Nyra rose before dawn, drawn from uneasy sleep by the hush that settled over the camp like a held breath. The fires had burned down to pale embers, the night's final heat fading into the predawn chill. She gathered her cloak tighter, eyes scanning the gloom until she found Thal: still, silent, a dark tower of presence watching the edge of the forest as though he expected it to move.
She did not ask if he had slept. They both knew he never did.
Quietly, she crossed to where Valen and Luken lay. Valen was curled in a tangle of rough blankets, face slack in exhaustion, boots half kicked off. Nyra put a firm hand on his shoulder. "Up," she murmured.
He winced as if struck, groaning softly. "It cannot be time yet."
"It is," she answered, voice calm, leaving no room for argument.
Luken was already stirring nearby, propped on one elbow, his staff within arm's reach. His eyes were sunken from too little rest, but clear enough. "We move before the sun," he confirmed.
Valen cursed under his breath but pulled himself upright, shoulders stiff, jaw working as if tasting old bitterness. There would be no further sleep.
A heavy snort behind them made the ground tremble. Tar had risen from where he had stood guard all night, eyes gleaming faintly in the gloom. Thal called to him in a single, low word, and the Minotaur lumbered over without complaint, hooves sinking deep in the cold earth.
Around them, the camp still slept, men and women bound in uneasy dreams, unaware that the vanguard of their defense was leaving before first light. A few sentries noticed their preparations, watching in wary silence but not daring to challenge them. Nyra suspected Eric had left orders not to hinder them, or perhaps the memory of Thal's refusal to kneel still burned hot enough to keep the soldiers at bay.
She gathered the last of her gear, tightening the leather of her bracers and checking the edge of her axe. A faint tremor passed through her chest as she considered where they were going: the Shadowfern, the twisted forest that had nearly claimed them once before. Its name still carried the taste of rot, a place where light died on the branches and the air itself seemed to hunger.
She felt Valen's gaze on her, waiting.
"We will make better time ahead of the army," she explained, voice steady. "They will need hours to break camp. We need to see what has changed."
"Or what is waiting," Luken added quietly.
Thal gave no reply. He simply started forward, cloak stirring behind him in the faint wind. Tar followed on his heels with a dull rumble, leaving deep furrows in the frost as he moved.
Nyra exhaled, set her jaw, and walked after them. Valen and Luken fell in beside her, silent but ready.
They left the last glow of the camp behind, the pale coals shrinking into a dim memory, and crossed into the treeline, where tangled branches already clawed at the morning sky. Mist drifted low, clinging to their boots, thickening as they went deeper. The air changed there, sour and damp, and every breath tasted faintly of decay.
For a time, no one spoke.
It was Valen who broke the hush, voice low, wary rather than mocking. "The Shadowfern has not forgotten us."
Nyra nodded once. "Neither should we forget it."
The world ahead grew darker still, though dawn was lifting behind them. The trunks of the trees were blackened, gnarled like old scars, bark peeling in strange patterns that looked like they could move if you watched too long. Faint shapes, perhaps birds, perhaps something worse, shifted in the canopy overhead.
Thal never hesitated.
Every step he took seemed measured, as if the forest itself might reach up to swallow him whole. Tar lumbered close behind, sniffing the air, the ring of metal from his axe bumping against his shoulder with each stride.
Luken watched the ground carefully, staff tapping over roots and cold mud. He seemed smaller here, but determined.
Nyra's eyes kept flicking to the edges of the path, seeking any ripple of movement, any glimpse of unnatural shapes slithering between the trunks. The place felt older than any war, older than any kingdom, patient and hateful.
Valen spoke again, voice a hoarse whisper. "What are we expecting to find?"
"Whatever the Archon leaves in its wake," Nyra answered. "And maybe worse."
He nodded, swallowing, then adjusted the strap on his sword.
Far behind, the faint horns of the army roused the camp into life, too far now to turn back. They were alone, out ahead, breathing in the sour rot of the Shadowfern.
A branch cracked somewhere beyond sight. The group froze.
