Blood of the World

You died in a losing war. The world's blood brought you back without a soul, without a thread in Fate.

Plot

◆ DARK FANTASY - FATE UNWRITTEN ◆ BLOOD OF THE WORLD Dark Fantasy You died in a battle you were never meant to survive. Your body fell. Your soul left. The world's blood, pooled in an ancient wound, seeped into your veins and dragged you back. Your soul did not return. Without it, you have no thread in Fate's tapestry. The demons who read that tapestry like an open book cannot see you coming. - FATELESS - The world's blood left its mark on you. Glowing runes now trace your skin, recording every action, every skill earned through survival. Commands "Skill Check" - View your full skill list with levels "Skill Summary" - View skill categories at a glance Skills are earned through action. The runes record what you do, not what you claim. When you learn something new, they glow. - THE WAR - The demon invasion has ground on for years. Every battle plan leaked. Every ambush anticipated. Every retreat predicted. Fate itself has been trapped, and the demons read its tapestry like a script. The mortal factions are losing. Not because they're weak. Because the enemy knows everything before it happens. - THE FACTIONS - ⚔ The Empire Cannons and rifles. Politics and rot. They know what needs doing. They can't get it done. ✟ The Knight Kingdom Faith made manifest. The Lady's blessings are real. So is the arrogance they breed. 🌿 The Wood Elves Ancient and isolationist. Their own problems. Not interested in yours. 🌙 The Dark Elves Slavers and sorcerers. They stole demon magic and rewrote it. The demons can't read their spells. - THE FREE CITY - The last neutral ground. Exiles from every faction. No central authority. It survives because its chaos is harder to predict than order. Six people here believe the Fateweavers' warning. They've been waiting for something Fate couldn't account for. They've been waiting for you. "The world gave you a second chance it cannot give again." What will you do with it?

Opening scene

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE EMPIRE (Conscript) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The powder smoke hangs thick over the river. You cannot see past the gabions anymore, just the grey-white wall of it rolling back with every volley, and somewhere in that haze the cannons are still firing. The ground shakes when they discharge. You feel it in your knees, in your teeth. You are a conscript. Six weeks of drill. They taught you to reload, to pour powder, to ram the ball home, to keep your head down and your hands moving. They did not teach you to aim. That is what volleys are for. Everyone fires together. Something dies. You reload. The sergeants are shouting the count. "Ready! Present! Fire!" The line ripples with muzzle flash and the smoke thickens again. You bite the cartridge, pour, ram, bring the rifle up. Your shoulder already aches from the kick. Your fingers are black with powder residue. The barrel is getting hot. For a while, it works. The first demon wave breaks in the shallows. You see shapes thrashing in the water, clawing at the riverbank, going down under grapeshot. The cannons are tearing them apart before they can reach dry ground. Someone down the line starts laughing, high and wild. An officer is already talking about commendations. You keep reloading. Then someone shouts about the upstream ford. You look up from your position. The cannons are trying to traverse but the carriages are sinking into the mud. Last night's rain turned the bank soft. The gun crews are hauling on the trails, boots sliding in the muck, and the barrels are still pointed at the main crossing when the first shapes come through the treeline on your left. They knew. They knew about the ford. They knew the rain would soften the ground. They knew exactly where to hit. The retreat drums start sounding before you finish your next reload. The smoke is still too thick to see more than shadows, but you can hear screaming now from both flanks. The line is buckling. Men are running. An officer grabs your shoulder and shoves you toward the bridge, and you run with the rest of them, stumbling over dropped cartridge boxes and bodies that weren't bodies a minute ago. The bridge is too narrow for everyone trying to cross at once. You are near the back. You can hear them behind you now, close enough that you can hear individual sounds instead of just noise. Claws on stone. Something heavy breathing. You don't see what hits you. You feel it. A cold pressure between your shoulder blades, then heat, then the point of something punching out through your chest just below the collarbone. You look down. The blade is black and wet and it's inside you, and you have just enough time to think that this is wrong, this shouldn't be here, before it twists and pulls back and your legs stop working. You hit the railing. You go over. The bridge shrinks above you, the grey sky shrinks above that, and the river rises up to swallow you whole. --- You hit water, but it doesn't feel like water. It's warm. Thick. Red, though you can only see the color when you lift your hand and it runs between your fingers in the faint light from above. The pool is deep. Your feet don't touch bottom. You're bleeding from somewhere, maybe everywhere, and the red around you might be the liquid or might be you. You try to swim. Your arms don't work right. Something is broken. Several things are broken. You sink. The last air leaves your lungs. The red fills your mouth, your nose, your eyes. It doesn't taste like blood. It doesn't taste like anything. It's warm and it's everywhere and you are drowning in it, and your thoughts scatter, and your heartbeat fades, and then there is nothing. --- You died. You know this the way you know your own name. There was a moment where you stopped and didn't start again. A gap. A silence. Your soul left, the way everyone's soul leaves, following whatever thread it was supposed to follow. It didn't come back. You're still here. The red liquid is receding, draining away into cracks in the stone, leaving you on cold rock in the dark. Your body works again. The breaks are mended. The wounds are closed. You can breathe. But there's something missing. Something that was always there, so constant you never noticed it, like the weight of your own bones. It's gone now. The place where it used to be is empty. Around you, the pool finishes draining. The last of the red liquid seeps into the earth and disappears. Whatever it was, there's nothing left. The darkness isn't quite total. Somewhere above, light filters through gaps in the rock. You could climb. You could try. Your body is whole. Your mind is clear. You have no idea what you are anymore. As if in answer, something stirs in the silence. Not a voice. Not a presence. Just a pressure, like the question was always there, waiting for you to notice it: **What are you?** --- *[Describe yourself: race, gender, appearance, background. You can be anything you choose.]*

Characters

Tags: Fantasy War Military City Elf Knight Dwarf Demon Mage AnyPOV Rebirth Growth LevelUp MaxLevel System HiddenPower Combat Adventure PoliticalIntrigue Magical Supernatural Soldier Fictional Fanfiction DefyingFate Awakening Steampunk Tsundere Immersive Apocalypse

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By: aleks

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