Chapter 16 - Raw Flesh and Rusted Iron
The fog did not just obscure their vision; it tasted of copper and forgotten prayers.
As Nyra, Jude, and Xylas stepped further away from the obsidian door, they found themselves stopping every few paces, paralyzed by the sheer wrongness of the environment. In the Aurelian Academy, everything was deliberate—the marble was polished, the mana-lights were rhythmic, the gardens were symmetrical.
Here, the world was a jagged, chaotic scream.
"Look at the rocks," Xylas whispered, his voice trembling as he pointed to a cluster of obsidian spires. They weren't just stones. Upon closer inspection, the mineral had grown in the shape of human ribcages, interlaced and calcified, forming a natural fence of bone-mineral.
Jude reached out to touch a nearby surface, but he pulled back as if burned. The "atmosphere" wasn't just air; it was a pressurized medium. Every time they inhaled, the ash felt like it was trying to map the inside of their lungs. They noticed the details they had missed in the initial shock: the way the "bruised plum" sky didn't just sit above them, but seemed to pulse in time with a slow, subterranean heartbeat. The ground didn't feel solid; it felt like walking on the skin of a drum stretched over a void.
"This isn't a mountain," Nyra realized, her eyes wide as she examined a "vein" of glowing, toxic violet liquid seeping through a crack. "This is a body. We are walking on something that died, but forgot to stop growing."
The sheer scale of the details—the microscopic fractals in the falling soot, the way the shadows moved independently of the light—made them feel like ants staring at a masterpiece of horror. They realized with a sinking dread that their "High Mage" education had prepared them for a world of order, but they were now in the realm of absolute, gothic entropy.
The silence was broken by a sound that shouldn't exist in nature. It was the sound of a heavy, iron chain being dragged over wet glass.
Then, the fog tore open.
Emerging from the gloom was a horror they would later know as The Orphan of the Empty Maw.
It stood fifteen feet tall, a spindly, nightmare-frame draped in the tattered remains of thousands of white funeral ribbons. Its "skin" was the color of a drowned man, stretched tight over a cage of rusted iron that served as its torso. But the horror was its head—or lack thereof. Where a face should have been, there was only a massive, hollow vertical slit that spanned from its crown to its chest.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Within that "Maw," there was nothing but a swirling, absolute darkness that seemed to pull the very light out of the air. The creature didn't breathe; it inhaled the existence of things around it.
A few yards away, pinned against a jagged ridge of rib-rock, was a woman.
She was a vision of battle-hardened grace, wearing armor made of scavenged monster-chitin and dull steel. She moved with a speed that exceeded anything the trio had seen in the Academy’s Rank-S duels. Her blade whistled through the air, trailing sparks of dim blue fire, but as she struck the Orphan, the darkness within its maw simply swallowed the impact.
She was fighting a god of hunger with a toothpick.
"We have to run," Jude breathed, his knees buckling. "Xylas, Nyra... look at her. She’s stronger than a High Proctor, and she can't even scratch it. If we go out there, we die in seconds."
They felt it then—the true terror of the new world. Back in Soluna, they had their Ranks. They had their Status. Here, they were just meat. The realization was a cold, suffocating blanket. They were powerless. Even with their full mana, they would be less than dust to the Orphan.
But as the woman’s blade shattered against the creature’s iron ribs, and the Orphan raised a multi-jointed limb to crush her, Nyra saw a flash of a different memory.
She didn't see a monster. She saw Kaelo.
She remembered him standing in the middle of a chaotic Academy hall, helping a fallen student while others laughed. She remembered his quiet, unwavering warmth. “Kindness isn't a calculation of strength,” his voice echoed in her mind. “It’s the only thing that stays real when the world starts to glitch.”
The fear was still there—sharp and toxic—but the paralysis snapped.
"We can't win," Nyra whispered, her hand going to her belt, gripping a crude Aether-Glass explosive. "But we can't let her die alone."
Without another word, the three "weaklings" charged into the ash, screaming a defiance that the mountains hadn't heard in centuries.
The woman watched in absolute, stunned disbelief as three children in pristine, high-collared robes—clothes that looked like they belonged in a palace, not this hellscape—threw themselves at the Orphan of the Empty Maw.
They had no magic. They fought with raw, clumsy strength, swinging rocks and throwing small, sparking glass balls that caused tiny, pathetic explosions against the Orphan's hide.
Who are these fools? she wondered. She could see they were terrified. She could see they were weak. Yet, they fought with an instinctual coordination she had never seen—a desperate, noble suicide.
She had a way out. In her gauntlet was a [Crystalline Echo of the First Sun]. She had been saving it for the moment her own heart was failing, a final escape to burn through the fog and find a sanctuary. It was her most precious possession.
But as she watched Nyra leap in front of a killing blow, she felt a spark of something she hadn't felt in years: Shame. She couldn't let these strange, hopeful idiots die for her. She made her decision. She wouldn't use the crystal to escape alone. She would use it to anchor them all.
A Warning to New Readers :
If you are expecting a normal webnovel where the heroes instantly level up, shoot fireballs, and easily defeat monsters, you are in the wrong place. In Centuries of Goodbye, the magic systems are parasites, the sky is a painted lie, and the monsters don't just kill you—they erase your existence. Welcome to a true Gothic RPG.
The Anatomy of a Dead World :
Did you feel the shift? The Shattered Teeth isn't just a location—it is a biological rejection. I wanted the horror to feel absolute, where even the rocks look like calcified human ribcages and the ground feels like a drum stretched over a void.
The Birth of the Orphan :
The Orphan of the Empty Maw is my favorite monster design yet. The true horror of Soluna’s deleted realities is erasure. That is why it doesn't have a face—just a hollow slit that inhales the existence of things around it.
The Echo of the Warmth :
When the trio realized they were powerless without their Academy Ranks, they could have easily run. But Kaelo's voice—reminding them that kindness isn't a calculation of strength—was the only thing that kept them anchored in the dark.
A Word to the Archive :
The mysterious woman was ready to use her [Crystalline Echo of the First Sun] to escape alone, but the desperate bravery of these strange kids made her feel shame instead. Who do you think this woman is, and how will they survive the Orphan's next strike?
___Oceansilver