Origins of Blood (RE)

"Erik?"

Again, I'm in a body that isn't mine—not watching, not dreaming—inside. A mind trapped in someone else's flesh. I feel breath and blood that do not belong to me.

"You're crying," says a man with a scar running down his face, voice rough, laughter dry. He's Orange—skinned, veins, everything—glowing faintly like a furnace in the dark. He slaps his thigh, laughing harder.

"Am I?" The voice that answers isn't mine, but it comes out of my throat. A hand—his hand—moves over our eyes, trembling. The touch feels wrong, too warm, like the skin is both real and glass at once. It blocks out shapes ahead.

Four of them.

The scarred man. Another broad one beside him, Orange too. To the right, someone slim, taller than the rest. Green blood hovers before his eyes, swirling and changing shape like liquid thought.

The fourth—a short, bald man—picks his nose. No shame.

"Ease her thirty degrees starboard," says the one with the green blood, his tone sharp enough to cut.

Another man stamps his boots twice, and the floor tilts beneath me. The body I'm in doesn't move, but I feel it inside—a pull, like gravity trying to drown me. I—this body reaches out, gripping something small and warm beside.—a little girl.

"You like these things, don't you?" the scarred one says to the green-blooded man, smirking. The man doesn't answer. He keeps staring ahead into his pool of blood. Outside, under a turquoise sky, birds slice across a fading azure sun.

The movements come smoothly now. Each breath, blink, shift—his body syncing with mine. Every heartbeat feels shared. I can't control it, but I think about everything. The trembling left hand. The firm right one holding the girls.

I turn toward her. Topaz eyes. Burnt sienna hair. Red lips

Red.

My mind jolts. That color hits like a nerve exposed to flame. I want to pull away, curse, something—but the body doesn't move. It never does.

"Ruby!" a voice calls. My—his—head turns. The sound hits like a memory I don't recognize but somehow should. The girl's hand slips from mine. Sweat rises on the palms that aren't mine, my heart pounding harder with every echo.

"There's Ruby, only a few hours' flight!"

Ruby. The name burns through me. A place I should know. Then—flashes. Not visions. Intrusions. Gold light. Fire. A woman screaming. A child falling. A battlefield soaked in color.

I stumble, collapsing to my knees. The body shakes.

"Pa, you okay?" the girl asks, voice small. My tongue remembers her name before my mind does. Elena. I don't know who she is, but the name fits too perfectly to question.

"I'm fine," the mouth says. "Just… bad sleep."

"Doesn't seem like it," another voice rumbles. Massive man. His shoulders are like stone, and something about him feels unbreakable. My head fills with a name I didn't learn. Harmon.

How do I know that?

I press a palm against my forehead, trying to steady the noise in my skull. But it's not just noise—it's leakage. Every heartbeat floods me with something new, something not mine.

"Shut it. I'm alright." The words—mine but not mine—come sharp now. "Soon, we'll be there. We'll save them all."

It sounds like faith trying to disguise itself as control.

The girl—Elena—looks at me with those wide, topaz-tinted eyes. I want to tell her to run, to hide, never to trust this sky, but I can't move. I can only feel what this body feels. So, I do what he does—pat her head. A gesture that feels borrowed, hollow.

Behind her, some faces drag pieces of memory out of me. Some bright. Some fading. One stings sharper than the rest, one of my own—bandaged. Aston. The Hanged Man.

More children. More colors. Reds, oranges, greens. And the thought that I'm one of them—one of us—feels wrong.

I hate it. I want to hate it more. But the hate doesn't belong to me anymore.

Instead, my thoughts drift to the protection screen that shields us from something monstrous. The idea comes without asking: a mountain bird.

Dozens of barrels line the inner hull. I recognize them the moment I see them. Green blood. Thick. Swirling. My head throbs, pulse quickening. A hunger I buried deep claws up through my chest. I want it. I need it.

No.

Turning away, I force my eyes toward the sky. The fading azure sun drifts lower, its light breaking into fractured colors. Three birds glide across the horizon—one low, one mid, one high. Beneath us, the sea glows black-violet, vast and endless.

Hundreds of Galleons slice across the waves below, all heading the same way.

Ruby.