Olryme's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The mortal stood beside Olryme, brave and small. Olryme felt the moment for what it was — rare, and worth keeping. Then the door blew open. A blood-red mist poured in, thick and whispering. It curled around the mortal's ankles before Olryme could fold smaller. The mist showed the mortal something. Their face went slack. Their eyes turned gold. Olryme reached. The mortal stepped back. "Stop," Olryme said, soft, then sharp. The mortal raised the bracelet hand against them. The mist hissed words Olryme could almost hear: burn, like the others, burn. The mortal believed it. Olryme saw the belief settle behind their eyes. A grey woman in a red gown drifted through the broken door. Black lips. Gold eyes. She smiled at Olryme like an old wound. "He is mine now," she said. "At the blood moon, I will finish what you started." She held out a hand. The mortal took it. Olryme moved to tear the mist apart — and stopped. To pull the mortal back by force was to burn them. They had learned that lesson in ash, more than once. Olryme's hands closed on nothing. The cost of that habit, of being careful, arrived all at once. The mist swallowed both figures. Where they had stood, a low spire of red fog hardened into the floor, whispering still. Far off, past the island's edge, a shape rose against the sky — a great tree with dark blue leaves and pale bark, black sap running down its trunk. A temple of bloodstone glowed at its roots. Nyxi's ritual ground, waiting for the moon to turn. Olryme stood alone in the empty hall. For the first time in eons, something was taken from them, and they had let it happen by being slow. The mark of that slowness sat on the floor, whispering. Olryme felt, at last, the small clean ache of loss. They turned toward the distant tree. They would go. They would not be slow again.