Aelric didn't respond.
Ashira smirked. "Or you could join the Pact. We are not sentimental about loyalty. You want to tear down the old gods and replace them with new laws? You'd fit right in."
Then came the whisper. The Empty Tongue didn't move or he breathed. But inside Aelric's mind, a hundred of clawed through, all speaking in different languages, all uttering the same thing.
FEED.bGROW. TRANSCEND.
And among those voices, one voice was particularly deeper, whispered like silk dipped in acid.
"You have only taken your first bite. Let me show you how to swallow."
The ritual was complete. The emissaries had extended their offers.
Three paths. Three futures.
The Voice spoke at the back of Aelric's mind. [Each faction is broken, monstrous, but powerful. Aligning with one grants strength, resources, and influence. Denying all three makes you a target for annihilation.]
Veyra looked uneasy. "Don't forget, Aelric, every alliance here comes with a chain around your neck."
Aelric's fingers brushed his shackles. They still bore the mark of the Chainlord. They pulsed faintly, fragments of absorbed law fighting to remain dominant.
He stepped forward. "I am not here to kneel."
The emissaries froze.
"I am not here to rebuild your broken systems. Not the dominion of chains, not the rebellion of the Pact, and not the hunger of your Cult. I will carve my path through this layer, and take what I need along the way."
They all become silent for a second, and laugh out loud.
Ashira chuckled. "You are either incredibly brave or catastrophically foolish."
The Empty Tongue receded into shadow. No further words were needed. The Cult would be watching and waiting.
Vorrik turned and vanished into flame. The Chainlords would come. With blades, chains and the city of oaths broken.
Only Ashira remained.
"Then we will see what kind of storm you will become," she whispered. "The Ashen Pact liked wild cards."
She disposed of it in the smoke. Aelric turned and left the Spire, his expression unreadable.
The Voice spoke. [Now you have made your choice. Now the layer will make its choice.]
From the canyon's edge, a howl echoed deep, inhuman, and filled with violent recognition. Word has spread.
Not just a duelist or a challenger. But of a new power rising.
The Abyss does not forgive ambition; it tests it, and now it would begin. The Second layer did not sleep; it waited.
In the days that followed his defiance at the Spire of Hooks, Aelric became a ghost among the monsters.
Not hunted, not yet, but observed. The ash-covered hills and chained valleys felt like they held their breath when he passed, the very air straining with a question left unspoken.
He hadn't pledged loyalty to the Chainlords. He didn't align himself with the Ashen Pact. He hadn't bowed before the Devourer Cult.
He had chosen to walk alone. Which meant everyone was now waiting to see if he would fall.
But the Abyss does not favor pride; it favors power. And so, power came looking for him.
They came at dusk, if one could call the lightless bleed of sky dusk. Aelric and Veyra had made camp beneath a hooked overhang, the skeletal just of some ancient, impaled beast acting as a shelter from the ash winds.
Veyra had been silent for hours, her attention drawn towards the horizon, where distant monoliths hummed like war drums under a blood colored aurora.
Aelric sat cross-legged, shackles unwrapped from his arms, floating gently beside him like slow, coiling snakes.
The Soulbound Shackles pulsed softly. Since the battle with the Chainlord, they had grown hungrier, demanding more than just binding; they wanted essence.
Gluttony had changed him. It was no longer just a skull. It was becoming a presence inside him.
And that night, it called something to him. The air turned cold, unnaturally so, the fire Veyra had conjured flickered and died, snuffed not by wind but by absence.
The shadows around them deepened, warped and from the black emerged a figure in a robe of stitched skin and iron clasps.
No footsteps, no words, just a presence like drowning in silence.
A Devourer Cult emissary. But not the same as before. This one carried weight. Not metaphorical, but spiritual.
Aelric could feel it pressing into his bones. This thing had fed thousands. Its aura reeked of digested souls.
Its voice was not heard. It was felt, inside the skull, a ripple across nerves and marrow.
"You bear the hunger. Yet you do not understand it, not truly."
Aelric rose slowly. He didn't draw a weapon. He knew somehow that this creature could disintegrate him if it chose to.
The Voice spoke, cold and calculating.
[Be cautious. This is no scout. This is a Seer. And a high-ranking one among them. It will carry weight even the pact would fear.]
The emissary raised a hand, half bone, half shifting ash and opened it. Inside hovered a fragment of writhing black substance, a shard of a consumed soul.
"The Maw can be opened further. But the cost is no longer a metaphor. It is blood, identity and self."
"We offer the Rift of the Maw, a ritual of deep consumption. You will face memories of the devoured. You will eat what they feared, become what they hated. It will change you. You may not return the same."
Aelric said nothing. He knew this was the moment. The Cult had taken an interest, and they didn't offer twice.
Veyra stepped forward, voice edged with fury.
"You do not know what they are offering, Aelric. The Devourer's Maw doesn't just evolve your power; it feeds on you. The more you take in, the more you forget who you were."
"I haven't forgotten," he said softly. "I will remember exactly who I am. That's why I need this."
The Ritual began at midnight. They left him in a hollowed-out cavern called the Maw's Root, a place carved not by hands but by consumption itself.