. Lira threw a glyph at its head, missing, but it stunned the thing enough for Aurelia to leap and slice its throat.

It didn't die.

It roared, limbs regrowing in real time—raw ink and viscera pulsing from the wounds.

Then it grabbed Lira.

Aki's eyes locked on her as the Fiend's tendrils wrapped around the girl's waist.

He moved before he thought.

"NO!"

He drew a circle so violently his nail broke.

The beast that emerged this time wasn't animal.

It was a thing with antlers, a crown of bone, and an eyeless face dripping with gold ink. It screamed with a voice that wasn't his.

It tore the Fiend from Lira.

But not in time.

Lira's body hit the ground like a dropped doll. Her eyes blinked, once, then didn't blink again.

Aki dropped his sketching hand. His other hand tried to hold her body.

He saw her face—and for a moment, it wasn't Lira. It was Reya.

Aurelia saw him freeze. "Boy—no, don't—"

His face twisted. Pain. Anger. Guilt. All of it.

And then—the golden markings.

They began to bloom up the side of his face. From chin to cheekbone, crawling like ink turned to fire.

Aurelia swore under her breath. "Oh fuck."

"Barclay! What is that?!" one of the agents shouted.

She didn't take her eyes off him. "It's a Raw Wovening. The Tapestry just burned his goddamn soul into itself."

"Aki," she said, voice quieter now, more human. "You have to stop."

He wasn't listening.

He drew again.

Three creatures this time. One collapsed immediately. Another turned on its sibling. The third charged toward the last Shadow Fiend.

It crashed into the monster, snarling, cracking bones and tearing ink-flesh with terrifying abandon. Its body bent in wrong angles—too much power, no control. It fought with rage, not training.

Aki fell to his knees.

Aurelia moved, tore forward, cutting down two more lesser Fiends that had crawled in from behind.

"Verran—on your six!" she shouted.

Too late.

One of the Fiends slipped past the line. Grabbed Verran's leg. He swung. Missed.

Another lunged for his back.

"VER—!"

The scream was buried under the sound of his ribs breaking. The beast crushed him against the wall, then ripped his throat out.

His eyes stayed open, even after the blood stopped pumping.

Aurelia's jaw locked.

She cut through the bastard that killed him—no magic, just metal—and didn't stop cutting until its limbs were ribbons.

"FALL BACK!" she screamed.

Two remaining agents pulled out the wounded. Aki tried to stand. Couldn't.

The final Shadow Fiend, the massive one, was reeling. The last beast Aki had summoned was latched onto its spine, tearing, gnawing, until the room filled with that sound—the sound of tendons giving way.

The monster collapsed. Its head split on the stone. Black bile sprayed the ceiling.

And then, silence.

Aurelia stood in the middle of it.

Her blade shook in her hand. Her cloak was tattered. Her body was covered in blood—some hers, most not.

She turned.

Aki was on his knees. Breathing shallow.

His eyes stared at the wall, vacant, disoriented.

He whispered something.

Aurelia crouched next to him.

"What did you say?"

He blinked.

And in a voice that wasn't loud or heroic, just empty, he said:

"…Reya…"

Then he collapsed into her arms.

She caught him, barely. He was too light. Too cold.

Her fingers brushed the gold markings now etched into the side of his face.

Not just lines. Glyphs. Fractured script.

Like someone had tried to write truth into a boy's skin and burned half the story out.

One of the surviving agents approached, wide-eyed.

"Is he… what the hell is he?"

Aurelia stared at him. At the markings. At the blood. At the ink stains on the walls that wouldn't wash away.

"He's a Raw Wovener," she said. "Untrained. Unfiltered. Still alive."

She looked down at Aki's unconscious face.

"And by the Tapestry… that might be the scariest thing I've ever seen."

She stood, cradling him like a fallen weapon that hadn't yet chosen which side to turn on.

"Let's move."

No one said a word as they stepped over the bodies.

The hallway felt colder than before.

Like the battle hadn't ended, just gone quiet, waiting for the next scream.

Aurelia POV

The cellblock was silent.

Not peace. Not calm.

Just… silence.

The kind that comes when too much blood has been spilled to make room for breath.

Aurelia stood still, her blade hanging low in her grip, its edge dripping black and red into the cracked stone. One droplet at a time. Slow. Relentless.

Like the sounds of dying hadn't yet finished echoing.

The corridor smelled of sulfur and old iron. Walls smeared with gore. Limbs that hadn't fallen in the right direction. Ink splatters still pulsing faintly with residual emotion-magic. And beneath it all, the wet, copper sting of real blood. Human. Order.

Lira… Verran…

Aurelia didn't move until the others had gone ahead. Only two agents left from the squad. The rest were dead or too wounded to walk.

She glanced down.

