F-Rank Soul Eater-Chapter 165: Sacrifice was the norm [DOS]

I do not know why the realization shocked me. Perhaps because I had still clung to the belief that this place operated by different rules.

Nobler ones.

It does not.

Survival is the only scripture beyond the Gate.

"Take what you can," Chronovore advised. "Sentiment in the Glass feeds nothing." It hissed.

("Chronovore seems to be quite talkative here. Till now, it has not responded to me" Soren thought out loud.)

I hesitated only a moment before reaching for the grass cloak.

The instant it settled over my shoulders, a coolness spread through me.

The exhaustion in my limbs softened, as if roots had grown into unseen soil beneath my feet. My breathing steadied.

The ache in my spirit dulled to something manageable.

"Good," Chronovore hissed with approval. "It binds to vitality."

I lifted the flowing helmet next. It felt weightless in my hands, yet dense with quiet awareness.

"Wear it," Chronovore urged. "It will blur you. Hide you from other souls. Especially those who remember..."

The Water That Remembers.

That bastard that wanted my wife’s name.

Even thinking of it sent a chill through me.

I placed the helmet over my head. The world shifted subtly, as though viewed through deep water.

My reflection in the cave wall blurred into something unrecognizable.

That would help.

After what I had faced, anonymity was a shield worth carrying.

I gathered the gauntlets and the belt as well, fastening them carefully. Each piece settled against me with strange familiarity, as if relieved to be worn again.

Perhaps they remembered being whole.

This was my first interaction with the treasures of this world.

Shade Treasures.

At the back of the chamber, beyond a curtain of hanging roots, I found something else.

An exit.

A narrow passage sloping upward, its walls scratched by countless small hands.

I followed it.

The tunnel opened abruptly onto a cliffside.

Cold air struck my face.

Far below, nestled against jagged rock and pale plains, stood what could only be described as a town.

Structures clustered together like wary animals seeking warmth. Pale lights flickered faintly between them. Movement—slow, indistinct—shifted through narrow paths.

Civilization.

Or something pretending to be.

Behind me lay the cave and the memory of what I had done.

To the other side lay the Water That Remembers.

I stood there for a long moment.

Then I chose.

I stepped forward—toward the town.

By the time I reached the so-called town, my fear had settled into something colder.

The town sat beneath the cliff like a wound in the earth, ringed by a jagged wall of fused bone and blackened timber. A gate stood at its mouth—two crooked slabs that leaned toward each other as if whispering secrets no one else was meant to hear.

Before it stretched a single, orderly line.

Souls waited.

They came in shapes both familiar and wrong.

A stag with twelve branching antlers stood ahead of me, its body translucent, ribs visible beneath a hide that shimmered like morning frost. It looked gentle, almost reverent, lowering its head whenever the wind passed.

Behind it shuffled something squat and furred, like a woolly rhinoceros dredged from an age long buried.

Its breath came out in slow plumes of ash. Its eyes, however, were small and anxious.

Further up the queue, I glimpsed a massive bird with hooked talons and a skull-like face, feathers molting into drifting motes of shadow.

Near it coiled a serpent thick as a tree trunk, scales patterned in extinct constellations. A pack of fox-shaped souls whispered to one another, their tails splitting and rejoining as if indecisive.

Docile. Predatory. Terrified. Resigned.

Yet they all shared one thing: they wore the memory of animals—some I knew, some humanity had only ever guessed at from bone fragments and dust.

"It is because this place leans toward the human world," Chronovore murmured within my mind. "Nearness demands comprehension. The mind of man insists on shapes it can endure. So souls become beasts remembered, beasts imagined, beasts that were once hunted."

I swallowed.

"But do not be deceived," it added. "Familiarity does not mean harmlessness."

I believed it. After all, I had experienced it first hand.

Fear pulsed beneath my borrowed calm. If not for the grass cloak draped over my shoulders—its woven blades constantly shifting, drinking in the echo of my humanity—I would have fled.

The coat dampened the warmth of my human presence, it pressed it flat.

Less human meant less noticeable.