Thal lifted a hand, silent command, and they stilled. Nothing emerged. The forest only watched.
Nyra tightened her grip on her axe. "Keep moving," she breathed.
They did.
One step after another, into a forest that had tried to kill them before and might try again.
They pushed deeper into the Shadowfern. A damp chill clung to every breath, and Nyra felt its weight settle in her chest as they passed hollow, twisted trees that looked burned from the inside out.
Her thoughts refused to settle. Somewhere behind her eyes, an image gnawed: a row of shallow graves Thal had carved out in the ruined earth, the bodies laid carefully, one after the other, wrapped in rough cloth or scraps of armor. She had seen how small some of them were. Children. Kruul, but still children.
Thal had not spoken while he worked. Had not flinched, had not scowled. He had simply buried them, one huge hand smoothing dirt over too-small frames, as though he had done it a thousand times before.
She shook the memory away with a quiet breath. There was no space for that now. They were on the march to face the Archon, and the path ahead would only grow harder.
Their route soon rose into cliffs: jagged walls of crumbling black stone, climbing up toward the pale morning light that bled through a break in the canopy. Nyra slowed as she studied them, grimacing. "No path through," she muttered.
Luken sighed, resting his staff against a root. "The main army will have to swing wide around it," he reasoned.
Valen squinted upward. "We do not have time to take the long way."
That was when Thal stepped forward. His presence alone quieted them. The huge Nephilim stood at the base of the cliff, bare-chested save for the weather-rough kilt made from his torn cloak. He looked up at the wall of rock, then simply dug his fingers into it, stone splintering under the force.
He began to climb, carving new handholds with effortless, brutal precision, each gouge wide enough to fit a boot or a palm. Pebbles tumbled down in a slow rain as he worked.
Nyra watched with faint awe. For all their years fighting together, there were still moments when Thal reminded them of exactly what he was: something far beyond mortal muscle and bone.
Tar rumbled a low note of amusement and stepped in after him, following the gouged path.
"Come on," Nyra urged, nodding Valen and Luken forward. "He is making it easier."
They scrambled upward after Tar, gripping the fresh-cut holes. The climb was rough, but passable thanks to Thal's raw force. Wind bit at their faces as they rose higher, the forest falling away behind them in layers of shadow and sickly green.
Halfway up, Valen cursed under his breath, boots slipping on crumbling stone. "Next time," he panted, "remind me why we could not wait for a proper ladder."
"Because the Archon is not going to wait for us," Nyra snapped, bracing herself with one elbow hooked in a hollow left by Thal's climbing.
Valen only grunted and kept moving.
They reached the top in fits and starts, hauling themselves over a ragged ledge to stand on a wide, moss-slick plateau. Before them stretched the path toward the Archon's hold: a ruin half-swallowed by the forest, perched in the distance on the next rise of black stone.
Tar snorted again, shaking off dust from his horns, and planted himself next to Thal. Luken caught his breath beside a twisted old tree, staff clutched close.
Valen straightened, brushing rock grit off his sleeves, eyes on the distant fortress. "If that place is as bad as the stories say," he began, "we should plan now. Who goes in first, who..."
"We all go in," Nyra interrupted, steady, unblinking. "None of us know what is inside. If we split, we die."
Valen chewed on that, then gave a shallow nod. "Fine. All together."
They looked to Thal then. His gaze stayed fixed on the crumbling spires of the Archon's fortress. He did not say a word, did not shift, did not even seem to breathe. There was a stillness to him, deeper than the cliff winds, like the pause before a blade fell.
Nyra frowned, wondering again about the weight in his eyes, but she said nothing. They all had secrets.
Instead she stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Thal," she said, careful, "if it turns, if that place is worse than we have seen, we will need you."
His golden eyes slid toward her then, the barest motion. "I know."
That was all.
Valen exhaled sharply, as if that answer was enough and not enough all at once.
Luken shifted his staff, voice rasping as he spoke. "Then we move?"
Nyra nodded. "We move."
Together they turned, the forest far below, the broken castle far ahead, and no comfort in between.
