Echoes Of The Silent God
ONE- Excerpt
Night presses against the stone chamber like a living thing — a black, breathless predator coiled in every corner, ancient in its patience and merciless in its hunger. The darkness does not merely fill the room; it tightens, wrapping itself around the walls until even silence seems to
suffocate.
Blood falls steadily from somewhere unseen, each drop plinking against the floor like water from a dying fountain. The sound travels through the chamber in lonely echoes, as if the room itself is whispering its grief down the corridors.
A lone soldier stumbles through the gloom, swallowed by shadows that cling to him like wet cloth. His breath rasps in the air — rapid, shallow, desperate — the frantic rhythm of a man trying to outrun the night itself. A dagger slices past his ear with a whispering hiss, so close it kisses the skin before vanishing into the dark. Pain blooms. His fingers abandon his weapon and fly to the wound — a fragile, trembling instinct fighting against a relentless tide of fear.
His armor hangs in ruins, plates dented and torn, the crest once proud now scratched into oblivion. His left leg twists beneath him at an unnatural angle, a broken branch in a forest of stone. He grunts, the sound raw and animal, straining to pierce the suffocating black that blinds him.
Somewhere within that darkness, something moves.
A faint silhouette — a boy, quick as a shadow’s heartbeat — darts along the edges of his vision, barely more than a ghost flickering in his peripherals. The chamber seems to hold its breath, watching, waiting, as predator and prey circle in the dark.
A dagger whistles past his cheek, close enough to steal a breath of skin before vanishing into the dark. He jerks, dropping his blade as his hand clamps over the sudden sting — a fragile instinct fighting a relentless tide of panic. His armor hangs in tatters, the crest once proud now scratched into anonymity, and his twisted leg buckles beneath him like a snapped pillar.
He grunts, vision swimming, the chamber’s darkness pressing in like a predator savoring the moment. He can’t see his attacker — only the faintest flicker of movement, a boy-shaped shadow darting along the edges of his failing sight.
The soldier forces out a trembling snarl.
“Come out… little ghost… if you’re brave enough.”
But the words barely leave his lips before a sudden, sharp pain blooms in his abdomen — a cold, precise intrusion that steals his breath. His knees give way. The world tilts. He collapses, gasping, the stone floor rising to meet him.
Footsteps approach.
Slow.
Measured.
Unhurried.
The boy’s silhouette grows clearer with each step, the darkness parting for him as if it recognizes its own. Vidarr steps out of the darkness with a jagged stone clenched in white‑knuckled fury, the crude weapon trembling with the promise of violence. The chamber seems to recoil from him, shadows bending away as if they recognize the storm wearing a man’s shape.
The wounded soldier wheezes on the floor, armor cracked, breath thin. Vidarr doesn’t slow. He drops onto the man’s chest with merciless finality, the impact forcing the air from the soldier’s lungs in a broken gasp. Kneeling over him, Vidarr studies the man’s agony with a calm, predatory focus — as though he’s examining a creature already claimed by fate.
The stone glints in his grip.
The darkness leans closer.
And the soldier realizes too late that the boy in the shadows was never running.
He was hunting.
“…little ghost…?” Vidarr repeats, one eyebrow lifting, the faintest curl of curiosity threading through his voice. The soldier finally sees him — truly sees him — and his eyes widen until they turn a bleached, terrified white, as if he’s staring at something that stepped out of a nightmare wearing a boy’s shape.
Vidarr tilts his head, studying the man with a calm far too cold for someone so young. His hands rise, not in haste but with deliberate, unsettling precision, framing the soldier’s head as though he’s holding a fragile vessel of fear. The darkness seems to lean in with him, eager, listening, hungry.
The soldier trembles beneath his touch.
And Vidarr, the ghost he feared, simply watches him break.
“Agh—! Get off me!” the soldier chokes out, but Vidarr does not yield.
Something ancient and merciless unfurls beneath his skin — a black‑violet void that blossoms outward like a living eclipse, swallowing the chamber’s light in a single breath.
The temperature plummets.
The air turns brittle, sharp enough to sting the lungs. Droplets of water hanging mid‑air freeze in place, suspended like tiny glass beads. Even the warmth of spilled blood recoils from Vidarr’s presence, evaporating into thin curls of dark mist that drift upward as though answering a silent summons.
The soldier thrashes, his voice cracking into panic, but Vidarr’s grip only tightens — not with rage, but with a cold, deliberate certainty. The void around him deepens, humming with a power that feels older than the stone beneath them.
He pulls.
Not at flesh —
but at the man’s will,
his strength,
his very sense of self.
The soldier’s scream fractures against the chamber walls, swallowed by the darkness gathering at Vidarr’s back.
And in that moment, it becomes clear:
The boy is no longer fighting.
He is consuming the fear that once hunted him.
“…Please…” the soldier finally whispers, the word trembling out of him like a dying ember. But mercy has no place in the boy standing over him.
Vidarr’s expression doesn’t change. The void beneath his skin surges again — a black‑violet storm that coils around his arms, swallowing the torchlight, devouring the warmth from the air.
The chamber groans as if the stone itself fears what’s coming.
The soldier’s breath catches.
Vidarr reaches forward, hands closing around the man’s head with a calm, ritualistic certainty.
The void flares. Shadows twist. Time seems to stutter. The soldier’s scream fractures into something thin and brittle as the darkness pulls at him — not at flesh, but at the core of him, the part that remembers fear, hope, and the shape of being alive.
The world tilts.
The soldier’s body shudders once… then begins to fade, color draining, heat evaporating, form collapsing into drifting grey ash as though time itself has accelerated to claim him.
Vidarr rises slowly, the last wisps of the man’s existence dissolving around his feet like smoke returning to the void that birthed it.
The chamber falls silent.
And the darkness at Vidarr’s back feels suddenly, terrifyingly awake.
A faint voice trembles through the darkness, thin as a dying ember.
“...What are you… Demon Boy…?”
Vidarr turns toward the sound, the void still simmering beneath his skin. For a heartbeat, he simply breathes — a slow exhale that carries relief, hunger, and something far more dangerous.
Power coils through him like a second heartbeat, intoxicating, electric.
A smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth as he lowers his head, speaking not to a face, but to the fear hiding in the dark.
“Vengeance.”
The word lands like a verdict, and the chamber seems to bow to it — shadows tightening, the air holding its breath, as if the darkness itself recognizes the name of its new master.
To Be Continued...