I Received System to Become Dragonborn Chapter 886: The Shadow

The three cultists wasted no more ti.

With cold precision, they stepped away from the ritual circle. Its dark energy pulsing silently now, swirling like a storm contained in a glass.

The circle no longer required their attention because it had reached the phase where it only needed ti.

Ti for the portal to open and for the being that slumbered beyond to awaken.

Ti for the King — Thar'Zul-Vekar, the Forest God — to erge from the ancient world of Varn-Kuruth.

As one, the cultists raised their arms and began chanting.

Magical syllables twisted the air around them, warping it with pressure and heat.

Then, from the thin space between planes, armor began to form.

Those armors were not summoned from their armor storage but woven from darkness and enchanted power.

It looks like black leather that molded to their forms like second skin and wrapped around their bodies. It shone with unknown runes and unnatural sheen. The armor didn't just protect, it amplified their essence and expanded their Magical output and deepened their reserves of Magic energy.

Then ca the next layer.

Black plate erupted into being. The plate armor were thick as obsidian and sharp-edged. It glimred in the torchlight and showing oily and cold sight, and as they moved it made no sound.

Their helts clicked into place. The helt was seamless and faceless and crowned with antlers that curved outward like the twisted branches of ancient trees.

Their weapons followed next.

The eldest took a gnarled staff, its shaft wrapped in root-like etchings, topped with a crystal that throbbed with sickly green light.

The silver-tattooed cultist has his long and slender sword, forged from a strange dull-tal that shimred.

The youngest has black spear ford in his hand, the blade jagged and etched with symbols that shimred.

They looked at one another. And without speaking, they all knew that they were ready.

Without another word, they launch through the tall temple window in three streaks of dark and green. Their cloaks whipping behind them like wings of shadow.

They didn't spare even a glance at the adventurers already in the temple. There was no point. None of them had the strength to interfere with the ritual now.

The circle was beyond interruption. Only destruction on a cataclysmic scale could stop it and they were sure those fools didn't possess such power.

—

anwhile, deeper inside the temple, the adventurers moved with grim urgency through the long stone corridors.

Their steps were fast, their breathing tight. One chamber after another greeted them with the sa horrifying sight which is the rows of unconscious or barely alive n and won, their minds erased, drained of mories, left as breathing husks.

Esther whispered a quiet curse under her breath at each one. Mark kept glancing behind, unsettled by the lack of resistance.

"It's too quiet," Selene murmured.

But they pressed on.

Finally, they ca to a massive stone door at the corridor's end. Unlike the others, this one was carved with precision and reverence.

Twisting vines, dead roots, and the looming figure of a horned being with antlers stretched across the stone like a god watching over a dying forest.

Its eyes — though only carved — seed to follow them.

Jan ran his hand across the surface, searching for a keyhole or anything that could open it. But he found nothing. Only a slit in the center, and a smooth seamless stone slab that offered no grip.

"I can feel the Magic inside," Jan said through clenched teeth. "Whatever's behind here it's the heart of everything. We need to open it."

Esther frowned, gripping her staff. "Should we just blast it open?"

"I don't think that's wise," Selene said quickly. "Magic like this might fight back."

They paused. Silence that thick with tension hung again.

Then Jan's eyes found sothing. Windows.

Small and narrow windows high up on the stone wall to their right. He could barely see through them but enough to guess that they likely opened into the room beyond.

"I can climb up," he said while pointing. "Get through that window and unlock it from the inside if there's a way."

They hesitated for only a second.

Mark nodded. "Right now, we don't have ti to argue. You're our best chance."

Selene raised her hands, ,Magic swirling in her palms. "Hold still."

A pulse of force lifted Jan upward. He caught the wall halfway, then used the montum to scale the rest with swift, practiced motions.

His fingers found ancient grooves in the stone. His boots slid across moss-covered carvings. He reached the window, slipped through, and vanished inside the room beyond.

As the others waited in tense silence below.