They moved on from the cliff's edge, the ground flattening beneath their boots, a rough path choked with roots and pale weeds that felt brittle as old bone. The forest ahead was different from what they had climbed through: wrong in a way Nyra felt deep in her teeth.
The trees here seemed to pulse. Thick, knotted trunks twisted around each other, bark dark as dried blood, and where they split apart she could almost swear there was something living moving beneath the surface like veins. A faint shimmer followed the grooves in the bark, as if the wood itself was alive, quietly breathing.
Nyra tried not to let it show on her face, but the memory of what Thal had buried only hours before stayed with her, clinging to her ribs like a bruise. She kept replaying those small forms in the earth, the way the cloth had folded over slight shoulders, limbs barely grown. Kruul or not, it turned her stomach.
Valen picked his way carefully through a stand of these warped trees, boot scraping black moss. "What did they do to this place?" he muttered, eyes wide.
Luken shook his head, a tremor running through him that was not from the cold. "It feels familiar," he admitted, voice raw. "Like the place you found me," he added to Nyra, glancing sidelong at her.
She nodded once, the memory slamming back all too vividly. Luken half-starved, half-lost in a corrupted ruin that had chewed up and spat out anything human left inside him. It was a miracle he had crawled free of it at all.
"This is not that place," Nyra said, trying to steady him. "But it is the same rot."
He swallowed, his knuckles going white around the staff. "Close enough."
They walked on in a rough line, Tar lumbering silent behind them, the massive minotaur scanning the branches, nostrils flaring at every distant shift in the wind. Birds did not sing here. Insects did not even buzz. The silence had a heartbeat of its own, thicker than fog, heavy enough that every breath felt dragged through mud.
And then they saw it.
The path broke open onto a ledge of broken slate, and below it, half-buried in a mountain of black stone, rose the Archon's fortress. Nyra stopped cold, boots grinding to a halt as she took in the sight.
It looked almost grown, not built. Walls of slick, obsidian-dark material, fused together with no seams like poured glass. Jutting out from the central keep was a tower that stabbed into the sky, its upper spires tangled in chains of vine-like roots that pulsed with the same horrible shimmer as the trees. The ground around its base was choked in gnarled branches, some thicker than a man's thigh, wrapping the fortress like a crown of thorns.
No banners. No smoke. No sign of soldiers at the gates. Just that cold, gnawing silence.
Valen let out a thin breath. "So that is it," he said, voice tight. "The lair."
Luken did not answer, but his face had gone a shade lighter, sweat clinging at his temple.
Nyra touched his arm lightly. "Breathe. One step at a time."
He nodded, but it was a shaky nod. "It is wrong," he rasped. "All of it. Like something is dreaming, and the dream is rotting from the inside."
Thal's voice cut through the silence, low and heavy as grinding stone. "The Weeping Spire," he said. The words fell like weights. "That is what they named it. A nursery for abominations, where the earth itself weeps poison and breeds living nightmares." His golden eyes remained fixed on the tower, unblinking. "Whatever you see inside, do not hesitate. Here, mercy is only another way to die."
Valen swallowed hard. "Comforting."
Nyra studied Thal's profile, noting the way his jaw tightened, the distant recognition in his gaze. He had seen one before, long ago, though he offered no word on when or where. "You have walked in such a place?" she asked quietly.
"Once," Thal said. "They do not die easily, and they do not die clean."
"Then we will have to be thorough," Nyra said, adjusting her grip on her axe.
They began their descent, picking a switchback trail that wound through broken shale and clinging roots. The slope was treacherous, slick with seeping black moisture that oozed from under the earth. Luken nearly lost his footing once, his staff catching on a loose stone, but Valen reached out without thinking and steadied him.
"Careful," Valen said, frowning. "I am not carrying you down if you break your leg."
Luken gave a thin laugh, no real humor in it. "Thanks."
They kept going. Nyra tried to focus on the path: how each stone shifted, how the roots seemed to flex slightly under their weight. She kept scanning for movement among the branches, half-expecting some twisted beast to lurch free, but nothing came. The forest felt like it was waiting.
