Three days had bled into the valley's eternal twilight.
Eirian moved like a ghost through the dense, clawing forest—his right arm a stump wrapped in frayed a thron black cloth, his left gripping a rusted sword that split the undergrowth with grim efficiency.
The air here was thick with cold, a chill that seeped past flesh and bone, gnawing at the soul itself. Frost crackled on the leaves; his breath hung in jagged crystals before vanishing into the gloom.
No rest. No hesitation.
From above, the valley would have looked like a maw of shadows—and Eirian, a lone ember drifting toward its throat.
He paused, boots sinking into moss that whispered beneath his weight. "Three days… and only the center." He is thinking about shortening the time, but his remaining hand clenched. At this pace, the valley would claim eight more days.
A rustle. His old broken blade snapped up, but it was just a skeletal hare, ribs protruding like broken spokes, watching him with eyes that glowed sickly green. It bolted. Eirian exhaled. No threats yet. Only illusions..?
As dusk bled into the valley, Eirian's stomach growled like a caged beast. He needed food, rest a moment of weakness the valley would exploit.
He followed the sound of trickling water, his boots sinking into moss that whispered underfoot.
The stream he found was thin and sluggish, its surface filmed with an oily sheen. Poisoned? He thought.
No—the water smelled clean, but the rocks beneath it were too perfectly round, as if shaped by unseen hands.
Gritting his teeth, he drank.
Nearby, he gathered fallen branches—dry, but oddly weightless, as if they'd been hollowed out by time.
The fire he built spat and hissed, its flames tinged blue at the edges. The rabbit he had hunted earlier on the way here, he started skinning and spitted, dripped fat into the coals. The scent of cooking meat should have been comforting. Instead, the valley warped it—something metallic, like blood on a winter wind.
As he ate, the firelight flickered over a midnight-black boulder beside him. Its surface was unnaturally smooth, polished by generations of desperate travelers. Then he saw them:
Weird Words carved in a language in that stone it burned to look at: "The worthy pass. The hungry remain."
Confused, he murmured, "What does it means?" He was feeling something was going on but couldn't point it out.
He realises it would likely be an illusion. The Valley's first true trick.
Later, he found a good tree and climbed on top of the branch and he tried to sleep, but he is still alerted.
In a makeshift perch, an uncomfortable feeling covered his heart, as if something—or someone—was observing him!
The valley watched him work with silent, hungry attention.
"You'll die here, armless runt."
"Dris was smarter to leave you."
"The Abyss Sanctum knows your scent."
He woke abruptly to a handprint on his chest—icy, child-sized, not hisown.
Dawn brought no comfort. The fog had teeth today.
Eirian didn't sleep anymore. It was already late at night - soon morning would come. He had spent the night fighting off the valley's whispers that slithered into his mind.
He was thinking, what gripped him - it was confusion it wasn't fear. How was this illusion happening? And why? Where was it coming from?
After a few hours, the morning arrived—though no sun appeared. He resumed his journey, after eating some leftover food of the previous night, covering 500 miles in 3 hours.
Yet cultivator's stamina meant little here. The valley resisted him at every step. Roots lashed at his ankles.
Stones slid beneath his feet, as if trying to mislead him. The air thickened, carrying the scent of rusted iron and decaying blossoms.
"It's the fourth day!! I haven't even crossed the Valley yet," He was still thinking about finding a solution about it but suddenly—
His ran pause until the valley's nature twisted before him—Yin and Yang Made Flesh??
The world split into nightmare beauty:
To his left stretched a field of frozen statues, their faces locked in eternal screams, skin gleaming like a fractured diamond.
To his right bubbled a lake of liquid fire, where flame-wrapped figures melted and reformed in endless, laughing cycles.
Eirian stared, unsure if his mind still belonged to him or he had gone crazy. Was this a dream, or had the valley stolen even his sense of reality to manipulate him?
I'm dreaming or something? He assumed.
Above this duality, the sky itself was torn in half—one side a devouring black vortex, the other a searing white sun.
And at the center, a bridge of bone, leading west.
Eirian froze, his breath catching at the impossible sight before him. Before he could process the nightmare landscape, the valley's voice shuddered through his bones:
"Choose your death, Flameborn. Ice or fire?" The voice came from everywhere at once - the frozen statues' mouths, the fiery lake's crackling waves, even the split sky itself seemed to form the syllables.
Eirian's grip tightened on his blade as he leveled it at the nearest statue. The steel trembled slightly in his hand - whether from his own tension or some unseen force, he couldn't tell.
"Another test? Or are you mocking me now?" he demanded, his voice cutting through the unnatural stillness. His eyes darted between the frozen figures. "More illusions?"
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the valley answered - not with words, but with a sound like cracking glaciers and sighing flames. A laugh. A cruel, knowing laugh that seemed to come from the very air itself.
As the echoes faded, a new horror unfolded. One by one, the statues turned their heads toward him, their crystalline faces creaking like breaking ice. Empty eye sockets fixed upon Eirian, and in their depths, tiny flames flickered to life.
He observed the several statutes and thought, " The statues stood in perfect, grotesque elegance.
Their forms carved with impossible artistry yet radiating primal terror. Each figure gleamed like polished crystal, but their face are hideous.
The longer Eirian looked, the more the details sickened him.
The first statue stepped off its pedestal, ice cracking like breaking bones. Its mouth unhinged, and out poured Dris's voice:
"Eirian… why did you leave me to die?"
"Then the lake of fire surged!!, And a figure of molten rock rose, wearing Eirian's own face.
"You've been running from me," it hissed. "Your true self."
The bridge of bone splintered. The sky ripped wider.
Eirian, right arm was armless and exhausted, felt a mad grin twist his lips as he smile into the chaos.
Magnificent, he thought. This Valley of Whispers...to conjuresuch an illusion...
His smile and saw the statues groaning and crackling flames, a defiant note in the symphony of horrors.
A memory flash back in his mind.
Dris's hand gripping his shoulder in their last moment together at the cave's entrance. "I'll hold them off. Go!"
The Veilborn Spirit's claws shredding the air between them. Eirian's own voice, raw with betrayal: "You knew this would happen. You knew I'd lose the arm."
The statue's icy fingers brushed Eirian's chest, and the vision shifted
Dris alone in the Dust Monastery secret, tracing the scroll's faded ink with reverent fingers. "Soulshaper…"
A shadow loomed behind him—a hooded figure with a blade made of black ice.
Eirian gasped. Was that memory or prophecy??
He realised these are illusion tricks and become serious."He knew these are fake nothing happened like this exactly in that case"
Author's Note:
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