Lira Velst lay crumpled beside the destroyed glyph wall, her eyes glassy. Her mouth slightly open. A spray of blood across her cheek, too light, too recent, had started to flake.

She hadn't screamed when it happened.

That made it worse.

Lira had tried. Gods, she'd tried to do her part. Too young. Too raw. But she'd thrown her glyph anyway, even when her hands were shaking like twigs in a storm.

This wasn't her failure. It was mine.

Aurelia knelt beside her, brushed a curl of dark hair from Lira's brow, and exhaled through her teeth.

"She was a fighter," came a voice behind her.

Aurelia didn't look. "They all were."

She turned, finally, to face what was left of Verran Kael.

His body had slumped against the blood-drenched wall, eyes still open. One of the beasts had torn through his throat so violently that his spine had cracked the stone behind him. His arms had been half-lifted when he fell, like he was still trying to protect someone.

Aurelia stepped over, dropped to a crouch, and ran a blood-soaked cloth across her face. Her fingers trembled, not from weakness, from rage. From the burning weight of every order badge she'd ever sworn to uphold.

Red streaks smeared across her cheek. It wasn't just monster blood anymore.

"You were the anchor," she thought. "You kept us from falling apart. And I let you die."

She looked away fast. If she stared too long, she might scream.

Behind her, Aki stirred.

Aurelia snapped around, her boots scraping the gore-slick floor. The boy had been placed on a folded cloak near the inner wall, away from the corpses, away from the ink-stained craters. Two surviving Order agents knelt beside him, one pressing linen against his mouth where he'd bitten through his tongue.

He was convulsing again.

Not violently, but in waves, his limbs twitching, eyes fluttering under closed lids. And the markings on the left side of his face… the golden glyphs… they pulsed now, slow and subtle, like a heartbeat.

"Is he stabilizing?" she asked.

"No. His temperature's dropping fast, and his pulse's a flicker. The glyphs are active, but inconsistent. They're… I don't know, Commander. They're not like ours."

"Because he didn't earn them," Aurelia murmured. "They burned themselves into him. That's not a Path. That's survival."

One of the agents blinked. "Can someone even survive a Raw Wovening like that?"

"They're not supposed to," she muttered.

They began moving the dead.

Verran was lifted last, by two agents who hadn't served beside him long enough to understand what a monument they were carrying. His blade was placed on his chest. His hand slipped from the hilt as they passed the corridor's threshold.

Lira was wrapped in her own cloak. Her glyph book fell open as she was lifted, revealing a half-finished sigil sketched in messy ink. She'd been trying to cast even in her final moments.

Aurelia took the book and slid it into her belt. Someone should remember the spell she never finished.

Aki groaned as they moved him.

He wasn't awake — not fully — but his body responded to touch. His arms jerked. His chest rose and fell in uneven lurches.

One of the agents glanced nervously at Aurelia. "Should we restrain him? Just in case he—"

"No," she said firmly. "He's not the threat."

"But those things he drew—"

"Weren't him," she cut in. "They were what he had to do."

They carried him carefully, step by step, until the glow of the outer hallway reached them, less blood here, less ink, but still echoes of screams in the walls.

Aurelia walked behind them, her hand never leaving the hilt of her sword.

Aki coughed once, a thin stream of blood at his lips.

Then, softly, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, he whispered something again.

"…Reya…"

Aurelia froze for a heartbeat.

Her hand tightened.

Not in suspicion. Not in fear.

In recognition.

That name…

It was etched into the way he breathed it. Not a word, a wound.

They reached the outer ward.

Healers rushed forward, but stopped when they saw the markings.

Golden glyphs on the skin weren't normal. They weren't safe.

They asked questions Aurelia didn't answer.

She gave them orders instead. "Stabilize him first. Ask questions later."

When they hesitated, she added: "Or I'll let him wake up again and draw your fucking lungs out of your chest."

That got them moving.

Aurelia stood alone at the corridor's mouth.

The smell of smoke had faded.

The ink was drying.

The weight hadn't.

She closed her eyes.

And for just a moment, just long enough to let it hurt, she let herself feel it.

The guilt. The failure. The fact that she had called the plays and her people had died anyway.

She wiped her face again, slower this time.

Her fingers trembled again. Not rage, this time.

Just grief.

I should've been better.

End of Chapter 6

Authors note:

So… yeah.

That wasn't a heroic battle. That was a f**king massacre.

Verran's blood is still on the walls. Lira's spellbook still lies open. And Aki?

He's convulsing with golden glyphs carved into his skin like trauma made flesh.

Aurelia's not okay. The Order's not okay.

I, the writer? Hydrating and pretending this isn't the first of many tragedies.

Welcome to Ecaria.

Where magic is emotion, grief is a weapon, and no one, not even "just Aki", walks away clean.

Chapter 7's waiting in the dark.

And it's not kinder.

-MangoKiller🥭