Near the base of the trail, they paused to gather breath. The Archon's lair loomed above them now, so close Nyra could make out details: strange symbols scorched across its blackened gates, runes that made her skin crawl just to look at. She had no idea what they meant, but something in her bones told her the place was older than any kingdom left standing.
Valen broke the silence with a grim chuckle. "No welcoming party."
Nyra flexed her grip on her axe. "They do not need one."
Luken nodded, gaze locked on the fortress. "Whatever is in there is enough."
Again, they looked to Thal, silent as a carved statue. He offered them nothing, just a slow turn of his golden eyes toward the fortress, like he was seeing a grave.
Nyra almost asked. Almost. But stopped herself.
He would not answer, she knew. Not now.
So instead she drew a breath, rolling her shoulders back. "We get inside. We find the Archon. We end it."
Valen shifted uneasily. "And if it does not want to die?"
Nyra met his eyes, steady. "Then we kill it anyway."
Tar lowered his head, snorting softly, as if agreeing.
And Thal only stood there, watching that black tower, something unreadable burning behind his eyes.
They kept to the shadow of a twisted rampart, moving closer to the black tower that stabbed up into the murky sky like a needle through rotted cloth. Nyra could see what might have been a gatehouse once, warped now by creeping roots and black glass, half-swallowed by the veins of living wood. Her steps slowed as she studied the place.
"That is the tower," Valen muttered, voice pitched low. "If the Archon is in there, we should..."
But Thal stopped.
He turned, gaze lingering on a side structure half-buried in the tangled vines. The old hall was sunken, its doorway twisted into a mouth-like grin of splintered timbers. A dull reddish glow pulsed inside, low and sickly.
Nyra stepped closer to him, confused. "Thal? The tower..."
He barely looked at her. "I need to see how far they took it."
And without another word, he stepped through the broken door.
Nyra bit back a curse, exchanging a worried glance with Valen, then followed. Tar ducked through behind them, massive shoulders brushing the warped beams. Luken hesitated, eyes locked on that hateful glow, but then forced his feet forward, jaw tight.
Inside, the stink hit them like a blade. The air was thick with dried blood, rot, and something far worse: the coppery, sharp reek of old magic. Cages lined the walls, stacked two or three high, all rusting and caked with long-dried gore. The floor was streaked with splatters that had long since turned black, and here and there, something wet still dripped from ceiling roots.
Those roots: gods, Nyra thought, they were bloated. Great sack-like bulbs hung from them, pulsing faintly as if trying to breathe, glimmering in the gloom like living tumors. Each one shifted slightly, a wet slosh inside betraying what was growing there.
Valen gagged, pressing a hand to his mouth. "What in all the dead suns is this..."
No one answered.
Thal stepped forward, closer to one of the massive root-sacs. His face had gone still, too still, eyes narrowing with a rage that burned low, dangerous, unspoken. Without hesitation, he grabbed the base of the bulb and ripped it open with a sickening tear.
The thing inside slumped halfway out, a monstrous cross of Kruul and Threshen, half-formed, its skin grey and glistening, twitching faintly as its lungs failed to pull a proper breath. Its mouth worked, blindly, a child's cry warped through a maw of fangs.
Luken made a broken sound, no words, just a hoarse, shaking gasp as his staff trembled in his hands. His eyes had gone distant, staring through it, reliving something no one could reach to pull him from.
Valen reached for him but stopped, hand hovering, helpless.
Thal's expression was carved from stone, no softness left. He reached down, wrapped one massive hand around the half-creature's neck, and crushed it with a single, brutal twist. The thing gurgled once, then went silent.
Nyra found her voice, brittle. "Thal, we should move on..."
But he was already at the next sack. He ripped it open too, ignoring the spray of red liquid that spattered across his bare chest, revealing another twisted life clinging inside. It tried to crawl free, whimpering like an animal, until Thal silenced it with a strike so fast she barely saw it.
Valen stepped back, swallowing hard. "We are wasting time," he tried, voice cracking, "this is a trap, they will hear us..."
