Chapter 118
Kross
When I opened my eyes, the world was bleeding.
Not in the way of wounds or c*****e—but everything was red.
The sky stretched above me like torn flesh, thick with scarlet clouds that pulsed as if alive. The trees around me bled crimson sap from their twisted trunks, their leaves like flayed skin, fluttering in a wind that carried no scent but iron. Even the soil beneath my boots stained the air with its hue, as though the ground itself was soaked forever in blood.
A place cursed. A place I had been told of only in whispers, in the forgotten verses of the Trials.
I knew why it looked like this.
This was no mere battlefield.
This was the domain of a Fate.
The last trial.
I swallowed hard, my throat raw. My body still hummed with the burn of the portal, but my insti
