Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 48: Hymn of the Flayed Beyond

Chapter 48: Hymn of the Flayed Beyond

An entire month passed.

A month of relentless fighting, of hastily healed wounds, of silences broken only by the rumble of volcanoes or the crash of broken bones. We were so deep in the mountains’ bowels that the world itself seemed to no longer exist.

That day, I approached her.

Not to attack. Not to test her reflexes, nor to push her again.

She was sitting at the edge of a cliff, her gaze lost in the red vapors dancing below.

I stopped near her, just a few steps away.

— Lysara.

My voice was but a whisper.

She turned her head slightly. No word. No emotion.

— Can you disable your Shapeshifter skill... for both of us?

Silence.

— No one will find us here. It’s just us.

A suspended moment. Time seemed to freeze in the suffocating heat.

She moved, reaching her hand toward me.

Then, without a word, she agreed.

Our bodies began to transform, slowly, subtly, as if the world around us held its breath.

And then... we returned to our true forms.

It was like emerging from a long coma, painful, disorienting. I felt my body re-form around my bones, as if each fiber suddenly remembered what it once was. The echo of my lost humanity brushed my mind, just enough to remind me I was no longer human.

My pale skin, an unreal white, reappeared beneath the dark folds of my kimono. My vampire form, once again part of the world. A being both dead and alive, bathed in damned nobility.

Beside me, Lysara also revealed herself.

Her skin, as white as mine, seemed to glow under the red gleams of the lava flows. Large, ink-black horns once again adorned her skull, rising with eerie grace toward the veiled sky. Her tail, supple and muscular, swayed gently behind her like a living shadow. A being beyond this world, shaped to survive the unspeakable.

Our pale skins, our forgotten forms, clashed violently with our black kimonos.

It was a sight to behold.

Two white creatures in the heart of a red and black kingdom. Two anomalies in the middle of a mineral hell.

Maybe that was our truth. Not human. Not monster. Just... where we belonged.

Silent, still, we were finally ourselves.

No mask.

Just... us.

I reached out to her and gently stroked her head.

Her skin was cool, almost icy despite the ambient heat. strands slipped through my fingers like light mist.

— You’re doing very well, Lysara.

My voice was calm, steady, but heavy with thoughts.

— Don’t forget... it’s never too late to run. Always think of yourself.

She turned her eyes slightly toward me, her pupils strangely deep.

Then she answered, in her neutral, ever-lifeless tone:

— No.

One word. Nothing more. But I knew. I knew.

That refusal held a thousand things she didn’t say.

A silent vow.

An invisible bond.

A promise.

Then, as if to shatter this rare moment of intimacy between master and student...

A sound rose in the distance.

Faint, at first. Almost a stray whisper in the bowels of the mountains. A wet, irregular rustle... as if something were dragging a bloody carcass across jagged rocks.

The noise grew louder.

It was approaching, slowly but surely, in a cacophony of flayed flesh, shattering rocks, slapping and bursting membranes. The screeches of claws, of muscles sliding against living stone.

Then came the voices.

They wept.

They screamed.

Twisted, distorted cries, mixed with wails and broken laughter. An unholy choir, suffering, chained to the rhythm of footsteps so heavy they made the ground tremble, as if the mountain itself recoiled with each impact.

Each echo tore a gasp from the caverns.

A breath. A moan. A fractured, haunted breath.

And the moans... they sounded like prayers. But not ours.

Unholy prayers.

Whispered by something that should not exist.

Heading toward the source of the din, I climbed higher, circling a split peak to perch on a rocky outcrop overlooking the chasms. From there, I had a clear view of the narrow valley opening below.

And I saw it.

At first, I thought I recognized a reptilian creature. At least... what was left of one. Then a second. A third?

But no.

It wasn’t three beasts. It was one single thing.

And something was wrong.

Their bodies, once massive and powerful, were now twisted, fused, amalgamated in a chaos of blackened flesh and broken rock. You couldn’t tell where one beast began and the other ended. Three reptilian skulls were visible at the front... fused together in a single, grotesque, distended maw.

They all screamed.

Their vocal cords were gone, replaced by open tubes of flesh, pulsing, from which thick, scarlet vapor escaped, like the breath of cooked blood.

Their former shells, once compact, were now burst, torn by gaping wounds. From these oozing chasms sprouted incandescent flesh tentacles, writhing in the air. Jets of black flame rose in bursts, like the gasps of a sick volcano.

And then I realized there was something else in them.

Something... deeper.

A parasite, perhaps. A foreign entity. For from the fused spine, a form had burrowed, invisible but omnipresent. I couldn’t see it directly, but its effects were everywhere.

Oversized arms, sharp as blades, burst from its flanks at random intervals, slashing the air in a blind mutilation dance.

And at the center... near the ribcage, a vertical maw opened and closed slowly, like a second monstrous heart. It breathed. Panted. Thick, corrosive drool dripped from its walls, steaming, gnawing even the rock.

In some spots, a sort of translucent, foreign, almost organic skin partially covered the rock plates. It pulsed, undulated, as if it breathed in pain.

And the whole body...

The whole body was now a living pyre.

A mountain of melted flesh, twisted bone, cracked rock, and black fire.

Human-like silhouettes... no, perhaps survivors, were trapped in its mass. Frozen in pure agony. Some... still moved. Slightly. Hands scratching the inside of their flesh prison. Mouths moving without sound.

Their eyes, when they opened, did not beg for salvation. They no longer even sought death. They stared, uncomprehending, unresisting, as if their minds had been flayed, washed, forgotten. All that remained was a look: the memory of a being, trapped in a furnace-made body.

And that was my next opponent.

A horror born from a world that no longer wanted logic. Nor mercy.