Serpent’s Spire.

”The ancient remains of a fallen kingdom. Stray from its path and you will fall into an endless labyrinth.”

Aginald had foolishly thought that the Serpent’s road would be the most dangerous thing they would encounter.

Oh, how wrong he was.

He was overconfident. He believed that so long as he was with you, the other witch who shares an atelier with him, there would be nothing to fear. Together, nothing has stood in your way.

However, Brimhats do not exist within conventional laws.

It all happened so fast. One moment, Aginald by your side and blended into the cave’s shadows through the spell carved onto his cloak. In the next, he was being dragged away. Aginald tried to let you know what was going on, but his scream was silenced by countless writhing arms. They took his pen and conjuring ink, and in the earlier chaos, the small book with prepared spells he carried with him—a habit leftover from his apprentice days, had been dropped somewhere along the Serpent’s road.

He could do little more than force out gasping cries from his lips. The sound didn’t travel far, swallowed up by the vast darkness of Serpent’s Spire.

The arms tightened around his throat.

“Someone who hides away within the darkness should actually have something to hide.”

Then, pain.

Exploding from the base of his skull, the pain glided downwards. Something was slicing through Aginald’s back, sharp and precise as a surgeon’s scalpel and he is splitting apart with it. Aginald thrashed, throwing himself forward—then backwards in a bid to escape, but he continued to fall apart. Unbearably hot then chillingly cold, it entered him, burrowing through the tightly bound fibers of his sinew and making itself home within the marrows of his bone.

Aginald screamed.

When had he been let go?

He crawled forward. His fingers—unbearably sharp now, digging into the cobblestone tiles.

He can’t feel his legs.

Aginald’s cloak billowed out behind him, as black as the night. Beneath it, his body bubbled like the frothing foam atop a boiling pot. Bones elongating and shrinking as they pleased, they tore open wounds through his skin to make room for their growth. Tender to air without their natural covering, Aginald’s flesh pulsed as it climbed along the stark white paths. They wove themselves into each other, instinctively searching for respite from the air before quieting as a thick layer of fur and skin covered them.

He is—

He’s—

His cape could hide it no longer.

Aginald reached out towards you.

“I’m losing—” Myself.

There was no more him.

He merged with it, and “myself” was not a word it understood. “Myself” rattled around in its consciousness for a moment, then dissipated into nothingness.

It lifted its head. Lips pulling back to reveal two rows of razor sharp teeth, it backed away from the edge of the path. You locked eyes with it, and it raised its haunches.

Unfamiliar. Bad.

Its ear flicked, once. Wind. Turning around, it tensed its powerful hind legs, launching itself in the other direction.