Jan dropped silently onto the cold stone floor, landing in a crouch. He rose slowly, and the first thing that greeted him was the stillness. There were no one here just like his senses had predicted.

A dozen statues stood in solemn arrangent along the curved wall, all of the sa tall, androgynous, humanoid, with branching antlers and an unsettlingly serene smile.

Their eyes were closed, carved with reverence, yet Jan felt like he was being watched.

The way their heads tilted, the grace in their stance. It was less like they were carved and more like they were waiting to move.

A chill slid down his spine.

Then his gaze fell to the far corner of the chamber. And he saw bodies.

Several of those bodies laying there limp, twisted, and discarded like broken dolls.

Their skin was ashen, stretched thin, and their mouths hung open as if they had died mid-scream.

So were missing pieces like arms or parts of their face but there was no blood. No decay or sll. Despite their state, the air remained crisp and dry.

Jan felt his stomach knot.

They've been here for days, maybe longer and yet they were no rot. No stench.

Then he saw the circle on the floor.

It was located across the center of the chamber, runes etched into stone and filled with liquid light. The symbols pulsed with an unnatural green glow.

The Magic radiating from it was felt like pressure that pressing inward and muting the world like a deep-sea current.

Jan's jaw clenched. He could feel sothing waking beneath it. Sothing wrong.

And then, without understanding why, he stepped closer.

Instinct. Or maybe sothing deeper. A tug in his bones. A whisper in the back of his mind. He needed to be near it.

But first he need to open the door.

He turned, scanning the wall where he'd climbed down from. The massive stone door lood ahead. The sa carving crawled up its face. It looked unmovable and impenetrable.

But Jan darted toward it, running his hands across the grooves and the carvings. His fingers found a faint seam and then a protrusion that barely noticeable. The protrusion was a circular nub disguised among the etchings of vines and roots.

He pressed it.

With a deep grinding noise, the stone door shuddered and began to part.

Light from the corridor spilled in. Esther was the first to step in with her staff raised and eyes narrowing in instant alarm.

Selene followed close behind and then Mark, then all of them stopped at once as they took in the room's state aand see the statues, the bodies, and the circle.

Esther swallowed. "Damn…"

Selene's voice dropped to a whisper. "That must be him… the Forest God. The statues must be his image."

Mark stepped forward, staring at the bodies. "What happened to them?"

Jan didn't answer. He pointed to the circle. "It's still active. I don't think we're too late. But we're close."

They all turned toward the pulsing circle on the floor. Then they hear the humming sound that growing deeper by the second.

Esther took a step forward, raising her staff slowly. "We have to stop this now."

But even as she said the words, a tremor ran through the chamber.

The circle flared.

The runes shifted, reshaping like living veins. And for the briefest mont sothing on the other side of the veil stirred. They can see a shadow of antlers and teeth, smiling wide in the darkness.

The pressure hit like a huge wave.

All eight adventurers buckled. The chamber groaned with Magic far beyond mortal scale.

Air was crushed from their lungs. Their limbs trembled. So of them dropped to their knees, gasping, hands on the floor to keep from collapsing fully.

Jan's head pounded with pain and even Esther's staff slipped from her fingers.

The circle pulsed again.

A strange hum deeper pressed into their bones. From within the veil of green light the silhouette of the Forest God lood cleared.

Then Annette moved.

Though trembling, she forced herself upright and dropped to one knee. Her soft but clear voice broke through the weight. She whispered a prayer asking for light to shield against the darkness.

Golden radiance wrapped her first then spread outward.

One by one, the others feels the pressure began to lift. Their lungs opened. Their limbs unshackled.

Jan rose first with fire sparking in his palm.

A crackling arrow then ford on his bow, burning bright with fla-infused Magic. He aid it at the circle and shoot it.

The arrow streaked through the chamber and struck the center of the Magic circle.

A shockwave burst outward. The circle spasd. The antlered shadow within the veil glitched. It snarled silently as its form flickered and broke apart and retreating.

Then silence.

The pressure vanished. The circle lay dim and still. And the looming grin in the dark was gone, for now.

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