Cel stood frozen, staring at the empty entrance. His mind struggled to process what had just happened.
'He's... coming back?'
The stranger who'd appeared out of nowhere, who'd survived a whole year in this hellscape alone, had just left to get… what? Help? Supplies?
For him.
A complete stranger.
The absurdity of it struck him like a physical blow.
Cel's gaze dropped to Silent Moon, still gripped in his left hand. Four crescents pulsed along the blade's length with steady white light. He dismissed it with a thought, watching the weapon dissolve into moonlight threads that unraveled and vanished.
His wounds throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat. Blood had soaked through Cinderward's fabric in several places, the divine armor unable to deflect damage already inflicted. His right arm remained dead weight, fingers refusing to respond no matter how hard he tried to move them.
The silence pressed in around him, broken only by the distant whisper of settling ash and his own ragged breathing.
'Why would he help me?'
The question circled his mind without answer. Raven had been alone for a year. Had survived in a place where everything could get you killed.
And yet he'd walked away - not abandoning Cel, but to help him.
It made no sense.
'What kind of person survives a year in the Hollow Realms and still cares enough to help a stranger?'
The answer, he suspected, would reveal itself when Raven returned.
If he returned.
But dwelling on it wouldn't help. Not now.
He needed information. Needed to understand what he was dealing with in this place.
'The Ledger.' The thought came with sudden urgency. He'd unlocked it with his only coin.
He reached inward - not toward his soul this time, but toward the bond that connected him to the Ledger of Nightmares.
The response was immediate.
Moonlight bloomed before him - softer than Silent Moon's manifestation, gentler than Cinderward's wrapping radiance. The light wove itself into solid form, building from nothing with methodical grace.
A book materialized in the air before him.
Leather-bound. Moderate size - large enough to be substantial, small enough to hold comfortably. The cover was worn black leather, unmarked except for faint silver filigree along the edges that caught the dim light filtering through the ruins.
It hung there for a heartbeat, suspended.
Then gravity remembered itself.
The Ledger dropped.
Cel's left hand shot out on instinct, catching it before it hit the ash-covered floor.
He settled the book across his lap, his right arm remaining dead weight at his side. The leather was cool against his palm as he steadied it, worn smooth by what felt like centuries of handling.
His fingers found the edge and opened the cover.
The first page simply held the name: Ledger of Nightmares.
He turned to the next page. Text filled the left side in black ink stark against yellowed paper. On the right, a sketch rendered in the same dark ink - simple lines, but detailed enough to be immediately recognizable.
The hunched posture, the elongated limbs ending in wicked claws, the angular head. This was the creature that had killed him when he first entered the Hollow Realms.
Cel stared at the words, memory flooding back with visceral clarity.
The creature had struck from above. Had torn through his back with surgical precision. Had let him bleed, let him crawl, let him suffer before delivering the final blow.
It hadn't been random violence. It had been calculated. Methodical.
'Heat signatures.'
That's how it had found him.
Cel's jaw tightened. The information here could have saved his life. Could have warned him that the creature hunted by heat, that it preferred to wound rather than kill outright.
Knowledge he'd lacked when it mattered most.
His eyes caught on the Blight classification. Infernal. The word carried weight - a measure of corruption that ran opposite to Grace, the ranking system for divine artifacts. Where Grace measured how close something stood to the gods, Blight measured how far it had fallen from them.
Infernal sat in third place of the ten tiers. Not the weakest corruption, but far from the worst. Cel's instructors had drilled the hierarchy into him years ago - Cursed at the bottom, then Profaned, Infernal, Defiled, and upward through increasingly nightmarish classifications until reaching Abyssal at the peak.
Each tier represented not just power, but wrongness. How thoroughly the Hollow Realms had twisted a creature into something that shouldn't exist.
An Infernal-class creature could kill him. Had killed him, in fact. But even now, even with divine gifts, facing an Infernal-tier creature would end the same way.
Cel let out a sigh and turned the page to the next entry.
Cel froze.
Crystal Maze.
The words struck him like a fist to the sternum. His eyes scanned the rest of the entry rapidly:
The sketch showed a skeletal figure, crystal growths erupting from bone in chaotic patterns.
The crystal-crowned skeletons. The ones that had pursued him through those violet-lit passages, their movements mechanical and wrong.
But that didn't make sense.
The trial had been an illusion. A test created by the Moon Goddess within his soul. Nothing there had been real - not the four suns, not the crystal formations, not the creatures that stalked him.
So why did the Ledger list them as a real encounter?
His brow furrowed.
The question hung in his mind, unanswered and deeply unsettling.
