Dimensional Descent

"Oh? You recognize these?" Aina asked softly. "I guess you would, right?"

She took her time to stake the wooden pillars into the ground. Every time she touched it and another layer of her skin fell to the ground, rotten and sizzling, the Brazingers would flinch again. They couldn't even feel Aina's earlier rage, and yet this silence felt so much more oppressive, the heaviness of it all gripping at their throats and pressing down.

"They call this Black Wood, a simple name, quite short, succinct... I guess its history speaks for itself."

The calmness in Aina's voice was eerie. They had heard too much about this supposed Black Wood, enough to know that most wouldn't dare to even try to handle it without specialized equipment, and that went for experts that surpassed even the Seventh Dimension.

Just looking at the ground they were pierced into told a story of a thousand words. Black veins pulsed into the soil, drying and cracking the land as though a curse was slowly spreading through it. This didn't seem to stop until the phenomena had stretched over ten meters from the location of the pillars of Black Wood.

"Look at you all, already in the Sixth Dimension and yet so afraid of this wood. It doesn't move, it doesn't bite, and yet you mighty Brazingers can't look at it without shivering. I wonder how you'd react if you were in the Third Dimension like my mother?"

Raffyr felt his heart leapt into his throat. Not long ago, he had been planning on making Leonel pay for simply being associated with Aina, a "stain" on their family. And yet, now standing before the woman herself, he couldn't seem to even look her in the eye.

properties. Regardless of who touches it, the suffering is the exact same.

executioners who acted that day, but I think I've changed my mind. My man showed me a better way. Your entire family is rotten to the core, it would be better

hand not moving her in the slightest. This was a sort of pain that she had dealt with every moment of everyday, and let alone

until she gained Leonel's Cleansing Waters did that horrible, unbearable pain lessen, but by then it had already been almost two decades. To her, this was absolutely nothing, and seeing the fear on the faces of the so-called Brazinger geniuses before her, she only felt more

special bloodlines or abilities...

father had never described how it had happened, but Aina had enough knowledge now to understand exactly what would

her head was shaved entirely bald, leaving nothing between her and the Black

of her back, eating away at it slowly. It would make it sizzle and crack, a sick burning sensation piercing into her very soul as it

got to her muscles and fat beneath, the curse would have already started eating away at the front of her body like a slowly burning flame, just taking off one layer at a time until she was nothing but a husk

only continuing to do its diligent work as it ate through

already died by now. The shock would be too great and the mortal human body could die even to burns that were too severe, let alone

the scent it created from rotting flesh could force lucidity and force one to stay alive. At the same time, because the Black Wood didn't work on bone nor nerves, but only on unrelated flesh, even when there was no longer any flesh on

last thing to disappear was the intricacies of one's expression and the sound of one's voice. Everything from the horrified screeches of pain to the twisting of one's expression when sounds could no longer be made

was all finished, there would be nothing left but a