The Watcher's presence had receded, but what it left behind was no mere absence. The world did not breathe the same way it once had. The fire, once a beacon of defiance against the night, now guttered weakly, its embers clinging to the last shreds of warmth as if they feared being noticed. Shadows stretched unnaturally, bending toward something unseen, reaching with quiet hunger. The air itself had weight, thick with a presence that did not belong, a silent, pressing thing that loomed at the edges of perception like a whisper waiting to be heard.
The knights who had survived—if they could still be called that—sat in uneasy silence, their armor scuffed and stained, their weapons held more out of habit than belief. The notion that steel could protect them had been shattered the moment they realized what they were truly up against. Their eyes, hollow and darting, searched the darkness beyond the firelight not for what was there, but for what should have been—for the faces that had been beside them only moments ago. But the names of the missing did not come to mind. Their voices had already faded. The space they once occupied was not merely empty—it had been erased. And though they knew, deep down, that something was terribly, terribly wrong, the shape of their grief had no edges to grasp, no certainty to anchor itself upon.
Erasmus sat apart from them. He did not look at the men. He did not acknowledge the fire or the way it stuttered as though fighting off an unseen wind. He simply listened. Not to the remnants of battle, nor to the shifting of weary bodies, but to the deeper silence that had settled over the world. Silence was not the absence of sound—it was a thing unto itself, an entity that pressed against the bones of reality, waiting.
And then, it spoke.
Not in words. Not in any way that a human throat could form speech. It was a sensation, a ripple through the emptiness, a vibration that hummed just beyond the threshold of perception. It was a whisper that did not need to be heard to be understood.
Erasmus did not need to turn his head to know where it came from. The wound was still there—raw, gaping, a distortion in space where a young squire had once stood. But wounds fester. And in the absence of something once real, something else had begun to take its place.
A shimmer warped the air where the squire had been. At first, it was subtle, barely more than a mirage, a wavering of reality as if the world itself had not yet decided whether it should correct the discrepancy or allow it to remain. But then, it deepened. The bend in space became a shape, crude and unfinished, a silhouette that was not formed of flesh, nor shadow, but of something in-between.
The knights did not see it. Their gazes passed over the shape, their minds rejecting it before comprehension could take root. But Erasmus saw it. He saw it too clearly.
It was not the squire.
And yet, it wore his absence like a second skin.
One of the knights—one of the fortunate few who had not been consumed by the unmaking—staggered to his feet, shaking, his breath shallow. He clutched his sword with white-knuckled desperation, but his grip was that of a drowning man grasping at reeds. "We… we need to move. We can't stay here. We can't—"
His words stopped.
Not because he had been silenced.
But because he had been replaced.
The space where he had stood was no longer his.
In his place stood another. An exact copy, clad in the same battered armor, gripping the same weapon, wearing the same sweat-streaked face. A perfect mirror, flawless in every way—except for the eyes. The eyes were wrong. They were not reflections of a soul, not windows into a man's mind. They were voids, gaping and depthless, filled not with darkness but with something that watched from behind the surface.
And then, it smiled.
Not with lips, but with something beneath them.
Erasmus did not move, did not speak, did not betray even the faintest flicker of surprise. The thing was testing him, waiting to see if he would acknowledge it for what it truly was. To the others, nothing had changed. They still saw their comrade. Still believed in the lie. But Erasmus knew better. This was not merely a mimicry. It was an entity that fed upon empty spaces, a thing that crept in where something else had been forcibly removed.
It thrived in the gaps left behind.
And yet, it lacked something vital.
A name.
Erasmus let out a slow breath, tilting his head slightly. His voice, when he spoke, was deliberate. Measured.
"Tell me," he murmured, his tone threading through the fabric of the moment, pressing against the fragile edges of reality itself. "What is your name?"
The thing twitched. A ripple passed through it, distorting its perfect façade for the briefest moment. Erasmus caught a glimpse beneath the surface—of shifting features, of stolen expressions, of mouths frozen in silent screams. It was not a singular entity. It was a collective. A patchwork of forgotten fragments. A parasite wearing borrowed flesh.
But it did not answer.
Because it could not.
Because it had no name of its own.
Erasmus smiled.
"That's a shame," he said softly, stepping forward, his presence pressing against the edges of the thing's form like a weight it could not ignore. "Because I do."
And then, he whispered a name.
Not its name.
But the name of the one it had taken.
The effect was immediate.
The thing convulsed, its form collapsing in on itself, rippling as if an unseen force had driven a stake through its very existence. A sound followed—deep, resonant, a vibration that did not belong in this world. It was not a scream. It was something older. A howl of unraveling, a keening wail of something being forced back into nonexistence.
The knights recoiled, though they did not understand why. Their minds could not process what their senses were telling them, and yet, on some primal level, they felt the shift, the way reality twisted around them. The fire flared, embers snapping into the air like startled birds.
And then, where the thing had been—
There was a boy.
The squire.
Alive. Trembling. His breath hitched in sharp, broken gasps, his hands clawing at his chest as if confirming that he still existed. His eyes, wild with confusion and horror, met Erasmus'. "I—I was—"
Erasmus placed a firm hand on his shoulder.
"Don't." His voice was steady, unwavering. "It's over."
The boy swallowed hard, his throat working around words that would not come. Because some part of him knew—if he spoke them aloud, if he acknowledged what had happened, the thing might hear.
But something else was already listening.
A voice, ancient and deep, rippled through the night. Not sound. Not speech. Just an overwhelming force pressing against the fabric of the world itself.
"You should not have done that."
Erasmus did not look away. Did not flinch.
Instead, he smiled.
"Then stop me."
For a moment, the world held its breath.
And then, the shadows moved.