Where time fractures, names twist, and the unseen hungers.
—
The firelight flickered, struggling to hold its ground against the encroaching blackness. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and old blood, a taste of things that had gone horribly wrong. It wasn't just the night that felt wrong—it was everything. The weight of it pressed down on them, suffocating the hope of safety that once clung to their bones.
Sir Aldric was already dead.
The others hadn't seen it yet, but Erasmus had. He always saw things before they happened. A subtle shift in the air—a crackle of time breaking under unseen pressure. It wasn't always immediate, but the signs were there, hanging in the silence.
Aldric stood upright, poised as if in mid-combat, his sword raised. His expression was one of determination, frozen in a moment that felt both eternal and fleeting.
Until his head was gone.
One moment, the knight had a face—eyes wide in confusion. The next, it was gone. The clean, surgical slice across his neck left no blood, no mess. It was as if his skin had simply forgotten how to exist there.
The head dropped.
Thud.
But it didn't roll. It vanished before it could touch the earth, fading out like a memory erased before it could be fully formed. Aldric's body stood frozen for a second longer, waiting. As if the world itself was frozen, waiting for someone to shout a command.
And then—his body collapsed inward.
The armor crumpled like paper, the metal folding into nothing, devouring itself. No blood. No flesh. No trace remained.
The squire near Aldric blinked, wide-eyed, his breath catching in his throat. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. His voice wasn't allowed to exist here.
"What happened?" His voice cracked. His fingers trembled as they fumbled for his sword.
The others stood frozen, paralyzed by something beyond their comprehension. They were locked in place, not by fear—but by something worse. Something they couldn't understand. Time had fractured. Reality had splintered. The world was no longer what it used to be.
Erasmus stepped forward, his presence a stark contrast to the frozen chaos around him. He could feel the moment as it split in two, the crack widening beneath his feet. The world trembled.
"Forget it," Erasmus said softly, his voice the only thing real in this collapsing space. "It's already gone."
The squires stared, eyes wide and filled with horror. They didn't understand. They couldn't.
A subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the air. The presence was back. Not entering, but appearing.
A knight in tarnished armor stepped into the light, his form an unsettling distortion. His armor was too clean, his posture too rigid, his eyes not quite there.
Erasmus took his time before speaking, his words dripping with purpose.
"Where did you go?"
The knight turned to him, the void in his eyes deeper than any of them could comprehend. "I never left."
One of the remaining squires tensed. "That's a damn lie. We saw you vanish."
The knight's gaze didn't shift. It was as though he was staring into something far beyond the present. His voice was empty, hollow. "...Then tell me." He pointed to the firelight. "Why does your shadow have too many arms?"
The squire's breath hitched. His gaze snapped to the ground. His shadow stretched unnaturally, twitching, crawling across the dirt, slithering, but not in time with his body.
It smiled.
The squire stumbled back, his breath quickening. "What is that?" he gasped.
The shadow reached for his feet. And then, it pulled.
His bones cracked, but there was no force. No impact. No weight.
His body unraveled, each limb pulling apart like thread being unwoven by an invisible hand. The skin at his fingertips split, peeling upward as if it were paper. His flesh dissolved under the unseen pressure.
The last thing they saw were his lips, moving in silence, as if screaming from somewhere far beyond the confines of their perception.
And then—he was gone.
No body. No blood. Just a shadow that did not belong to anyone.
And already, two knights didn't remember him.
Erasmus sighed, the sound a release of tension in the air.
"Predictable."
—
A voice echoed from the distance, distant laughter, but not human.
It was coming from beyond the trees, deep within the mist. A cold wind swept in from the forest, heavy with something foreign. Something hungry.
Erasmus felt it—his senses always attuned to the things that lingered just beyond perception. The Watcher was here, but not in the firelight this time. It had moved. Gone deeper, into the fog.
He didn't need to see it. He could feel it.
"It's always watching," Erasmus murmured, his voice low and deliberate, carrying the weight of something only he understood. He turned his gaze to the knight beside him, who stood rigid, eyes dull, a ghost of himself.
The knight looked back at him, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Just an endless, vacant stare. For a moment, it flickered, as if something else—a shred of life—had been caught in the web of his thoughts.
"I don't remember…" The knight's voice was too hollow. "Did I… did I ever fight beside anyone?"
A whisper brushed against Erasmus' ear. A suggestion—of the Watcher, or whatever it was—that had left this knight with nothing. Not even memories. He was empty. Like the one before him.
And now, the Watcher was closing in.
Erasmus straightened his back. He could feel it—a pressure, invisible, weighing on the air around them. It was building, something unseen reaching into their minds, pulling at their identities. It wasn't just a threat to the body. It was a war for existence itself.
A sudden crackling sound pierced the silence, and a shape emerged from the mist. It wasn't a creature, but something far more insidious. A formless presence, an entity made of nothing but shadow, slithering through the trees, bending the very air with each movement. It wasn't a thing of flesh—it was something worse, something that didn't belong in any world.
Erasmus didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. His mind was already calculating, already on the edge of what was to come.
The knight beside him stiffened, his hand moving to his sword. Erasmus reached out, his grip firm on his wrist. "Stay," he whispered, voice cold, yet calm. "Don't move."
The knight hesitated, his fear obvious, but obeyed. Good. Erasmus didn't need him to die yet.
The Watcher's shape loomed closer, unphased by light, by matter, by time. It didn't need anything. It was everywhere and nowhere. Its very presence suffocated the air, drained the warmth from the world around them.
The others—what was left of them—hadn't seen it yet. They were still lost in the fog of disbelief, still trapped by their own inability to grasp what was happening.
But that would change soon enough.
The knight beside Erasmus breathed raggedly, his chest tightening with every second that passed. The Watcher's influence had already begun to wrap itself around them. The others would feel it soon. They would slip away into nothingness just as Aldric had. They'd be forgotten, erased, just like the squire before.
And then, just as Erasmus suspected—one of the squires shrieked. It wasn't the scream of pain. No. It was the realization that they had already died.
The squire's body crumpled. His armor folded into itself. Flesh unraveled as his bones splintered into dust. The Watcher hadn't even touched him. It had only looked at him, and that had been enough.
There was nothing left but the void where he once was.
Erasmus felt something shift in the pit of his stomach. A strange mixture of curiosity, even amusement, stirred within him. This was the world now. This was their fate.
The knight beside him turned, eyes wide in terror. "W—what's happening?"
Erasmus didn't look at him. He didn't need to.
"We're being forgotten," he said, his voice a whisper against the wind. "That's all. Just like the rest."
The Watcher's laughter returned, distant but overwhelming—a deep, resonating sound that rattled their bones. The ground shuddered beneath them as the shapes around them flickered, bending, distorting.
The knight tightened his grip on his sword, but Erasmus smiled without looking at him.
"You might want to hold onto something," he whispered.
And then he turned his back.
The Watcher's eyes weren't just in the dark. They were in the very bones of their existence. It had already made its choice.
The knight would shield him for a time.
For now, that was enough.