The whisper of the system flared in Aiden’s vision, fading like embers carried by the wind. His body moved before his mind could calculate—an instinct, primal and inescapable.
It was not strength guiding his blade, not skill, not discipline, but sothing deeper. A tether. A thread.
Amber.
He could feel her. Not see, not hear—feel. The way one feels the ache of a missing limb or the pull of the tide beneath still water.
Sowhere inside, carved into marrow and fire, her presence burned. It tugged him through the dark, telling him she was ahead, sowhere beyond branches that clawed his armour, sowhere beyond the breathless silence of the forest.
After she had been claid—after she had beco the one and only to pass into the final stage of his possession—sothing between them had changed.
The leash was no longer just a chain of power. It had beco a bond, as if two souls had been forced into the sa chamber, learning each other’s secrets with every shared heartbeat.
He knew her more each passing day, and—though she would never admit it—she knew him. Their fears, their hungers, their shas bled together in the quiet places where language could not reach.
When she had appeared in his room days ago, he had thought the pull was trickery. His gut had scread she was near, yet his reason told him she was still within Leonidus’ city walls. He had doubted himself. He had doubted the bond.
But then the door had opened. And there she had been, frad by torchlight, standing behind Akidna. His gut had not lied. His bond had not lied.
And so, here, again, he trusted.
Slice.
Steel bit through branches, scattering leaves in a storm of green fragnts. The air was thick with the scent of damp wood and loam. Sweat slid into Aiden’s mouth, tasting of salt and iron. Every cut felt like a rejection of hesitation, a blade carved against doubt.
He was not strong. He knew this, But tonight strength was not the battlefield. Tonight, the danger was Arina.
"She’s smart," Aiden muttered, words escaping with the rhythm of his panting lungs. "But she’s getting desperate. And desperation makes the clever bleed stupidity."
His boots tore free of tangled undergrowth as the forest spat him out into an open field. Moonlight cascaded across a adow drowned in silver. And at its center—two figures.
Amber.
And Arina.
"Amber!!!"
The na tore from his throat, half-command, half-prayer. His chest burned as his eyes took them in: Amber clutched tight in Arina’s grip, while the slayer’s body glead beneath new-forged armour.
Above them, impossibility hung in the heavens—a colossal chandelier of stone and fla, a dungeon descending like a chained beast from the stars. Its form pulsed with alien light, its very existence bending the night around it.
The two won turned, startled. For a heartbeat, disbelief painted their faces.
"Aiden!" Amber’s voice cracked like glass. Her fear carried even across the distance. "It’s okay! Don’t follow —I’m safe!"
Safe. The lie shrieked through her tone, shaking on each syllable. She trembled, though she tried to stand firm. The bond told him more than her words could ever conceal.
He took a single step forward, the adow grass whispering beneath his greaves. His voice rang clear.
"Arina! I know what you’re planning. Stop this. It’s madness!"
Arina’s mouth curved. Not into joy. Not into cruelty. Into sothing jagged—an admiration tinged with pity.
"...You’re brave, Aiden," she said, her tone half-mocking, half-sincere. "From noble beds to the foot of a dungeon—you’ve got iron in places most n don’t. But you don’t know . You don’t know what’s rotting from the inside."
Her armour shimred with pale green reflection as the dungeon’s glow thickened.
Aiden’s heart kicked against his ribs. He did not waste ti. He sprinted. His boots hamred the earth, his breath tearing from him like torn fabric. This idiot... this fucking idiot...
"Stop!" His shout chased her. "I know what you’re going through—"
Then the heavens roared.
The dungeon above shivered like a living thing awakening. Its stone ribs contracted, then widened, and the sound that followed was not stone, not wind—it was hunger.
A roar without throat, a call without language. The earth beneath them trembled.
It opened.
Not jaws, not teeth, but a gate—a spiraling maw of impossible geotry, a circle within circles that spun like a storm of light and shadow. And the world changed.
The gravity of the field tore free of its laws. The ground released its prisoners. Grass lifted like strands of hair in water. Insects spun upward in dizzy constellations. A rabbit twisted midair, squealing, its paws clawing at nothing. Snakes slithered upward, hissing as they rose like unholy banners.
And Arina and Amber with them.
Arina’s grip tightened around Amber’s wrist as both won floated skyward, their hair lashing in invisible currents.
Aiden’s boots tore from the mud. His stomach lurched as his body joined the rising storm. His arms flailed for balance, but there was no balance to find.
"Arina!" he scread, voice raw, body twisting as he fought the invisible tide. "Your lungs burn every ti you breathe!"
Her head snapped down.
"Your body seizes every ti you touch mana!"
Arina’s eyes widened. Shock broke through the mask of determination.
"You tremble in your sleep," he roared, voice tearing with desperation. "Shaking for hours, every night, until dawn finally forgives you!"
Her mouth opened. A whisper escaped her. "...How...?"
But she did not stop. Her armour spun as the pull of the dungeon dragged her closer. Her grip on Amber did not loosen.
No, she thought. It doesn’t matter. If I reach the core before the curse consus ... I will be healed. I will not die a husk.
She turned her gaze toward Amber. Green eyes, bright as poisoned glass, softened for just a heartbeat. Pity.
"I’m sorry," Arina said, and for the first ti, her voice cracked.
"Sorry!" she scread again, louder, at Aiden. "You should have reached sooner. Maybe I would have let you seduce , pretty boy!"
Her laugh was bitter, jagged, a confession cut into shards.
"Stop it!" Aiden’s voice broke. "I can—"
But the dungeon roared again. Its hunger tolerated no speeches, no bargains, no confessions. The pull intensified. Arina’s body snapped upward, drawn like a needle into the maw of a storm.
And she was gone.
The field emptied itself. Gravity returned in an instant. The air scread as everything plumted back to the soil.
Aiden hit the earth with a sickening crack, mud splattering across his face. Rabbits slamd into grass. Snakes writhed, broken-backed. Insects fell in carpets, twitching and still.
His chest heaved. His armour dug into his ribs. His lungs fought for air, burning with iron fire.
"Fuuuuuuck!" The cry ripped out of him, raw, shredded by despair.
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