Prologue
The Echo of a Severed Soul
The world is screaming, but it has no voice.
Everything is burning.
The forest ahead has become a funeral pyre. Black ash falls like a heavy, suffocating veil over the dying earth.
I lie in the dirt. The copper tang of blood fills my lungs. Beside me, Hana is a broken doll, unconscious after the brutal strikes of the Abassel Children.
I pull her closer, shielding her small frame with my own. My heart beats against my ribs like a trapped animal in a cage of bone.
Across the clearing, the air is thick with the scent of ozone and rot. Kyuro is surrounded—five Ghouls closing in like shadows.
Their leader, a monstrous silhouette, grins as he unsheathes a long, glistening needle. His laughter is a jagged blade in the dark.
And then, there is the High Priest. Or what remains of him.
He is a puppet of flesh and agony, his body a canvas for Natsu’s madness.
His skin melts and sloughs off in wet heaps. His blood pours forth like a relentless waterfall. Black tears flow from his hollowed eyes.
“I... I am... so—” The Priest’s voice cracks, a ghost of an apology strangled by the power possessing him.
Natsu’s hysterical laughter erupts from the heart of the forest. He twists the High Priest like a macabre marionette.
I watch in paralyzed horror as the Priest’s veins unravel, his organs dissolve, until nothing is left but a skeletal frame dancing to the tune of a madman.
The skeleton-priest raises a massive sword with a roar that shatters the silence.
It descends toward Hana. I throw myself forward. The steel whistles past, severing a lock of her hair.
Then, I see it—my arm, spinning through the smoke-choked sky.
Blood explodes from the stump of my shoulder, a crimson geyser painting the ash red.
Pain burns like a white-hot sun, but it is drowned out by the scream of the locket—a sound vibrating through every corner of the woods.
I grab a handful of black powder, my vision blurring, and hurl it with my remaining hand. The explosion tears the skeletal remains of the Priest into a thousand splinters of bone.
“You are a failure, Master of Aether!” Natsu’s voice booms, mocking and cruel. “You could not protect this land. You and the Spirit of the Earth are weak!”
I scream into the void, my mind fracturing. “Why?! Why is this happening?! I only wanted to live… to hide a few scraps of grain from the Hand of God… to listen to the Abbot’s tales of the Forest of Oblivion…”
My voice breaks as I stare at the severed limb in the dirt.
“Everything began two years ago... the day you died, Pietro.”
