Chapter 66: Welcome Back To Realm of The Evil

We stood close to the inverted pentagram carved into the church floor, Arthur, Mary, Theodore, Sera, and me, all five of us gathered in a loose half circle around the edges of the symbol like we were afraid getting too close too soon would summon whatever waited on the other side before we were ready for it.

It was time. We were going back to the Realm of the Evil.

We had already said our goodbyes. Mother had held onto me longer than usual that morning, long enough that I’d felt the tremor in her hands even after she let go. Father had said very little, which somehow said more than words could have.

Sera had gotten her own version of it too, the same trembling hands, the same too-long embrace, except this time it had been for both of us at once, two people walking out the same door into the same unknown.

None of us said much now. There wasn’t a lot left worth saying.

I let out a breath, slow and heavy, and glanced down at myself. No bag. No supplies slung over my shoulder, nothing that made this look like the kind of journey you packed for.

The reason was simple, if not exactly comforting.

We might not come back for half a year. Maybe longer. Time didn’t move the same way inside the Realm, and there was no point bringing anything that wouldn’t survive whatever waited for us there anyway.

Nightmares weren’t something you found easily. They were even harder to put down once you did.

We talked a little more, small, quiet things that didn’t matter, the sort of conversation people have when they’re trying to delay something without admitting that’s what they’re doing. Then, one by one, we stepped onto the pentagram.

When I opened my eyes again, the church was gone.

[Welcome Back To Realm of The Evil, Awakened Edmund Rhys]

[You Are On The Island of The Smiling Starfish]

[Threat Grade: 3]

’Hmm... Not bad but well not good either, I don’t think we will find a Nightmare in a 3rd Grade Threat Area... But we did find a Great Horror in a 2nd Grade,’ I thought, unimpressed.

I was standing on a cliff.

The sky above stretched wide and furious, thick with dark, roiling clouds that pulsed faintly with veins of lightning, the flashes crawling sideways through the cloud cover rather than striking down, like something enormous was breathing just behind the storm.

Through the gaps in the canopy far below, a dim crimson moonlight bled through, painting everything in shades of dried blood and shadow.

The ground beneath my boots was black and faintly sticky, clinging in thin threads whenever I shifted my weight.

I made my way toward the others, who were already gathered near the cliff’s edge, staring down into whatever waited below.

I understood why the moment I reached them.

Beneath the cliff was a forest which stretched out for miles, an endless sea of trees the color of old wounds, their bark rotten and split, leaves hanging limp and wrong in shades of deep crimson that had no business belonging to anything alive.

Even from up here, I could feel negativity radiating off them.

"Damn," Theodore muttered, and for once I didn’t think he was exaggerating.

I turned to Arthur. "Water?"

He nodded, already reaching into the small pouch at his hip, and pulled out a single glass bottle. He handed it over without a word.

The bottle was worth more than it looked.

Every Awakened preparing to advance to a Silver Core through the Realm carried one, an Awakened-ranked artifact with exactly one function, deceptively simple on paper and endlessly valuable in practice. Pour spiritual power into it, and it gave you clean water in return, an ordinary miracle in a place where almost nothing else could be trusted.

I poured a thread of my own spiritual power into the glass, watching the liquid shimmer faintly gold before settling into something clear and still. I drank slowly, eyes still fixed on the forest below, letting the coolness settle the nervous heat building somewhere behind my ribs.

We had been given two of these bottles total. One for Sera and Mary. One for the three of us. Small mercy, maybe, but a mercy all the same, given everything else about this place seemed determined to take rather than give.

I capped the bottle and passed it back, and for a moment none of us said anything at all.

The wind up here carried a strange, metallic taste, faint enough to ignore if you weren’t paying attention, impossible to forget once you noticed it.

Somewhere far below, deep in that rotten crimson canopy, something let out a long, low sound that might have been a cry or might have been something else entirely, and none of us particularly wanted to find out which.

Mary shifted her weight beside me, arms crossed, eyes scanning the tree line with the kind of focus that meant she was already cataloguing escape routes.

Theodore had gone quiet again, jaw tight, and Sera stood a little apart from the rest of us, staring down at the forest with an expression I couldn’t quite place, something caught between awe and dread.

Arthur, of all of us, surprisingly looked the calmest.

I looked at each of them in turn, feeling the weight of the last few minutes settle somewhere heavier than my stomach.

I thought of Mother’s trembling hands, of Father’s careful silence, of the church floor and the pentagram and the version of me that had stepped onto it not knowing what waited on the other side.

Well. Now I knew, at least a little.

I straightened, rolled my shoulders once, and let the nervous edge in my chest settle into something steadier, something I could actually use.

"Well," I said, glancing around at the four of them, "let’s start our journey, I guess?"

Nobody answered right away.

Then... Theodore huffed out something close to a laugh, low and humorless, and started walking to the opposite side of the foreset

The rest of us followed him without a second thought.