"My leg? What's wrong with my leg?"
The red-haired youth's voice trembled as he jerked his head down.
He hadn't felt anything.
Not a sting. Not a cut.
Just—silence.
Then he saw it.
And sothing inside him snapped.
His legs—his flesh—had already rotted away.
The skin was gone.
The muscle was gone.
All that remained were wet, blood-slick bones standing where his legs used to be.
And still—his body hadn't caught up.
His mind was frozen.
Stuck between panic and denial.
The blood and pus that oozed from his ruined limbs—
sank into the ground silently.
The dark-gray stone of the Mourning Depths
drank the fluid like thirsting soil.
And then—
it changed.
Beneath him, the ground turned a deep, hellish crimson.
As if the blood itself awakened sothing buried beneath.
"AhhhhhhHH!"
He scread.
This ti, it was human.
A sound of soone who just realized they weren't dying—they were being unmade.
He fell backwards, collapsing to the stone floor in a frantic sprawl.
And as soon as his hands touched the ground—
They began to rot.
Instantly.
Skin sloughing off like wet cloth.
Flesh liquefying, sliding off bone like hot wax.
His fingers dissolved.
His wrists followed.
Then the blood started bubbling.
Dark. Thick. Sickly sweet in its stench.
"No… no… no…"
He gasped and gurgled.
Hands clawing at air, eyes wide and unblinking, as chunks of his body dropped off with every motion.
He tried to crawl away.
But with every inch, he left behind bloody trails of half-lted muscle and shredded organs.
His thighs turned to pulp.
His waist slumped, barely held together by torn sinew.
And yet—he was still alive.
Still aware.
The sll was unbearable.
It wasn't just death—
it was corruption made manifest.
"SAVE ! SAVE !!"
Finally, he rembered.
Old Man Grey.
The guide. The only one who might know sothing—anything.
He reached out a rotting, skeletal hand, palm out, shaking with terror, dripping blood and strings of at.
"Please! Help !!"
But Old Man Grey—stepped back.
Twice.
Eyes wide.
Face pale.
Voice hoarse.
"No one approach him!"
His words cut like a whip.
And no one disobeyed.
Not because of respect.
But because they were already backing away.
Kacha!
His bones cracked—not with force, but with a sound like ancient wood splintering in a storm.
His legs collapsed inward.
The femurs—once proud, strong—crumbled into fine gray dust, as if they'd aged ten thousand years in seconds.
And it didn't stop there.
The rot was no longer just a physical thing.
It had entered the marrow.
It had seeped into ti.
His spine curved, caving in.
Shoulders sagged.
Every joint popped and cracked and then shattered, like glass under pressure.
Then—his hair paled.
Not slowly—not gradually—
But in two breaths, it turned into dry, brittle hay, the kind that would crumble at a touch.
His face…
Once youthful and proud—beca tight, wrinkled, and hollow.
Skin turned to bark.
Eyes sank, vanishing into deep, black pits.
His cheeks hollowed out like a mummy pulled from its tomb.
He reached out.
His left arm stretched, trembling—not toward a person.
Not toward salvation.
But toward nothing.
A aningless, pitiful reach—as if trying to grasp existence itself before it slipped through his fingers.
A groan slipped from his throat—low, wet, full of despair.
And then—
Crack.
His arm shattered, breaking into dust and chunks, raining onto the blood-soaked stones.
The last thing anyone saw—was his torso lting, his ribcage folding in, his organs liquefying, turning into a thick, black-red syrup.
His whole body collapsed into a puddle of blood, rot, and gore.
Slosh.
It all slumped down.
A heap of viscous, stinking fluid, where a man once stood.
Even that didn't last long.
The ground drank it in.
Every drop.
Every shred.
And the bones?
What remained of them—
turned to ash.
A mont later—nothing remained.
No bones.
No body.
No clothing.
No trace.
Just a small pile of red ash, barely enough to fill a hand.
That was all.
Everything else—
His pride, his fear, his ambition, his voice—
Had been erased.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
They just stood there—frozen—staring at the crimson ashes where the red-haired youth had vanished.
Not died.
Vanished.
Like a page torn from existence.
Even the most ruthless among them—those who had killed in cold blood, who had crushed enemies, who had spilled blood for glory—
They said nothing.
Because this wasn't battle.
This wasn't poison.
This wasn't a fatal wound.
This was decay. Erasure.
A slow, grotesque unraveling of life… that none of them could stop.
Or even understand.
Even Max—with his calm mind, steady heart, and will like tempered steel—
Felt it.
A sharp chill, climbing from his lower back, shooting upward along his spine like a spear of ice aid straight at the heavens.
His fists clenched.
Not out of fear.
But instinct.
That was not a natural death.
It was a ssage.
Old Man Grey, who had seen horrors most couldn't dream of, stood with a trembling breath stuck in his throat.
He swallowed hard.
A bead of sweat rolled down his weathered cheek and dripped to the blood-red stone below.
He had survived dozens of expeditions into the Mourning Depths.
He had seen bodies explode from within.
People driven mad by cursed echoes.
n who aged a century in a minute.
But this—
This kind of death?
He had never seen it.
The wind no longer blew.
The infernal mist around them… felt heavier.
Thicker.
As if the Mourning Depths itself
was waiting.
Watching.
Tasting their fear.
No one dared to speak.
No one dared to exhale too loudly.
Weapons remained unsheathed.
Eyes scanned every inch of fog.
Max stood still—
Body tensed, breath shallow.
His senses—usually sharp as blades, capable of detecting a flicker of killing intent from hundreds of ters—felt numb.
He hadn't seen it.
Hadn't sensed it.
Hadn't felt a thing.
And yet…
He'd just watched soone die in the most horrifying way imaginable.
He had co ready.
ntally. Physically.
Prepared for battle—
For swords and claws.
For explosions of mana and deadly strikes in the fog.
He thought the danger ca from the infernal beings—that if one died in the Mourning Depths, it would be in combat, struggling against so abomination twisted by infernal energy.
But now—
He had seen a death with no attacker.
No claws.
No curse.
No warning.
Just… decay.
Rot that crept silently through the soul, and devoured everything.
And that, to Max—was more terrifying than any monster.
Because the scariest thing in this world was never the strongest.
It was the unknown.
Ghosts? Gods?
Those were titles.
Nas.
Geniuses like them had long since stopped fearing superstition. Even the so-called "gods" were just mortals who stood too high. Ghosts? Just another class. Another trick.
But this?
This had no na.
No shape.
No origin.
And that made it impossible to prepare for.
In that mont—
Max understood sothing chilling.
They weren't geniuses here.
Not now.
Not in the face of this place.
They were mortals again.
Walking through a cursed night, surrounded by shadows that didn't speak, didn't move, but watched.
The kind of fear that crept into the chest, settled in the spine, and made a man question if even blinking too loud might get him killed.
They had only crossed 5,000 miles.
Still 3,500 to go before reaching the 1,500-mile zone.
This wasn't even the deep end.
This was the edge.
And already—
Sothing unexplainable had claid a life.
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