The sun rose, but its light felt like a half-formed thought—unwilling to fully manifest. The horizon was but a faint suggestion, a feeble glow barely reaching the edges of the camp. The shadows, still deep and pervasive, clung to the earth like forgotten memories. Drevan's absence gnawed at them, but there was something worse. Something deeper than loss. Something that had begun to slither into the very fabric of reality.
Erasmus stood at the edge of the camp, hands clasped behind his back. His gaze was not on the horizon but through it, tracing the faintest, most delicate ripples in the air. He could feel them—tremors beneath the surface of existence. A distortion. A sickness.
The camp itself was shifting. The men moved with a growing unease, their bodies not yet attuned to the world they had entered. Even the trees—dark sentinels at the camp's edge—felt wrong, watching with too much silence. No one spoke of it, but every knight's whisper carried the weight of suspicion.
Erasmus could see it all: the cracks. The ones that whispered to him in ways no one else could hear. They bent the edges of time and memory, unraveling threads too delicate for the untrained eye to notice.
The fire, once a comforting hearth, now cast flickering shadows that danced like ghosts, trembling in the distorted air. Erasmus didn't need to see Drevan's absence to feel it. He had felt it the moment Drevan was erased—not lost, not gone—but erased. His name, his very presence, had been scrubbed from existence like a smudge on a page.
But there was something more.
Erasmus closed his eyes, allowing his mind to drift into the realm of perception. Threads of consciousness wove through the air, connecting everyone around him. Every man, every soul, bound to the world by the fragile bonds of memory and identity. There, at the edge of the pattern—a thread was missing. Not gone, but rewritten. Erased.
"Not yet," he murmured to himself, a shiver running through him. The voice of the entity from the night before still echoed in his mind. The realization hit him: this was no trial. It was deliberate.
A rustle broke his concentration as Riven stepped forward, his features tight with frustration. "We need to find Drevan," he said, voice low and urgent. "Something's wrong. People are... disappearing."
The others murmured their agreement, fear pooling in their eyes. Erasmus could feel it—their fear was sharp, but it wasn't the kind that would save them. Fear would drive them to madness before it ever led them to answers.
Erasmus remained still, his gaze never leaving the shifting shadows. He could feel it, deep in his bones—an alien presence watching from beyond the veil. Something far older than them, stretching toward them with fingers not meant to touch this world.
"How long do we have?" Jory's voice was tight, his hand resting uneasily on his sword.
Erasmus tilted his head, the weight of his words settling into the air. "How long do you think we have?" he asked softly.
Jory didn't answer. He didn't need to.
The camp fell silent, and for a moment, the world held its breath. They could feel it too—the creeping distortion in the air, the slow collapse of reality. Erasmus knew it wasn't just Drevan who was gone. It was the world itself, slowly unraveling, and they were helpless to stop it.
Riven's fist clenched at his side, his eyes scanning the camp like a man searching for an escape that wasn't there. "We need to move," he urged. "We can't stay here. We'll be sitting ducks."
"No," Erasmus interrupted, his voice calm and steady. "We stay. We wait. There's something we're missing."
The knights exchanged glances, uncertainty flickering in their eyes. But Riven, for all his strength, did not argue. Erasmus was the enigma, the one who saw what they could not. The one who always knew.
Erasmus turned his gaze back to the fire, watching the embers shift and smolder. The absence of Drevan was only the beginning. Erasmus had felt the ripples when the man was erased. But there was more—something deeper, more insidious. The truth was slipping through their fingers, and they were too slow to catch it.
"We need to be careful," Erasmus said, his voice low, each word weighted with meaning. "What's happening here isn't random. Someone—or something—is orchestrating it."
Riven's eyes narrowed, his expression unreadable. He knew better than to dismiss Erasmus' words. They all did now.
Erasmus' gaze flicked to the dark forest. A cold wind whispered through the trees. "And I don't think we're meant to survive this," he added, his words chilling in their finality.
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating, as though the very air had thickened with the weight of his prediction. They had no response. None could argue. They were all caught in a web they couldn't see, spun by hands beyond their understanding.
But Erasmus was not helpless. Not anymore.
A pull—a tug—had begun to stir within him. Power. The Weight of Judgment, raw and untamed, pulsed beneath his skin, growing with every moment of uncertainty. Erasmus smiled faintly. Fear, uncertainty—they were his tools now. He would shape them into something more. He would bend this fractured reality to his will.
Behind him, the knights whispered, unease spreading through them like a sickness. But Erasmus knew they were looking to him now, not as a stranger, but as the answer. The only answer.
The fire crackled once more, its last breath fading into silence. And then, with a final shudder, it died. The world, for a moment, held its breath.
—
As the tension in the air began to dissipate, Erasmus' gaze shifted to another matter. His thoughts turned toward Rei. The young man had been absent for most of the day, disappearing into the forest each evening.
He asked, his tone calculated and nonchalant, "Speaking of missing people, where does Rei go every day?"
The question cut through the silence with precision. The group's attention snapped to him, but no one spoke immediately. After a long pause, it was Riven who spoke up, his voice flat with suspicion.
"Rei goes off into the forest," he said, eyes narrowing slightly as he studied Erasmus. "He says he's looking for missing people, but who knows what he's really doing out there?"
The knights and squires murmured among themselves, each offering their own half-hearted guesses, but none seemed truly convinced by Rei's story.
Riven's gaze lingered on Erasmus, unreadable, sharp. "And you? What do you believe?"
Erasmus met his gaze, his expression unwavering. He knew exactly what was happening out there in the woods. He had his suspicions about Rei's true intentions, but there was no need to reveal them—not yet. Not until he had more pieces to the puzzle.
"I believe in survival," Erasmus said softly, his voice carrying the weight of something darker. "And in the end, survival is all that matters."
The group fell silent again, unsure whether to push further or let the conversation die. Erasmus allowed the pause to stretch, knowing that every word spoken in this camp, every action taken, carried with it the weight of a reality slowly slipping away.
And in the darkness beyond the camp, Rei's search continued.