Jacob woke choking on ash.
The cave's air tasted like old firewood left too long in a hearth—dry, bitter, and sharp enough to scratch his throat on the way down. Orange light pulsed against the stone walls, flickering like a signal he didn't understand. He sat up, every muscle aching, and scraped soot from his eyelids.
Fiorde was already on his feet, leaning at the cave mouth and sniffing the wind like a connoisseur.
"Mmm," he hummed. "Caramelized despair. Some people pay a fortune for that note in their tea."
Jacob crawled to the entrance. Night had finally surrendered to something that looked like dawn but felt like apocalypse. The sky glowed ember-orange, smeared with smoke so thick it blotted out the stars. Somewhere beyond the first lines of blackleaf trees, flames leapt high—too high for any normal fire. The entire forest crackled like a single, gigantic wick.
"Something's burning," Jacob whispered.
"Everything's burning," Fiorde replied. He sounded almost pleased.
They hurriedly stepped out of the cave and back into the Black Forest. If it could still be called that—for the trees had been put ablaze. A deep orange pulsed around Jacob and the man on his back.
They noticed cursed running from something. Not at them. Just… away. They didn't even seem to register the two humans standing in their path. They were too focused on escape.
"Well, if our hosts are moving, we better get moving as well," Fiorde said while taking a sip from what Jacob knew to be an empty cup.
Jacob heeded Fiorde's word and began following the cursed's direction.
Fiorde muttered something on his back,
"Who burns a forest of cursed? That's just poor etiquette… unless it's smoked tea. Then maybe."
"Again with the tea…" Jacob muttered, rolling his eyes as they crunched through brittle leaves. "Do you ever say anything that isn't dipped in madness?"
Fiorde didn't pause.
"Tea is the last sane thing in this cursed world. Everything else is just… burnt toast and regret."
Jacob smirked.
"Says the man who offered me invisible tea and called it 'training.'"
"Which it was. You imagined the cup wrong, by the way. That's why it didn't work."
"Oh, I'm so sorry." Jacob swept a mocking bow. "Next time I'll conjure up a porcelain cup with gold trim and please the tea gods properly."
Fiorde nodded solemnly.
"They do appreciate the effort. Especially Oolong the Silent."
Jacob bit the inside of his cheek.
"You're making that up."
"Obviously. Oolong never speaks."
They reached a ridge, the hill sloping gently downward. The trees here were untouched, but the air already felt thinner—tinged with heat, as if the fire's breath was just over their shoulder.
Jacob exhaled sharply.
"You're unbelievable."
"And you're fun when you're annoyed," Fiorde said cheerfully. "It adds color to your otherwise tragically plain aura."
"I don't have an aura."
"You do. It's beige. But grumpy beige."
Jacob narrowed his eyes.
"You're doing this on purpose."
Fiorde tilted his head.
"That implies I ever stop."
Jacob clenched his jaw, speeding up just enough to walk ahead.
"Remind me again why I haven't buried you in this forest."
"Because you'd miss me," Fiorde called sweetly.
Jacob muttered something not even the tea gods could bless, dragging a hand down his face. Fiorde just hummed and followed, hands tucked behind his back like this was a stroll through a dream.
They reached the bottom of the hill, and what lay ahead froze Jacob mid-step.
A village—if it could still be called that—sprawled before them like the rotting remains of a once-living thing. Nature hadn't just taken it back; it had devoured it. Roots thick as a man's torso slithered over rooftops and through shattered walls, wrapping buildings in a slow, merciless strangle. Moss clung to what remained of wooden beams, and fungi bloomed where windows once looked out on the world.
Everything sagged, split, or collapsed. Homes were caved in like broken chests, beams sticking out like ribs. The walls were crusted with black-green mold and bubbled rot, as if the structures themselves were diseased. Some rooms had no roofs; others had no floors. Trees grew inside kitchens. Ivy slithered through hearths.
And the corpses—there were so many corpses.
They hung from rafters like grotesque ornaments, their faces empty, hollow sockets where eyes had been burned away. Some were strung up by wire, others by roots that seemed to have grown intentionally cruel—piercing shoulders, coiling around necks. Most were bloated, bones twisted into poses of panic or surrender.
The ground was slick with old blood—thick, black, and crusted in places, as though the forest itself had tried to digest it. The stench wasn't fresh, but it lingered. Heavy. Sour. The kind of smell that made your teeth itch and your thoughts turn backward.
But he couldn't forget the Black Forest. Maybe because they were still in it—or because the roots here were black as shadow.
"Building looks like it's from about 500 AA," Fiorde said casually, still draped over Jacob's back like a sack of eccentric bricks. He craned his head to glance at a broken roofline, humming a lopsided tune that sounded suspiciously like a tea lullaby.
Jacob grimaced.
"How can you tell? Everything's half-melted."
Fiorde sniffed.
"That's part of the charm. Look at the angles—pre-Incursion. And those door hinges? Definitely forged before the alloy crisis."
"...I didn't even know there was an alloy crisis."
"Well of course you didn't, you're practically uncooked dough," Fiorde replied, as if that settled it.
Jacob stepped over a collapsed fence, boots squelching into a puddle of cursed ichor.
