The forest was quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet, but the kind that came after something terrible had happened. Birds no longer chirped. Even the insects had stilled. A low mist clung to the underbrush like it had been poured there, thick and suffocating. In the distance, a dull splash echoed across the dark water.
A body floated, limp and broken, face turned toward the unseen sky above. It was Michael.
Hours earlier, his screams had faded into hoarse sobs, then silence.
He'd been strapped to the altar for what felt like eternity. Blood pooled beneath him, mixing with the strange, glowing runes etched into the stone floor. His limbs trembled from pain and exhaustion. The spikes embedded in his back pulsed unnaturally, like they had a heartbeat of their own.
The faceless men remained silent.
They stood in a perfect circle around him, each one clad in black, unmoving, their faces nothing but pale, smooth skin stretched where features should've been. No eyes, no nose, no mouth.
Just void.
Michael whimpered. His mind fought to stay together, latching onto old memories like a drowning man grabbing at driftwood. His sister's laugh. A sunny field. Halberd Academy. Emma's sharp jokes. Andrew's calm eyes.
Why was Andrew's name always there?
Why did they say his name?
And then, without warning, the runes ignited in a blinding light.
Michael's back arched as the chains tightened. A terrible pressure gripped his chest, not like pain but like something crawling under his skin, something pushing through his bones, something... entering.
He screamed again, voice raw.
It felt like his insides were burning, being hollowed out and filled with something else. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. He wasn't Michael anymore. Not entirely. Something was trying to take over.
A deep, guttural noise echoed from the altar itself.
It wasn't a voice. It wasn't sound. It was hate made audible. Malice wrapped in vibration. Every rune around the altar pulsed, as if reacting to the presence that had awakened.
Then it stopped.
Michael collapsed onto the stone.
The spikes retracted, chains slithered back, and the light disappeared as quickly as it had come. The faceless men stood still.
One finally stepped forward, touching Michael's cheek.
Nothing. No breath. No pulse. Just vacant, glassy eyes staring upward.
The vessel had failed.
The entity whatever it had been had tried to inhabit Michael. But something in his body rejected it at the final moment. Perhaps he wasn't strong enough. Perhaps he wasn't compatible.
Regardless, he was useless now.
The faceless men moved without speaking.
Two of them lifted Michael's body, one holding his arms, the other his legs. His head lolled to the side like a discarded puppet. They carried him out of the building, their footsteps making no sound.
They reached the river, where the water moved sluggishly, as though mourning already.
Without ceremony, they dropped him in.
The water accepted him without a ripple.
And then the building vanished.
No crumbling. No flash of light. It simply ceased to exist.
Along with the faceless men.
There was no trace left.
No sign that anything had ever happened.
Except for the body slowly sinking beneath the surface of the river, forgotten by the world.
And somewhere far away something ancient stirred in frustration, denied a vessel once again
The pain had stopped.
Michael's body floated in the shallow edge of a riverbank, face up, eyes wide open, unmoving. The faceless men were gone just like the building, just like the altar, just like the pain but their presence lingered in the weight of his silence. The moon above him watched with hollow light. The trees swayed gently in the breeze, whispering secrets he'd never hear. Not anymore.
A fish swam past his arm. It stopped for a moment, inspecting him, then darted away. The blood around him had thinned, already fading into the current.
Nothing about the scene said he had just died for a reason. No lightning cracked the sky. No wolves howled in mourning. Just a boy discarded into the world like trash.
Like he hadn't mattered.
His clothes were soaked and heavy. The spiked wounds across his chest and limbs had stopped bleeding hours ago. His head lolled gently with the flow of the river.
Back upstream, there was nothing left. The structure the faceless men had taken him to a crooked building veiled in shadows had simply vanished. Like it had never existed. Not even the earth beneath it showed signs of disturbance. No broken branches. No footprints. Only untouched ground, as though nature itself had chosen to forget.
Michael hadn't been lucky.
They'd wanted to use him. Break him. Turn him into something else something not human. But they failed. And instead of returning him, instead of leaving him near help, they tossed him into the river. The same way you throw out garbage that stinks too much to keep around.
A bird landed nearby. Then another. They chirped and pecked at the grass. Oblivious.
Michael had tried to scream in his final moments. Not for help he'd known no one would come but out of refusal. Refusal to be used. To be rewritten. To be someone else's vessel.
He hadn't even known what they were. Or what they wanted.
All he'd gotten was pain.
And then silence.
The next morning, the sun rose like it always did. Without apology. Without hesitation.
The small river twisted through the woodland, its surface bright with scattered light. Insects hovered above the water. Somewhere far off, a dog barked.
A pair of joggers passed the bend near the river and paused when they spotted something strange. Something pale, and still.
They screamed.
Later, yellow tape would be stretched across the trail. Local police would be called. Investigators would hover around the scene, cameras in hand, gloved fingers brushing the bruised skin of a boy they didn't recognize at first.
It took hours before someone finally said it:
"Michael Darnell. Student at Saint Aramond University."
No one understood what had happened. The wounds were strange old and new at the same time. Jagged. Some of them burnt closed at the ends, like heat had met flesh and sealed it shut in cruel patterns. And the expression on his face frozen between pain and fear.
No animals had touched him. No scavengers. As though even nature refused to claim him.
At Halberd, Emma checked her phone for the fifth time that morning.
"He's still not answering," she said, frowning.
Kate looked up from her laptop, tired. "I told you, I've been trying, too."
"What if something's really wrong?" Emma asked. She tried to laugh, but it came out tight. "Like, I don't know, he fell into a ditch or....."
Her phone buzzed.
She snatched it up, thinking it might be him.
But it wasn't.
It was a call from the school office.
Her brows furrowed. "Hello?"
A quiet pause. Then a voice.
"Emma lennox? This is Officer Tran. I need to speak with you about Michael Darnell."
The world spun a little.
Kate stood quickly. "What is it?"
Emma's lips moved, but no words came.
They sat on a bench outside the administrative building two hours later. Emma stared at nothing. Kate's hands were clenched together so tightly her knuckles were white.
"Dead?" Emma finally whispered.
Kate couldn't speak.
"He's dead?"
Kate nodded once, shakily.
Emma let out a broken sound. A mix between disbelief and grief.
"They said he was found in a river. That there were... injuries," Kate said softly.
"Injuries?"
Kate swallowed. "They won't say what kind. Just that they're investigating."
The word echoed in Emma's mind. Investigating. Like a puzzle. Like this could be solved.
But how do you solve something that doesn't make sense?
Michael had been alive a week ago. Sarcastic. Annoying. Brilliant.
And now he was gone.
Just like that.
Emma blinked. Her fingers trembled. "Do you think it was an accident?"
Kate shook her head. "No."
"Then what? Who would do something like that?"
Kate didn't answer. She couldn't. But a part of her a quiet, growing part whispered a name.
Not a suspect. Not a murderer.
But someone who had always been at the center of strange.
Andrew.
Michael's parents arrived three days later.
Emma saw them from the common hall window. His mother looked hollow. His father, tight-lipped and trembling.
Kate joined her silently. Neither spoke.
"We have to find out what happened," Emma said eventually.
Kate nodded. "And we will."
But deep down, she was terrified.
Because Michael had just died.