The Ash Warden loomed higher than any creature Quinn had yet faced. Its frame towered, stitched from smoke and dust, but anchored by a core of silver light burning inside its hollow chest. Every movement carried the weight of a collapsing building, and the ruins groaned with each step it took.
Quinn stood still at its feet, breath steady, muscles coiled. The fragments in his chest pulsed in rhythm with the Predator form, each beat filling him with strength, speed, clarity. Yet even that clarity warned him: one mistake, and the thing would crush him.
[ Stage Boss Ascended: Ash Warden – Phase Two ][ Host Survival Probability: 22% ]
A voice deep in his instincts whispered a correction. Not survival. Hunt.
The Warden struck first. Its blade-arm tore the air with a scream, ash curling in its wake. Quinn moved, body surging with ferocity. He darted low, boots scraping dust, silence cloaking his motion until even the sound of his heartbeat disappeared. The blade cut down where he had stood, pillars crumbling, ground cracking wide.
He was already inside its guard. Staff flashing, Quinn drove it upward into the Warden's chest. Insight sharpened his aim, finding the thinnest fracture in its smoke-flesh, a sliver of weakness radiating from the core.
The blow landed. Silver light bled out like liquid fire.
The Warden roared, ash spiraling outward in a violent storm. Quinn was thrown back, tumbling across the cracked stone until his shoulder slammed into a wall. Pain shot through him, but Predator form steadied his bones, knitting the damage faster than before. He rolled to his feet, chest heaving.
The monster advanced, sockets burning brighter. Its roar was not just sound. It was pressure, a crushing wave that bent the very air, trying to drive him to his knees.
[ Status Effect Detected: Oppression Field. Willpower Resistance Engaged. ]
Quinn snarled. His fragments flared in defiance. Silence dimmed the roar to a whisper, ferocity burned hot in his veins, and insight cut through the pressure, showing the hollowness beneath. He forced one step forward. Then another. His body shook, but he did not bow.
The Warden lifted its blade high, drawing energy from the ruins. Runes blazed white-hot across the broken walls, feeding the weapon until it gleamed silver-bright.
Quinn sprinted.
The blade fell.
He slid, perception stretching every heartbeat into an eternity. His body flowed beneath the strike, stone exploding in shards above him. Heat flared against his skin. He came up on the other side, staff in both hands, and drove it into the Warden's knee-joint.
Ferocity surged. Bone and dust cracked. The joint buckled, sending the Warden stumbling sideways with an earth-shaking crash.
Quinn did not hesitate. He vaulted onto its collapsing leg, running up its massive frame like a shadow ascending a wall. His staff carved arcs of silver with each strike, tearing at the creature's seams, unraveling threads of smoke. He reached the chest, leapt high, and slammed the staff directly at the glowing core.
For an instant, the ruin lit like dawn.
Then the Warden's claw shot up, catching him midair.
Pain exploded across his ribs as the grip crushed inward. The staff slipped from his hand, clattering far below. The Warden lifted him higher, sockets blazing with fury, and squeezed.
[ Critical Damage Sustained. Rib Fractures Detected. ]
Quinn's vision blurred. Blood filled his mouth. But the fragments screamed in unison, refusing collapse. Predator form burned brighter, ferocity exploding in his limbs. He twisted, muscles straining against impossible strength, and drove his free hand into the Warden's wrist.
Instinctive Surge triggered. Energy detonated.
The claw shattered, void-flesh ripping apart. Quinn dropped, spinning through the air, landing in a crouch on the cracked stone. His chest heaved, lungs scraping with fire.
The Warden howled, half its arm gone, ash bleeding into the night.
Quinn spat blood. His voice was hoarse. "Not enough."
He sprinted again, faster this time, the fragments harmonizing in a way they never had before. Silence masked his steps. Perception charted every motion. Insight revealed the lines of fracture. Ferocity fueled the strike. Predator form bound it all together.
He vaulted a fallen pillar, snatched the staff mid-roll, and came up beneath the Warden's looming frame. He swung once, twice, three times, each blow cracking void-flesh deeper. Silver ash sprayed across the ruin floor.
The Warden lashed out with its remaining claw. Quinn ducked, then rolled between its legs. He drove the staff upward with both hands, slamming it into the hollow joint of the hip.
The monster staggered, collapsing onto one knee. The ruins quaked.
Quinn darted up its back, breath ragged, staff in one hand, shards of instinct guiding his every step. He reached the base of its neck. The sockets flared, sensing him.
Too late.
He roared, fragments uniting in a blinding surge, and slammed the staff straight into the glowing core.
The sound was not an explosion. It was silence, a vacuum that tore light from the world. Silver energy spiraled upward in a storm, consuming the Warden from within. Its body unraveled, smoke shredding into fragments of ash, void collapsing inward.
Quinn clung to the dissolving frame, then leapt free as the creature imploded. Dust geysered skyward. The ruins shook once more, then fell still.
The silence that followed was total.
[ Boss Entity Defeated – Ash Warden of the Forgotten ][ Rewards: Refined Fragment Acquired. Trait Unlock Available. Experience threshold exceeded. ]
The prompts burned against his vision, but Quinn only lay there, chest rising and falling, staff resting across his legs. Sweat plastered his hair to his face. Blood still tasted bitter on his tongue. Yet beneath the exhaustion, power simmered. Predator form thrummed like a living engine, fragments pulsing stronger than ever.
Slowly, he sat up. Among the ashes of the Warden's collapse, something glimmered. A fragment, shaped like a shard of obsidian wrapped in veins of silver. Refined, deliberate.
He dragged himself forward, hand trembling, and lifted it. The shard was cold, far colder than the night, its weight immense though it fit in his palm.
[ Fragment Acquired: Shard of Resilience ][ Function: Host gains enhanced damage resistance and accelerated tissue repair. ]
His chest pulsed as the fragment sank into him, threads of silver stitching into the lattice already there. Pain flared, then dulled. Strength followed, heavier, denser. The aches in his ribs eased, the cuts on his arms sealed faster than before.
Quinn exhaled. The ruin was broken, the Warden destroyed, yet he knew this was no end. It was the beginning of something larger, darker. He had claimed a shard placed, protected, and guarded by entities not of this world. The system was guiding him somewhere, and the path ahead was only getting steeper.
He stood, ash swirling at his feet. For the first time, he felt not like prey caught in the ruins, but like a predator that had survived the test.
Yet even predators were watched.
Insight pulsed colder, forcing his gaze upward.
Beyond the broken roof, high above the treeline, a faint shimmer rippled in the sky. Like glass bending. Like someone peering through.
A chill ran down his spine. Not shadows. Not beasts. Something else.
The prompt flickered sharp.
[ Alert: External Observation Detected. Unknown Source. Countermeasures Unavailable. ]
The shimmer quivered, then vanished.
Quinn gripped his staff tighter, jaw set. He had killed the Warden, claimed its fragment, evolved into something stronger. But he was not alone anymore. Eyes were on him.
And whoever they belonged to had just seen everything.