1.

On the shores of an unknown world

Dominic was woken up by pain. He felt that there were cuts and scrapes all across his skin, and something was seeping in and making them sting. Following that came the realization that he was lying on stones, gravel and grit probing like needles into his wounds with every incoming wave, spreading bruises across his back. Last to reach him was the sound of the water.

He cracked his eyes open, lashes encrusted with salt, his vision hazy and unfocused. He tried to take in his surroundings, but a thick, white fog obscured everything past an arm’s length. All Dominic could tell was that he had ended up on a chilly, unfamiliar beach, and that he was somehow, inexplicably alive.

He opened his mouth to test his voice but only managed to cough violently. The inside was caked in salt, so dry it felt like sandpaper. His chest ached as he heaved, ribs stinging, definitely broken. Nonetheless, he took a deep breath, disregarding the sharp pain that went through his bones, and tried to press himself up from the shore.

His left arm gave out beneath him, a burning agony filling his senses. His right though, was only stiff and sore, and Dominic finally managed to sit up.

The exertion from such a simple movement made his head spin. Pain was filling his hearing, pounding through his skull. He put his hand lightly on his chest and tried to cast healing magic.

“…Huh?”

For some reason his mana dissipated as quickly as it gathered, as if something was interrupting and dispersing the spell, but he had neither the time nor the energy to think about the reason why. He let his hand fall back to his side and eventually gathered the strength to tentatively test his legs. They seemed in better shape.

Dominic tried standing, but immediately collapsed to his knees, sending an excruciating shock through his cracked ribs. He had no strength. He was hardly awake to begin with, a ring of black clouding the edges of his vision, the sound of pulsing pain filling his ears. The world seemed to only exist halfway. He forced himself up again with his good hand, and staggered to his feet.

His head spun. He stepped forward.

He didn’t know where he was going. There was nothing to see but fog anyway. He just stumbled in the direction he was already facing, moving away from the shore.

The pain got worse. His left arm dangled uselessly at his side. Every movement made it sting anew. The pounding of his pulse from the exertion needed just to move forward made his vision turn black in patches. The noise in his ears rose to a din, surging with every step, muting the rest of the world. In the haze of the fog that obscured everything and the haze of his own consciousness, it started to sound like wood groaning, bending, and breaking.

The ship was gone in a moment and the world went black. There were sailors and priests shouting and screaming, trying to cling to the shredded debris, but Dominic was already in the water. How cold and sudden it had been. There were no memories past that.

He was losing himself again. Dominic reached his good hand over to his left arm and pinched the bruised, bloodied skin. It sent a burning shock through his body, but the pain didn’t do anything to clear his senses as he’d hoped. He needed to wake up. Or maybe he had never woken up to begin with. Perhaps this was just a dream, and his body was still on the rocky shore he had barely left behind, deep in oblivious slumber.

Dominic slogged forward, forcing his legs to move. The gravel and sand of the beach turned to wilted, yellow grass. The grass grew taller, turning into faded green weeds, and through the haze of his consciousness, Dominic noticed that the ground beneath him was now paved with stone. The remnants of an abandoned path, cracked and crumbling. That was right. He remembered people usually lived by coasts.

He considered, momentarily, if it would be fine to just collapse and leave the rest to whoever discovered his corpse. But he didn’t have the energy to keep the thought sustained, and it flickered out of existence. Dominic only continued moving forward, one slow step at a time.

The fog began to clear. Before his eyes emerged a long, rolling road that stretched over a hill and into the distance. As the haze around him thinned and finally disappeared, the silhouette of a castle—black and imposing—rose at the end.

He staggered a little further. The ground was uneven because of the old cobblestone, and it was sloping uphill. Dominic tried to brace himself against anything so he wouldn’t fall before remembering there wasn’t anything there but open air and grass to begin with. He collapsed to the ground.

He was fading. There were pinpricks of mana glancing across his skin, the gazes of people watching him from afar—but he didn’t have the energy to raise his head and find them. He couldn’t even hear the pain that had been roaring through his own ears anymore. Everything was fading away into an uncontrollable, drowsy black. This time, he didn’t try to stop it.