I stepped into the queue.

My goal was simple. Information.

I needed to know how to find the Eldritch soul that had slaughtered my family.

If this town truly possessed a way to repel such horrors, then somewhere within its walls would be knowledge.

Whispers drifted along the line like wind through reeds.

"This is the remaining town that can stop their attacks..."

"As long as the Eldritch do not cross the boundary, we are safe."

"I heard it costs so much, but being alive is better."

My eyes brightened beneath the moving helmet at my side.

So this place was capable of holding back an Eldritch.

I had seen what these creatures could do, destroying human cities luke a child falling dominoes tiles.

If i coujd find how these souls protected themselves, then maybe my chances of killing one would improve.

Even better... perhaps it was the same one. The same Eldritch that tore through my home like a laughing storm.

Perhaps this was not only refuge.

Perhaps it was a hunting ground.

My hunting ground.

Yes. I would kill it here.

My emotions flared, and gazes turned towards me.

"Calm yourself. " Chronovore warned.

Apparently, the coat I had on could only protect me if I held tight my emotions.

Thankfully, the gazes drifted away. They were more concerned with other things.

Gently and surely, the line crept forward. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

At the gate’s far end stood the guard.

It resembled an ostrich, but stretched grotesquely tall—its neck was long and sinewed, feathers slick and dark like oil on water. Its legs were pillars of coiled muscle. Where its beak should have ended cleanly, the edges split slightly, revealing layered teeth beneath.

Its eyes were old.

And calculating.

Cunning.

The queue moved again.

Then—

A scream.

A towel-shaped soul ahead of me was struck sideways by a violent burst of condensed soul energy.

It tumbled across the dust, fibers unraveling at the edges. The ostrich had moved so fast I barely saw it.

"I—I don’t have enough!" the towel cried, its voice fraying. "Please! I can still pay some! I only want to enter. I want my family safe!"

It unfolded itself desperately.

Within its layered folds were six smaller towels, each trembling, each with faint stitched eyes.

Children.

The guard tilted its head.

"Gate fee," it rasped. "Required measure of negative yield... Insufficient."

Its gaze slid across the little ones.

It licked the side of its beak.

"Alternative accepted."

The children clung tighter to their parent, tiny fibers knotting in panic.

The ostrich leaned forward, shadow swallowing them.

"What will it be?" it asked calmly. "Remain beyond the boundary until the Eldritch arrive... or surrender one unit."

The queue murmured.

This was not outrage at the demand.

No, it was agreement.

The towel soul trembled violently. I could feel the storm inside it—love colliding with terror. Its fibers tightened, then loosened.

Slowly... it nodded.

One small towel was pulled free.

The child screamed, calling for its parent, threads stretching thin as it resisted. But the parent held firm, voice breaking as it whispered something too soft for me to hear.

The ostrich opened its stomach.

It did not open like flesh.

It unlatched.

A seam split along its torso, revealing a hollow filled with swirling, compressed darkness.

The child was pushed inside.

The seam sealed.

Instantly, the ostrich’s tail flared brighter—a swollen orb of dim crimson light gathering near its base. I realized that was where the toll was stored.

Negative emotion, condensed and hoarded.

Power.

The parent re-formed itself, smaller now.

Broken.

The line moved again.

Around me, the murmurs resumed.

"That was Necessary."

"One for many."

"Survival is arithmetic."

I said nothing.

But something inside me hardened, as another realization hit me.

Maybe I was just too human for this strange world.

After all, none from mine. Even criminals would agree with this.

First the small stone soul in the cave and now here.

More and more, they were proving to me that this was how survival worked in this world.

But even more painful was that it was considered as the norm.

Sacrifice was the norm

And I stepped forward with the rest.

(Author’s Note: So its that time of our lives again, when the Eldritch horror known formally as exams raise its ugly head. Pray for my soul. But don’t worry, I’ll still load more. Also, hou guys stopped commenting. Now, i dont know if I am doing a good job or not. Or if the plot is bland or interesting. Please comment. I want to know and improve. Thank you)