"You're not even trying to be helpful, are you?"
"Oh, I am," Fiorde said cheerfully. "I'm helping you develop emotional resilience. Look at all this horror. And yet, you haven't wept once! That's progress."
Jacob shot him a look.
"I haven't wept because I'm too numb."
Fiorde wiggled his fingers like jazz hands.
"Exactly!"
Jacob's shoulders tensed. He stared back the way they came, where the little amount of sky he could see was slowly bleeding orange.
Behind them, the Black Forest was burning.
The Father himself wouldn't let them forget.
"Should we mourn them before we continue?" Jacob asked Fiorde in half sarcasm. He was no saint, but as much as he hated to admit it—pleasing the "Righteous Slayer" was as important as escaping the Black Forest.
But there was no time to mourn.
From behind a row of half-toppled buildings, they heard it: snarls, howls, the wet slap of clawed feet on stone. A cursed mob surged from the shadows like a flood with teeth. They came in a writhing mass, climbing over each other, biting and slashing, driven not by hunger but by something more primitive—need. Need to destroy, to rend, to erase whatever memory these ruins still clung to.
They didn't hesitate. Didn't slow.
Didn't give room to grief.
Jacob stiffened. His breath caught as he instinctively stepped backward, dragging Fiorde with him. The cursed didn't seem to see them—but that could change. The mob was so frenzied, they trampled corpses and each other alike, tearing into rotted walls and shrieking at nothing. One tore a root from the ground and chewed it like bone.
They passed through like a storm of madness.
Then—silence again.
But Jacob knew what he'd seen. Knew what it meant.
You didn't get to grieve in the Black Forest.
Not when it was still deciding if you were next.
"Before they come back, jump in that conveniently located well," Fiorde said while munching on some mint he had pulled from one of his many pockets—pockets that, by all logic, should've run out of space several strange items ago.
Jacob didn't wait. He launched himself toward the well's edge and leapt inside, trusting that Nero would soften his descent. His boots scraped stone as he dropped—
But the fall ended with an anticlimactic thud.
He hit bottom almost instantly.
"Huh?"
He blinked, confused. There was no rush of air, no stomach-lurching drop, no sense of plunging into any sort of depth. He landed on both feet, knees slightly bent, and looked around in disbelief.
The well was shallow. Barely deep at all—maybe three meters, if that. It could hide them in shadow, yes. But it was no escape. No haven. The world above still loomed wide open.
Fiorde landed beside him with far less urgency, brushing dust off his sleeves.
"I knew it was too good to be true… like that time I almost bought a tea garden for myself."
Jacob didn't respond. He tilted his head back and stared up at the sky.
The burning heavens still hovered close. Orange light poured down the mouth of the well like a warning from the gods. It looked just as apocalyptic from down here. Just as near. Just as cruel.
Before they could speak again—they heard it.
The sound returned.
Not a gentle echo. Not a distant threat.
Snarls.
Howls.
The slick, unmistakable slap of clawed feet on stone.
And they were getting closer.
"They can feel you," Fiorde said.
This time, there was no lilt of humor. No tease wrapped in tea metaphors. Just flat, clean warning.
Jacob's heart skipped. "What?! How?!"
"Maybe they didn't properly feel it earlier," Fiorde murmured, his eyes locked upward, voice quiet. "But now they have."
Jacob imagined it—cursed swarming like fire ants, finding their scent, their warmth, their life. He saw claws dragging him out of the well. Teeth tearing into flesh. Darkness swallowing him before he even screamed.
"You have two options," Fiorde continued, calm as still water. "Open this well into the gorge below and risk them hearing and attacking you before you can escape…"
A pause. Then, lightly—
"Or smother your Nero."
Jacob's voice cracked. "How do you smother Nero?"
"I see you've gone with option two…" Fiorde exhaled slowly, tapping the edge of the well wall. "Easy peasy. Just spread it out so thin that it can barely be differentiated from the Nero that's already in the Black Forest."
Jacob closed his eyes. Focused.
He let his Nero stretch—tentatively, then wider. Thin. Threadbare. A mist rather than a flame. He imagined it as a fog dissolving into a larger one, until his signature faded into the forest's ancient rot and ruin.
It wasn't much. He could feel his control straining. But it was something.
Outside the well, the snarls grew fainter. The howls—more distant. Claws scraped less. Then stopped altogether.
Silence crept in, thick and alive.
And just as Jacob began to ease his breath, Fiorde struck a match with an audible scratch, lit a small candle, and grinned into the shadows.
"This reminds me of my root cellar," he said softly. "Only more dirt. And less cinnamon."
Jacob turned his head toward him, but his lids were already heavy. The quiet pressed down on him like a blanket, laced with ash and exhaustion.
Sleep clawed at the edges of his vision.
"Oh, I forgot to say," Fiorde added casually, tucking the mint away. "It's easy because its risks are pretty high…"
He leaned back against the curved stone wall and gave Jacob a lazy little smile.
"So sweet dreams, sunshine."
Jacob didn't have time to retort. His eyes fell shut, and darkness claimed him once more.
And in that darkness, the same dream returned:
stars—adrift in a steaming cup.