The air went heavy, a weight pressing into my chest. My vision darkened at the edges as a familiar pull clawed at my mind, something old and lingering, something I had felt before in the presence of the rift. It wasn’t just some remnant of magic drifting through the ruin. No, this was something worse.
The thing behind us had shifted. No longer just a flicker at our backs—it was ahead.
Materializing in our path.
Asterion sucked in a sharp breath, stumbling back a step. My hand had already dropped to my sword.
The chamber stretched around us, vast but claustrophobic, its damp stone walls lined with sigils that barely flickered in protest of the entity’s presence. The thing took form at the center, swirling into existence like ink spilled in water. It pulsed—wrong, inconsistent, flickering from one shape to another—sometimes humanoid, sometimes monstrous, sometimes nothing but a smear of emptiness against the world. It did not belong here.
But the eyes—
I knew those eyes.
Not eyes, exactly, but an imitation of them. A memory half-buried, dredged up in flickering yellow light. The color of an old nightmare clawing its way into the waking world. Not Belisarius himself. But an echo. A fragment. A piece of something that should have never been left behind.
It moved.
Asterion was already circling, his movements slow and measured, hand drifting toward his dagger, watching for an opening. I wasted no time. There was no time. My mana reserves were a breath away from depletion—there would be no grand incantations, no violent bursts of arcane force to tear it apart. Just steel and movement.
My blade hissed from its sheath, a clean, practiced motion. The entity twisted toward me, its body warping, anticipating. A lesser opponent might have hesitated. I didn’t.
I lunged.
The first strike cleaved through ephemeral mass, the sensation like slicing through dense fog laced with glass. It felt wrong, my blade catching on something that should not exist, something that resisted and yet had no substance. The entity convulsed. A shudder ran through its form, and then tendrils burst outward, writhing like severed nerves seeking a connection.
Asterion was already moving, his dagger flashing in the dim glow of the chamber, striking fast, shallow cuts against what passed for the creature’s form. He was a fighter trained in precision, and despite the situation, there was no wasted movement.
The entity shrieked.
A sound without true voice. A corruption of sound. Not a cry of pain, but something deeper—something that rattled the bones, scraped against the mind. It was furious.
The chamber quivered around us. The air warped. The stone beneath my feet felt less real. Dust spilled from the crumbling ceiling, tiny fragments of rock rattling down like the ruin itself was gasping under the weight of this intrusion.
It lashed out.
Too fast. Too many limbs.
I twisted, instinct pulling me out of reach as jagged, shifting appendages scraped through empty air, mere inches from my ribs. Another tendril lashed toward my face, but I caught it mid-motion, my free hand snapping up to redirect the attack. The texture against my glove was cold, slick, shifting, like gripping smoke made solid for only a breath before dissolving. It wasn’t natural.
Asterion lunged low, slicing across the entity’s shifting mass, carving through rather than at it. His blade met resistance, then cut, the tendrils snapping back, recoiling. The entity flickered wildly, struggling to maintain its form. It was unstable.
I used that.
A breath. A single moment. That was all I needed.
I pivoted on my back foot, dropping low and driving my sword upward in a brutal arc. The blade sank deep. Not into flesh, not into something real, but into the heart of the thing’s existence.
It buckled.
The shriek that followed was a shuddering wail, not just sound but a presence collapsing inward, distorting the air itself. The weight of it crushed in on my skull, pressing into my ribs like an unseen hand. The chamber trembled.
A final, violent pulse.
And then—
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The presence evaporated.
Not a retreat. Not a death. Just… gone. Torn apart by its own instability. Whatever held it together had been severed. But not erased.
Not truly.
I stood still, my breath even, my grip firm on my sword. The tension in the chamber remained, the space where the entity had existed feeling wrong, scraped raw.
Asterion let out a slow breath, his fingers still tight around the hilt of his dagger. His shoulders were squared, his stance still primed for movement, but the sharp focus in his eyes had shifted into something else.
"That," he muttered, voice low, "was unpleasant."
I exhaled through my nose, rolling my shoulder to ease the residual ache. "It wasn’t real."
Asterion shot me a flat look. "It was real enough."
I didn’t argue.
The ruin groaned.
Not in the way old structures did, not the slow settling of time-worn stone, but a warning. A sound that sent a sharp pulse through my instincts.
The air shifted.
Not magic. Not directly. But something woven into the foundation of this place. A reaction to what had just transpired. I could feel the weight of it, a pressure in the bones of the ruin itself.
Asterion noticed it too. His head tilted slightly, sharp gaze flicking toward the ceiling, the cracks in the stonework that now stretched further than before.
Then he turned toward me and jerked his head toward the exit. "Move."
I didn’t argue.
The ruin was collapsing.
Whether from our battle, from the thing’s eradication, or from the slow failure of whatever ancient wards had once held it together, it no longer mattered.
We had done enough damage.
And whatever we had fought—whatever had been watching from beyond—wasn’t gone. Not truly.
As we moved, our steps quick but deliberate, the walls around us trembled, fractures forming with each second that passed. The ceiling above gave a groaning protest, dust spilling in lazy sheets.
We weren’t going to wait to find out how long it would hold.
The path to the exit was short, but every footstep felt like walking through the ribs of a dying beast, the ruin’s very bones rattling apart beneath our passage. The sigils along the walls flickered—some guttering out, others flaring unnaturally bright. Warnings, threats, remnants of magic that no longer had a master to direct it.
The weight of the thing we had fought—not its presence, but its absence—pressed against the space behind me like a second shadow.
I did not look back.
Asterion was ahead, slipping through the narrowing tunnel just as another deep crack split through the stonework above us. I followed, my muscles tight with readiness, knowing we had seconds—at best—before this place sealed itself shut behind us.
The final stretch. The last turn. The threshold of the ruin, waiting.
And then—
The chamber behind us collapsed.
A deep, rattling thunder of stone grinding against stone, of an ancient place finally giving in to time and the strain of what we had severed.
I did not stop moving.
Asterion was already through. The mist outside curled against the edges of the ruin’s entrance like waiting arms, spilling inward, mixing with the dust and debris. I pushed forward, my boots barely finding traction as the ground beneath me shifted—but I didn’t slow.
I never slowed.
One final push, and I was through.
The air outside hit me like a sharp slap to the senses—colder, cleaner, heavier with the scent of damp earth and something else, something beneath the natural world.
Asterion was a step ahead, already turning, already assessing, and for just a fraction of a moment, we stood there.
Breathing.
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Not silent. Not still. But finished.
For now.
We didn’t hesitate.
The chamber opened into the night. Mist swirled around us, thick and curling between skeletal trees, their gnarled branches reaching like grasping fingers toward the sky. The entrance to the ruin groaned behind us, then with a final, mournful sigh, collapsed inward. Dust and broken stone buried whatever secrets had remained within.
My breath was steady despite the strain. The fight had left its mark on me, but my body—strengthened by countless battles, reinforced by sheer force of will—was already recovering. Asterion, however, was still moving at an almost maddening pace, covering ground with the efficiency of a man who was used to avoiding pursuit. Even with my accelerated healing, my muscles protested the relentless push forward.
He glanced back once, perhaps sensing my momentary hesitation. "Keep up."
I scowled. "I am."
His mouth twitched, not quite a smirk, but something close. Then he gestured ahead. "We’re clear for now. But whatever that thing was? It might not be the only one."
I looked back at the ruin, where faint arcs of residual magic flickered like dying embers in the mist. No. That thing had not been alone. It had been a warning. Or a promise.
Either way, we had little time to waste.