Dominic closed his eyes, let his head slump to the ground, and passed out.

∞

Cracking and breaking and groaning and snapping. There was no sound in the dream, but Dominic knew what was happening. The bow of the boat tipped, and he was falling again. In the millisecond of time he had, he glimpsed a ship that had been cut cleanly in two, right down the middle. There was a white fog around everything.

Dominic only watched as the world around him collapsed.

The water was cold when he met it.

∞

The second time Dominic awoke was quiet, his eyes cracking open as soft light fell over them. It was so strangely peaceful that it unsettled him instead. He had forgotten where he was supposed to be, but he knew, without even remembering stumbling half-conscious over the shore, that it shouldn’t have been that way.

He moved just slightly, thinking about sitting up, but pain immediately surged through his chest. It was far more pronounced than it had been before, when he had barely even been awake. As he waited for the burning to subside, Dominic managed to clear his senses enough to glance around at his surroundings.

He was lying in a bed, not luxurious in any manner, but enough for one person, in a dark and dusty room that looked as if it had been out of use for a bit of time. By a desk against the wall, a thin man seemed to be reading a book with his back facing him.

Dominic slowly studied him, letting his breathing settle again. He was dressed in strange clothes—something like grey and white robes in several layers—and his long hair had been tied back into a ponytail.

The man stirred, seeming to finally have realized someone was watching him. He glanced from side to side before looking over his shoulder and finding Dominic staring at him from the bed.

He nearly leapt out of his seat, fumbling with the book in his hands.

“You, you’re awake…?” he said.

It took a moment for him to process the words that had come out of the man’s mouth. The mana that was exuded with every breath had conveyed the meaning to him instantly, yet whatever language he was speaking was completely unfamiliar. Dominic had traveled through quite a few countries while doing mercenary work, but none spoke like this. Perhaps the place he’d washed up was even further than he had anticipated.

He opened his mouth to respond, but only managed to cough.

The man got up quickly, looking concerned.

“Ah, sorry, this, uh—this isn’t my room, I was just taking a break here. Are you…okay?”

He tried pressing himself up from the bed, ignoring the burning pain that surged through his chest again. The thin blanket slid off of his body to reveal his minced meat left arm. The man grimaced visibly.

“Oh, no. You are not.”

He fretted over Dominic, but didn’t come much closer, seemingly wary.

“I’m not a healer, so…”

He pursed his lips, bashful.

“…And the guys who brought you in told me you weren’t going to wake up, so I don’t know if I’m allowed to do anything; they just said this room would be okay to take my break in…” he rambled.

Dominic swallowed, wetting his throat.

“…That’s fine,” he finally answered, voice still dry and crackly. “I’ll just stay here.”

The man nodded awkwardly and shuffled back to the desk, stiffly sitting down. Dominic turned away. He had noticed quickly that none of his wounds had been treated. Nobody had even given him basic first aid, and he wasn’t going to count on any other care coming.

Outside the window beside him, a sprawling estate—shrubs and topiaries preened to perfection—spread out below. He inhaled deeply, taking in the scents and trails of mana that were oozing through the cracked open window, then furrowed his brow at what he found.

The mana floating in was cold. The wind from the shore made it chilly to begin with, but the mana, too, was lowering the temperature. Every topiary, every lamp, every stone on the path—the entire estate was covered in a thin but dense layer of mana that felt like ice water. It was unwelcoming in a way that felt exclusive. This is not yours. It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine. Don’t touch.

He frowned, alarmed by how strong the scent was. Noble mansions were never easy places to navigate, but this one felt like the surface of a melting glacier. Freezing cold, yet slick and slippery. Clouds roll over the peaks like sandstorms. The crevasses have their mouths open.

Dominic cleared his throat weakly.

“Um, if it’s not too much,” he said quietly, “could you get me a glass of water?”

The man at the desk turned around and nodded.

“Of course, that’s not hard.”

He made his way to the door and opened it, glancing from left to right as if trying to decide which way meant water. He looked awkwardly over his shoulder at Dominic.

“I’ll be back as quick as I can,” he said.

