Eudora stood outside the Guild Hall, his cloak draped over one shoulder, boots damp from the slush-ridden yard. His bones ached. Not from exhaustion—but from slow, grinding change.
His body healed faster now. Not instantly, not miraculously. Just enough to feel wrong. Enough to make his skin feel like it wasn't his.
"Eudora. Marx. Inside. Now."
The barked order came from Guildmaster Varro. Gruff. Direct.
Inside, six other recruits stood in formation, waiting. Some were familiar faces from training. Others were survivors of past suicide missions. None looked happy to be summoned.
Varro stood at the head of the war table. A map unfurled before him, weighed down with rusted daggers and broken bones.
"This is not a test," he began. "This is a clean-up."
He stabbed a dagger into the forested northeast quadrant. "Three days ago, a squad sent to investigate disappearances in Hollow Pike failed to return. No report. No signal flares. No bodies. Nothing."
A beat passed. No one spoke.
"You're being sent to retrieve what's left," Varro said flatly. "And end whatever did this."
"With respect," Marx stepped forward, voice calm. "That sounds like a ten-man job. We're only seven."
Varro's expression never changed.
"It was a ten-man job. You're what we have left."
Marx didn't speak again.
Eudora stared at the map. Hollow Pike. He remembered it. He'd died there once—impaled by a monster he never saw, gutted in the dark, his body left for the crows.
That timeline was gone now.
But the place still remembered.
---
March into Hollow Pike
The group departed by dusk.
Fog greeted them by the second mile. Thicker than cloth, heavy like guilt. By the third, the road was gone. The trees bled sap that stank of rot. The forest had grown unnatural.
Something watched them. Not one thing. Many.
They moved in silence. Even Marx was quiet now.
Each footstep cracked old twigs, snapped brittle frost. The world felt too still.
Eudora stayed near the rear. Watching. Listening.
He felt the pull again. That pressure in his bones. That presence behind his eyes. His regeneration was changing again. Not just healing—adapting. The scars that once marked him were gone. Not faded. Gone. As if his body had forgotten how to be wounded.
When a twisted creature lunged from the mist—a mass of legs and eyes stitched from fur and teeth—Eudora was the first to move.
He didn't dodge.
He let it bite.
His arm tore from the elbow down, bones cracking, flesh ripped.
Someone screamed—Marx, maybe—but Eudora didn't flinch.
Because in seconds, the muscle began to stitch. The bone shifted back. Veins twined into place like roots returning to earth.
He gritted his teeth and drove a blade through the creature's eye.
It didn't even have time to scream.
The others stared. One recruit backed away from him.
"Eudora…" Marx whispered. "What... the hell are you?"
Eudora didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
And because the pain was returning—not from the injury… but from the healing.
---
Night at the Pike
They made camp at the edge of Hollow Pike.
The remains of the previous squad were found hanging in the trees. Not torn apart—emptied. Drained like fruit, hollowed out like vessels. Armor intact. Faces frozen in silence.
"There's no blood," someone muttered.
"Because it was taken," Eudora said. Voice low. Certain.
Marx leaned close to him by the fire. His voice was calm but forced.
"You shouldn't have survived that bite."
"I didn't," Eudora replied.
Marx didn't press further.
But Eudora could feel the fear in him now—not of the forest, not of the mission.
Of him.
And Eudora didn't blame him.
Because he wasn't healing anymore.
He was becoming something that didn't need to.
Something older than his body. Something buried deep inside. Something that now whispered louder at night:
"Pain is the key."
"Endure, and become."
"Break, and be reborn."