Unmade Chapter 5: chapter 5: a pale sky

Read chapter 5 of Unmade by churro on NovelPedia.

Vale found himself surrounded by boundless darkness once more, the darkness of rest. Yet he could already feel it: he was already waking up yet again. He moved his hand. The sensation that met his skin wasn’t the soft comfort of the hospital bed he remembered. No this felt different, Warm and Wet. But not like water. The texture, the temperature, it carried a strange weight, thicker and heavier than it. What unsettled him most was that only the front of his body felt submerged. The liquid clung to his skin as though he were lying in a shallow puddle of it. 'What… is this?' Vale wondered, his thoughts sluggish as he forced his eyes open. His eyelids resisted, trembling faintly under the effort, as if they too feared what he might see. When his vision finally cleared, he saw red. Not the dim, dark red of rust or light reflected through his eyelids, but it was vivid, wet crimson. The ground beneath him shimmered faintly, rippling as he moved. He blinked once and then twice, then lifted his hand from the surface. The color dripped from his fingers but didn’t cling, each drop slid back into the puddle as though drawn by some invisible pull. A heavy, metallic scent filled his nose. Vale’s eyes widened slightly. “Is this…?” The realization came swiftly. That smell was thick and unmistakable. Iron. The only liquid that carried such a scent was blood. He was lying face-first in a vast pool of blood. Despite the horror of the sight, Vale didn’t panic. Instead, he exhaled slowly and pushed himself up, using both arms to lift his weary body. The blood continued to behave unnaturally, refusing to stain his skin or hair, sliding back into place each time it touched him, as if it belonged only to that puddle and nowhere else. He took a deep breath, clearing his thoughts, forcing calm into his movements. After a moment, he shifted onto his knees, the ripples spreading outward before settling again. Slowly, Vale raised his gaze, trying to see, trying to understand just where he had woken up this time. Vale lifted his gaze and the higher he looked, the deeper his confusion grew. The puddle beneath him wasn’t just large; it wasn’t a puddle at all. The blood stretched outward far beyond his sight, forming a vast expanse, an ocean rather than a pool. In the far distance, barely visible through a faint haze, jagged mountains of black obsidian rose from the crimson surface, their sharp peaks piercing the horizon. They loomed impossibly tall, encircling the blood-red sea like walls meant to trap it, and him, within. Even from so far away, Vale could tell their scale was monstrous, each peak larger than any mountain he had ever imagined. He tilted his head upward, his eyes drawn higher still. The sky above was… wrong. There were white clouds, no shades of blue or gray, no color at all. The heavens were an endless, pale white void, empty and silent. Yet something hung there, something that made Vale’s breath catch. A sun. But not one of light. It was black, an all-consuming sphere of darkness that burned without flame, its presence devouring rather than illuminating the sky. And beside it… a second one. Vale’s eyes widened. He rose slowly to his feet, the thick surface of the blood rippling faintly under his movement. He turned, scanning the horizon, and what he saw next froze him in place. Three more black suns. They hung in the sky like great eyes of shadow, identical to the first two. Together, all five formed a perfect circle, each positioned as though guarding something unseen at their center. Massive celestial bodies of living darkness, surrounding the heart of an impossible sky. Vale stood in astonishment, his eyes wide as he took in the haunting beauty of the landscape before him. The scene was both breathtaking and profoundly unsettling it was a world painted in crimson and shadow. “I didn’t think I’d dream like this when I first fell asleep,” he murmured, a faint, eerie smile slowly curving across his lips. Everything about him seemed identic