If the creatures had been genuine rather than divine fabrications, if the dangers had been actual rather than symbolic, then what did that mean?
He had no answer.
Cel's grip on the book tightened as he stared at the entry. The uncertainty gnawed at him, but dwelling on it wouldn't help. Not now.
He turned the page, then another, skipping past more entries from the Crystal Maze. Whatever mysteries they held could wait. Right now, he needed to understand the threats in this realm - the Ashlands where he was actually trapped.
The right page was completely black. Not redacted like entry four - just solid black ink, as if someone had poured it across the paper and let it dry.
No sketch. No details. Just darkness.
Cel frowned, trying to remember. Perched Shadow... when had he encountered that?
Then memory struck.
The tendrils. The black mist that had erupted from the crack in the ravine floor when he'd first returned from his soul. The thing that had chased him through those narrow passages, forcing him to flee toward daylight.
He'd barely seen it. Hadn't fought it. Had only run until the dawn's light drove it back into shadow.
'Insufficient encounter.'
The Ledger was telling him he hadn't learned enough. Hadn't seen enough to fill in the details.
But the Blight classification alone told him enough. Defiled. One tier above Infernal. One tier above the creature that had already killed him.
His throat tightened. He'd fled from something far more dangerous than he'd realized. If that smoke thing had caught him in those narrow passages…
He quickly turned the page to the next entry.
Instead of reading further, Cel's eyes flicked to the sketch on the right page.
Recognition struck immediately.
The serpentine body. The elongated arms ending in clawed fingers. The eyeless head with its circular mouth ringed in needle teeth.
The creature he'd killed. The one whose corpse still lay coiling a few steps away.
His gaze snapped back to the text.
Profaned. One tier lower than Infernal. Only one tier higher than cursed - the lowest rank.
No wonder he'd managed to survive the fight despite his injuries and lack of skill. The Ashlurker had been weaker than what he'd already faced. Dangerous, yes - but within his ability to overcome with enough desperation and luck.
"Poor threat assessment." The phrase almost made him laugh - bitter and sharp. The thing had followed him into a storm that could have killed them both. Had pursued him with single-minded fury while death approached from behind.
Because he'd hurt it. Because he'd used it as a shield.
Ground vibrations.
The memory clicked into place. That eyeless head hadn't been a weakness - it was an adaptation. The thing didn't need eyes when it could feel every footstep, every shift of weight through the earth.
Simple. Accurate. Horrible.
Cel turned the page.
His eyes flicked to the sketch. The massive segmented body, the circular maw ringed with concentric rows of teeth.
The worm. The massive predator that had swallowed him whole, that had nearly cooked him alive with its molten breath.
Defiled. The same tier as the smoke thing. The same tier as something he'd needed to flee from rather than fight.
His hands tightened on the Ledger's edges. He'd survived being swallowed by a Defiled-class creature. Had carved his way through its mouth while trapped in its gullet.
How many newly blessed Chosen would be able to survive something like this? The thought should have filled him with pride.
Instead, it just made him realize how close he'd come to dying.
'Tactical deception.'
The words settled in his chest like ice. It hadn't been ignoring him after devouring that first creature. It had been pretending to ignore him. Lulling him into believing he was safe while it waited for the perfect moment to strike.
Cel's throat tightened.
The molten breath. He'd survived only because he'd carved out those teeth. Created a space to hide. Used another creature as a shield.
Luck. Pure, stupid luck.
Cel's chest tightened as he stared at the sketch again - at that impossibly large form that showed just how close he'd come to being nothing more than a meal.
The page began to blur at the edges. Cel blinked hard, trying to focus. But exhaustion pressed down on him like a physical weight.
When had he last slept? Not in the worm's throat - that had been survival, not rest. Not during the storm. Not since…
Since the trial.
His eyes drifted to the next entry almost against his will:
The sketch showed a bird-like creature. Body proportions wrong - too long, legs too thin, neck bent at angles that shouldn't exist. A beak lined with serrated teeth.
The bird. The thing that pecked at the Ashlurker's corpse with those terrible teeth.
The text swam in his vision. He tried to focus, tried to read the rest of the entry, but the words kept sliding away from him like water through his fingers.
His head drooped forward.
The book began to slip from his grip.
He should dismiss it. Should stay alert. That stranger - Raven - could return at any moment. The bird could decide he looked more appetizing than the corpse. Another predator could wander into the ruins.
But his body had reached its limit.
The Ledger fell from his lap, landing on the ash-covered floor with a soft thump.
His head tilted back against the stone wall.
Just for a moment, he told himself. Just a brief rest while he waited for Raven's return.
His eyes drifted closed.
And this time, when the darkness came, he didn't fight it.