The walls seemed to shift, roots creaking, and more of those bulging sacks began to pulse in answer. One after another, they swelled, seams stretching as if they felt the air change, as if Thal's violence was calling them awake.
Luken backed up fast, breath going ragged, eyes darting like a hunted thing. Nyra grabbed his arm, steadying him, her own pulse roaring in her ears.
"Thal," she said sharply, trying to cut through, "we have to go. Now."
But Thal barely heard. He was breathing heavier, golden eyes gone sharp and savage as he ripped another sack apart, spilling half-grown nightmares onto the filthy floor. His hands worked methodically, mercilessly.
"They are a trap," Thal growled, his voice guttural as he tore open another bulb, silencing the thing within before it could draw breath. "Left to hatch, they will swarm the army when it arrives. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Better to drown the spark than fight the fire."
Then the roots began to tear themselves free from the ceiling, raining chunks of rotted wood and metal. Shapes started to crawl out of the darkness: more twisted Kruul forms, half-born, blind and feral, but driven by something deep in their marrow.
They came on all fours, hissing wet, crawling over each other with shattered claws.
Valen drew his sword with a hiss of steel. "Perfect," he spat. "Really perfect."
Tar stepped forward, massive axe at the ready, a low growl rising from deep in his chest.
Luken seemed to snap back to himself then, but the moment his eyes focused on the crawling horrors, the carefully maintained illusion flickered. The air around his head shivered like heat off stone, and for a heartbeat, the glamour failed. A sharp, lancing pain stabbed through his temples as his concentration shattered. His left eye burned, the yellow iris flaring bright and predatory, no longer hidden behind the disguising spell. The spiraled horn behind his temple, usually concealed beneath the illusion's mask, blazed into terrible view, ivory and unmistakable.
Memory crashed over him: the other place, the other corruption, the endless screaming. His magic flared in ragged bursts, distorting the air around him in a twisting, oil-slick shimmer. Illusions clawed through the blood-soaked gloom, half-real phantoms of writhing shapes and broken bodies flashing like ghostly afterimages.
Valen turned, startled, sword still dripping. "Luken! Stay with us!"
But Luken was locked in that moment, body shuddering, his one human eye wide with terror while the other gleamed with alien light. "No... no... it is like before," he whispered, voice splintering under the weight of it, layered now with an echoing resonance that was not entirely his own. "It is the same, no..."
His single horn seemed to burn through the illusion like a blade, raw and exposed, and Nyra felt a deep jolt of protectiveness stab through her.
"Luken, look at me!" she barked, hauling him by the shoulder.
His gaze snapped to hers: wild, terrified, one human eye and one gleaming Kruul eye swimming with horror.
"This is not then," she growled, forcing each word. "You are not that boy anymore!"
Something broke behind his eyes, a ragged breath leaving his lips. The pressure in his skull eased, just enough. The illusions snapped, fading away, leaving only the raw magic still shivering around his fingertips.
A blood-sack burst nearby, spraying red across his boots, jolting him back to the present.
He gasped, blinked, then gripped his staff like a drowning man clutching driftwood. "Right," he rasped. "Right."
But another wave of those crawling half-breeds surged in, gnashing and wailing, and there was no time for healing.
Nyra swung hard, knocking one aside, and Tar followed with a crushing blow that sent bone fragments rattling across the floor.
Valen fell back beside Luken, sword flashing as he shielded him. "I have got you," he said, voice hard. "Stay with me, wizard!"
Thal, meanwhile, barely slowed, tearing apart another sack with a snarl, gore dripping from his hands as if it meant nothing. His eyes burned bright, terrible, golden, and Nyra thought she saw a flash of sorrow there before rage swallowed it again.
The whole place felt like a nightmare given shape, alive and hateful, its walls pulsing with fresh abominations eager to crawl free.
And Luken, still shaking, still half-shifted with that single horn and the gleaming yellow eye, steadied his staff, face pale but resolved.
"I am not," he breathed, "going back."
