The room was a tomb of silence, its stone walls swallowing sound and light alike. For days, Belial had settled into a grim, repetitive cadence that filled the hours of each passing night like the ticking of a cracked clock.
He didn't complain—there was too much quiet in this forsaken place for complaints, and besides, there was purpose in the routine, even if its shape remained elusive, a shadow just beyond his grasp. Each night was a cycle of survival, a ritual that bound him to this place and to the ghost of the Prince whose presence lingered in every carved stone and flickering crystal.
Each evening began the same way. As dusk bled across the ruined horizon, Belial emerged from the depths of the Prince's abandoned chamber, where he'd been resting on a pallet of worn furs. The air was stale, heavy with the etheric residue that clung to the spire like a second skin. A faint metallic tang lingered on his gloves, the ghost of monster blood that never quite washed away, no matter how many times he scrubbed them in the icy stream that trickled through the valley below. He stretched, his joints popping as he shook off the stiffness of sleep, and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The world outside the spire was a wasteland of jagged peaks and twisted trees, but it was the valley—his hunting grounds, that called to him.
The descent was always quiet, his boots silent on the worn stone steps. The valley was a graveyard of bones and ash, where creatures born of ether and malice roamed under the cover of night. Belial dispatched them methodically, his movements honed by necessity. Sometimes he used the curved blade at his hip, its edge singing as it sliced through sinew. Other times, he relied on ether-infused punches, his fists glowing faintly as they burst through bone like paper. The creatures' death cries were never screams—more like wet, gurgling gasps, as if the life within them was too weak to protest. He knelt over their bodies afterward, fingers pressed to the viscous ichor at their cores, drawing their essence into himself. It was a sharp, cold sensation, like swallowing frost, but it sharpened him, like steel against a whetstone. Each kill made him stronger, faster, more attuned to the pulse of this cursed place.
Then came the training.
Every two nights, Belial returned to the spire's inner sanctum, a vast chamber where the statue of the General loomed. The construct was a towering figure of obsidian and brass, forged in the image of a warrior long dead, its surface polished to a mirror-like sheen. Its face was featureless save for two hollow sockets, and its armor gleamed with an unnatural luster. The statue didn't move. Not at first. But when Belial pulled the pin from the mechanism at its base—a small, rune-etched rod that hummed with latent power—something within it stirred. Its eyes flared white, a cold, piercing light that seemed to see through him. Its joints shuddered, grinding stone against metal, and then it attacked.
They fought in silence, the only sounds the clash of steel and the scrape of boots on stone. The General was relentless, its movements smooth and precise, a machine of war that knew no hesitation. It wasn't just training; it was a lesson in humility. In the early sessions, Belial had been battered—ribs crushed, lips split, his body left crumpled on the floor as he waited for the ether in his blood to reknit his wounds. Those nights had been long, spent in darkness and pain, but he learned. Gradually, he dodged more, his reflexes sharpening. He struck harder, his blade finding gaps in the General's defenses. He adapted faster, anticipating the statue's patterns. The General never spoke, never acknowledged his progress, but Belial noticed the subtle shifts—the way its pace increased, the way its strikes grew more cunning with each session, as if testing him further.
After each sparring night, when the ache of battle still clung to his bones like damp cloth, Belial descended to the lower chamber. There, suspended in strands of black webbing that shimmered like liquid night, hung the giant chrysalis. It was massive, larger than a man, its surface a translucent green that pulsed faintly, like a heart dreaming in slow rhythm. Alive, but not yet born. Belial didn't know what it was—only that it mattered, that it was his responsibility. So he fed it, pouring the poisonous ether he'd cultivated from the creatures he'd slain into its core. The chrysalis drank greedily, its pulses growing stronger with each offering. It was growing, and with each night, Belial felt a strange kinship with it, as if they were both waiting for something to awaken.
Later, he always returned to the Prince's chamber, where the statue of the Prince stood at the bedroom's end. The sculpture was a work of art, carved from pale crystal that caught the dim light and refracted it into soft, prismatic glimmers. The Prince's features were delicate—high cheekbones, a slightly tilted head, lips curved in a faint, unreadable expression that could have been sorrow or defiance. It couldn't move, couldn't speak, but Belial felt its presence like a quiet companion. Each night, he brought the shogi board, its wooden pieces worn smooth from countless games, and set it between them on the stone floor.
He played alone, of course. He moved his own pieces, then the Prince's, his fingers lingering over each decision. "Would you favor the defensive lines?" he murmured one night, sliding a gold general into place. "Or would you feint and rush the flanks? You always struck me as patient. Calculated. But not too timid." He liked to imagine the Prince thinking deeply, his crystalline eyes fixed on the board, measuring each move like a battlefield. It was a strange comfort, a way to fill the silence of this lonely place. The Prince never won, of course—Belial was too good for that—but the act of playing felt like a conversation, a bridge to someone he'd never met but felt he knew.
After the game, Belial settled under the dim glow of the crystalline wall, its surface etched with faint, glowing runes. He pulled one of the crystalline books from the shelf, their engraved pages shimmering with memories of the past. He'd hoped for secrets—forbidden histories, truths buried in myth—but most of what he found was mundane. Crop cycles detailed with obsessive precision. Military logistics for armies long dissolved. Personal musings about weather patterns and the dream habits of tower-dwelling insects. One night, he stumbled across an entire chapter dedicated to tea—its cultivation, its brewing, its subtle variations in flavor. It was disappointingly dull, and yet he read on, searching for something more.
The night always ended with the black notebook. Its leather cover was a familiar weight in his hands, its pages alive with the Prince's voice. Each entry was a fragment, a glimpse into a mind both brilliant and burdened:
"The Grukins' culture is very similar to ours. They value order above all, but there's a warmth to their rituals, a rhythm I can't quite grasp."
"Statue General switched patterns again. Left elbow opening." Belial paused at that one, his lips twitching. It might actually help him in the next sparring session.
"I really don't appreciate how these people don't care much about emotion."
As the false dawn crawled across the ruined horizon, painting the sky in shades of ash and amber, Belial retreated to the spire's lowest depths. There, in a chamber hidden from the light, he slept, wrapped in layered cloaks and the faint hum of residual ether. His dreams were rarely peaceful—flashes of fire, screams in the void, the Witch's shadow looming over him—but they were familiar, a constant in this endless cycle.
The Prince's statue seemed to watch him with a more thoughtful gaze, as if it knew something he didn't. And somewhere, deep within the crystalline books or the Notebook, he felt a page waiting to reveal itself.
He just had to keep going.