Dominic simply nodded with a weak smile. The moment the door clicked closed behind, it melted off his face.

He slid out of bed, swinging his legs over the side. This was no place to stay and idle.

He tried to move the fingertips on his left arm. They barely managed to twitch, each minute action sending a jolt of burning hot pain through his entire body. He winced, then made himself relax.

“Heal,” he commanded.

A warmth, different from the fiery pain, rose on his skin and mixed into his blood. The bones, crushed to dust, began to shift and re-form.

Dominic grimaced as it quickly turned excruciating again. Healing magic alone was not an anesthetic. The bones cracked and snapped back into place, the flesh stretched unnaturally and reattached, the cuts on his skin wriggled and stitched themselves together. He had to feel all of it, every minute movement his body made. It was grotesque.

His skin finally latched onto itself and sealed shut, leaving a smooth surface where only torn flesh had been before. He stretched his arm out, twisting it and testing the muscles. The pain was gone. The bruises and cuts that had littered his body had disappeared as well. Dominic pushed himself away from the bed and stood.

He glanced around, looking for anything to wear, his own clothes ripped and torn and caked in salt. There was only an old, dust-covered cloak hanging from a hook in the corner. Dominic brushed it off and wrapped it around his shoulders.

At the door, he took a deep breath, carefully extending his senses into the hallway beyond. It was easy now that he was fully awake. There were empty spaces, rooms with made beds, the unmistakable scent of dust and linens. Nobody was around. He seemed to have ended up somewhere in the servants’ quarters, and everyone else was already out working for the day.

Dominic closed the door quietly behind him. He moved forward through the halls, putting the hood on his cloak up.

The further he went, the less sense he could make of the house. The walls were strangely decorated, built with dark wood and embellished with gold. The gilded designs were intricate and beautiful, yet at the same time dissonant. The gold was too bright, the wood polished too smoothly. The mana coming off the walls smelled of creaking boards and stale air. The stench of cleaning supplies. An aura as weak as driftwood. Holding its breath like the hull of a sinking ship.

Dominic frowned. He had known from the beginning that something about this place was wrong. He took a deep breath and extended his senses, sweeping through the halls and chambers as swiftly as he could. He needed information.

In an instant, an image of the mansion came flooding back to him. Footsteps shuffling. The rustling of robes and servant uniforms. Dirty laundry and frothing water. Creaking floorboards. Shouts in the kitchen, the sound of sharpening knives, the smell of fire and oil. Someone out in the garden, trimming the trees. The guards on duty by the doors. Earth and gravel and rain and metal. Across everything, that cold, unwelcoming veil. And behind him—

Dominic turned around, meeting the gaze of the tall man who was now standing there.

—a presence that burned. Someone like a mage. Mana that smelled like embers, and for some reason, a little bit like grass.

His hair was short and platinum blond, his skin a deep copper. Dominic stared, frozen, unable to move or react.

“…What’s this?” the man remarked, studying him. “The servants told me you were injured.”

He wasn't listening. It even took him a moment to realize that the man was speaking in a completely foreign language, and that he was understanding it anyway.

From the top of the man’s head, two short, crooked horns were growing, perched there as if completely natural.

He tilted his head, looking Dominic up and down. His horns glinted with the movement.

“Do I have the wrong person?” he mumbled to himself. “No. You’re the only stranger in the castle.”

They weren’t fake or simply ornaments. He could tell as a healer. These were real blood and bone horns. The man took a step closer, disregarding Dominic’s lack of a reaction.

“Someone healed you, then?” he presumed, grabbing Dominic’s arm, inspecting it. “No…”

His voice lowered as he came to a realization.

“You healed yourself.”

His gaze seemed to darken. He flicked his hand away with distaste. Only then did Dominic remember that someone had been speaking to him.

“I didn’t expect them to dredge up a healer,” the man mumbled. “How unfortunate.”

The mana had conveyed his intention clearly. It revealed the words he had resisted adding to the end of his sentence. How unfortunate.

For you.

“Come with me,” he commanded.

He turned away and swept down the hall without waiting for an answer. He spared only one glance over his shoulder back towards Dominic.

“There is something I need you to do.”