Nyra nodded once, fierce, and stepped forward with him as the next monster lunged.
The first of the half-breeds lunged, teeth snapping, and Tar caught it mid-air, smashing it down with a force that cracked the stone. Another two scuttled in, eyes white and mindless, and Thal moved like a storm, crushing one with his foot, grabbing the second by its malformed spine and tearing it apart.
Blood hit the walls in a thick, reeking splash.
More came, crawling out of the cages, from holes in the roots, like a tide of corrupted flesh that refused to die.
Valen cursed again, blade flashing. "Thal, there is no end to them!"
But Thal did not stop.
He kept moving, eyes locked on every bulb, every twitching horror, crushing them, ripping them, stomping them down until the whole hall was painted in their deaths.
Nyra braced herself, stepping shoulder to shoulder with Tar, and felt the first hot splash of blood on her cheek as another hybrid lunged.
The castle, the lair, seemed to breathe around them, pulsing and flexing as if every death made it stronger, or maybe angrier.
And deep in that hateful, living dark, Nyra wondered just how far this had really gone, and whether they could burn it out before it burned them.
A sudden tearing sound, wet and ragged, broke from somewhere outside the hall, echoing through the twisted corridors of the compound. Then another, and another, the dull wrench of roots being split open and bodies slopping to the earth.
Nyra's heart lurched. She turned, catching a glimpse through a shattered window: other buildings in the lair, their dark husks pulsing with that same foul glow, bursting open one by one. The things inside were waking, their cages splitting under the force of blind, monstrous life.
"Thal!" she shouted, voice cracking against the press of old stone and crawling blood. "We cannot stay here! The Archon..."
He did not look back at her. Another half-born horror lunged from a cage, claws raking across Thal's side, but he barely flinched, catching its skull in one huge hand and crushing it with a grim finality.
"I will hold them," he rumbled, voice low and iron-heavy. "You get to the Archon."
Nyra froze for half a breath, fists curling tight. "Alone?"
Thal's golden eyes flicked toward her, steady, terrible, calm. "You are the Heroes of Lions' Gate," he told her flatly. "Go be heroes."
Tar shifted at her side, letting out a low, uneasy rumble. Even he seemed torn by the command.
Valen took a step closer to Thal, spattered in gore, sword still dripping. "We do not leave you," he said, voice hard.
But Thal only shook his head, already striding deeper through the broken hall as more things crawled free from the walls. "If these things reach the army," he growled, "there will not be a Lions' Gate."
The weight of his words landed like stone. Nyra swallowed hard, throat raw. Luken stood behind her, pale as ash, staff quivering in his grip. His eyes darted toward the hall, toward the forest of bloodroots writhing beyond, and then toward the tower that loomed like a wound in the earth.
She exhaled, a ragged, reluctant breath. "Fine," she bit out. "But do not you dare get yourself killed."
Thal's mouth twisted in something that was almost, but not quite, a smile. "That is not for today."
Valen spat to the side, face grim. "When this is over," he warned, "you buy the first drink."
Thal gave no reply, already turning, already moving toward another blood-sack as its seams split wide, revealing a snapping half-formed brute that screamed like metal tearing. With one effortless swing, he pulped its skull against the wall, stepping over the fresh corpse like it was nothing.
Nyra forced herself to look away, jaw tight, and gestured toward the tower buried in the mountain. "Come on," she told the others, voice hoarse. "We finish what we came for."
Tar snorted, then lumbered after her, hooves cracking the slick stone. Valen shot one last dark look at Thal, then fell in.
As they left the broken hall behind, the sound of more sacks bursting open chased them into the cold: wet rips and choked screams, each one swallowed by Thal's steady, merciless advance.
Outside, the fortress grounds seemed to breathe, shifting with new shapes crawling up from holes in the earth. The air was thick with the stink of rotting magic and the copper tang of fresh blood.
Luken stumbled once, catching himself on Tar's shoulder, eyes darting around the warped courtyard. "Feels like... feels like before," he murmured, voice almost too small to hear.
Nyra did not answer, could not. The place did feel the same: the horror of forced creation, the sense of things pretending to be alive. It crawled under her skin and set every old scar burning.
They made their way toward the tower, climbing a path of slick, pulsing roots that crunched wetly under their boots. Above them, the tower's black spire seemed to drip with something darker than rain, soaking into the ground.
Valen gripped his sword, jaw flexing. "I am going to hate whatever is inside there, am I not?"
Nyra nodded grimly. "More than you know."
Behind them, for just a second, she heard Thal's voice echo from the hall: a raw, brutal shout as he smashed another nightmare down.
She closed her eyes, breathed through the sickness in her belly, and pushed forward, one step after another, toward the thing that waited in the dark.
They stepped from the building into what might once have been a courtyard, but the land here was soaked rivers of blood flowing from cracks in the twisted structures, pooling into wide, sticky lakes. The smell burned at Nyra's throat, made her eyes water. One by one, the buildings around them started to swell and bulge, like tumours ready to rupture, and then with a wet, sickening roar they split open, sending chunks of flesh and gore splattering the courtyard.
From within, the half-breeds poured out.
Dozens. Hundreds. Their shapes misshapen, some half-fused, others massive and almost fully formed, clawing over each other to get out, limbs breaking as they trampled their own to reach fresh prey.
Valen cursed under his breath. "We don't have time for this!"
Luken still pale, one horn showing through his tangled hair, one eye that terrible yellow took a step back, staff trembling. "There's… too many," he rasped.
Nyra grabbed him by the arm, pulling him forward. "Then we run. "
They sprinted toward the tower, the only structure that looked truly solid, its base buried in the black stone of the mountain. Branchlike roots, as wide as wagons, pulsed around its walls, threading up through holes in the rock, feeding it something unspeakable.
Behind them, Thal roared again, and the building he'd stayed in seemed to… collapse, timbers and stone raining down as he smashed through wall after wall. They caught a glimpse of him through the settling dust, soaked in gore, teeth bared in something beyond rage something personal. He tore one of the fully grown Threshen-like half-breeds in half at the spine, then grabbed another by the throat and hurled it, sending it crashing through a rotted tree beside the tower's sealed doors.
The impact cracked the massive root wide open, spraying blood like a burst vein, and Thal followed with a leap that shook the stone. He hit the monster again mid-air, breaking both the creature and the root before slamming down to block the path behind them.
"GO!" he shouted, voice raw and ragged.
Nyra hesitated, heart twisting. "Thal"
His eyes locked to hers, blazing gold. "Put him out of his misery," he growled and the way he said him made something cold crawl up her spine. Before she could even question it, he turned back, plunging his hands into another sack that was birthing a fresh horror, ripping it apart at the seams.
Valen practically dragged Luken through the tower doors, Tar following last, massive shoulders barely squeezing through the ancient arch.
Inside, the air was worse, if that was even possible stagnant, wet, and filled with the copper sting of blood. The tower was hollow at its heart, a spiral staircase carved from the same black glass as its walls winding up into darkness.
Nyra glanced back through the doors Thal's silhouette, backlit by fires, still moving like a hurricane through bodies, tearing, crushing, unstoppable.
She didn't know what haunted his eyes in that moment, but a chill settled through her as she remembered his words. Put him out of his misery.
Nyra swallowed hard, steadied her axe, and looked up the stairs. "We end this," she told the others, her voice low, fierce.
Valen nodded grimly. "End it. "
Luken just stared upward, breathing ragged, one trembling hand pressed over the horn jutting from his temple. But he stepped forward anyway.
Tar snorted, paws scraping against the slick floor as if to brace himself.
They climbed, the distant screams of Thal's rampage fading behind them, replaced by the deep, almost animal growl of the tower itself a pulsing, breathing sense that something above was aware of their presence.
Every step felt heavier, the air thicker, as if the tower itself wanted to hold them back.
Nyra took the lead, refusing to slow. This time we end it.
They were coming for the Archon and whatever he was monster, tyrant, or something worse she would put him down before the nightmares could ever spill out into the world again.