The roar of the beast shook the ruin as if the bones of the earth themselves were being cracked open. Stone shattered, dust rained down, and the black flame overhead seemed to flare in triumph, as though this moment had been waiting for centuries.
The Guardian rose fully now, a towering mass of bone and crimson crystal. Its ribcage rattled with every breathless motion, each joint groaning like the grinding of ancient millstones. Demonic essence bled from it in thick waves—so suffocating that the weaker outcasts dropped to their knees, clutching their chests as if their hearts were being squeezed out of rhythm.
One man screamed and fled toward the exit, only to be crushed beneath a falling slab as the ruin shifted around them. There would be no escape. Not for any of them.
The Prince stood at the forefront, eyes locked on the monstrosity. His pulse thundered, his body still trembling from the vision of the Monarch. For a fleeting instant, he wondered if this was how the Monarch himself had begun—alone before impossible odds, a world that wanted him broken.
Behind him, panic swelled like a tide.
"W-we can't fight that thing!" someone cried.
"It's not a beast—it's a curse!" another shouted.
"Lord, we must flee! Please!"
The words battered at his back, tempting, almost reasonable. But he knew the truth. If they turned their backs now, they were already dead. Not just because the Guardian would tear them apart, but because cowards never survive the borderlands.
His hand flexed. The Codex stirred inside his chest, whispering hunger, whispering promise. Devour or die.
The Guardian lowered its skull, twin pits of crimson fire burning in its sockets, and charged.
The impact of its first step sent a shockwave across the chamber. Cracks split the floor. Rubble tumbled from above. The beast's claws tore stone as easily as parchment.
"Form ranks!" the Prince barked, his voice like iron.
But fear was stronger than discipline. His followers scattered, weapons trembling in their hands. Only Lira moved to his side, bow drawn, jaw clenched tight despite the fear flickering in her eyes.
The Prince did not curse them. He understood. They were outcasts, beaten dogs who had known only running. But he—he was different. He could not run, not anymore.
When the Guardian's claw swept downward, aiming to crush him, he did not dodge. He surged forward.
Berserker rage lit his veins like molten iron. His muscles screamed as his body expanded with unnatural strength, veins bulging, flesh straining. At the same moment, the wolf's regenerative trait pulsed alive, burning like a second heartbeat. Wounds knit before they could bleed, bones mended before they could break.
His fist met bone.
The collision cracked the air like thunder. Pain rippled up his arm, threatening to tear his shoulder from its socket, but the Guardian staggered back a single step. One step—that was enough. His followers gasped. They had seen the impossible: a man of flesh forcing back a monster of bone.
The Guardian shrieked, its voice a grinding wail that clawed at sanity. Shards of crimson light burst from its ribs, lancing toward him like arrows. One tore across his side, another pierced his thigh. Flesh burned, bones splintered—but the wolf within him howled, and the wounds began to close even as blood dripped hot down his leg.
He roared back.
Not just with his voice, but with his will. Black flame erupted around him, the Codex answering his fury. The ruin seemed to warp under the force of his defiance, shadows bending toward him as though the chamber itself acknowledged him as its center.
Every breath hurt. Every heartbeat felt like war drums in his skull. But he pressed forward, step by step, closing the gap.
The Guardian slashed again. Claws like scythes. He ducked beneath one, let another tear across his back. Agony lit his nerves, but already the skin was knitting, sinew crawling back into place. He leapt upward, seizing one of its ribs with burning hands, and pulled himself onto its body.
From below, his followers stared in disbelief as their exiled prince scaled the abomination like a man climbing toward destiny.
The Guardian bucked, slammed itself into walls, trying to shake him free. Stone rained. His vision blurred. His ribs cracked under the force of the impacts. Still he clung on, teeth bared in a rictus grin, every muscle screaming.
"Devour or die," the Codex whispered again.
He drove his flaming hand into the Guardian's ribcage. Black fire surged, gnawing bone and crystal alike. The Codex opened within him, pulling, pulling—drinking in the demonic essence that powered this nightmare.
The Guardian shrieked, its hollow voice cracking the stone above. Crimson fire poured from its sockets, but its thrashing weakened. The Prince's body was breaking under the strain, blood running down his arms, but the wolf within howled, dragging him back from the brink again and again.
Then, with a final roar, the Guardian collapsed.
The Prince rolled free as the skeletal mass shuddered and stilled. The crimson crystals along its bones shattered into motes of light, and the ruin trembled as though relieved of its burden.
The Codex pulsed inside him—hungry, satisfied. A new rune seared itself into his soul: jagged, skeletal lines that shimmered faintly across his skin before sinking deep into his flesh. For a heartbeat, bone-like armor rippled across his chest and arms, ghostly and terrible. A new trait—temporary, unstable, but his.
Silence fell.
The outcasts stared at him as though he had become something more—and something less—than human. Even Lira's bow lowered, her lips parting in quiet disbelief.
The Prince stood slowly, breathing ragged, body drenched in blood and sweat. His gaze swept across them, sharp as a blade.
"Look well," he rasped, voice raw. "This is the price of survival. If you cannot pay it… leave now."
No one moved. Not even the cowards.
And then, as if in answer, the ruin groaned one last time. Stones cracked. The ceiling split. The chamber began to collapse.
The Prince's lips curled into a bloody smile.
"The ruin has given what it can. Now it tries to bury us."
He raised his arm, the black flame dancing along his fingers, bone armor flickering faintly across his form.
"Run," he commanded, his voice carrying the weight of the Monarch's shadow. "And follow me—if you would live."
The ruin fell around them.
The ruin collapses, but the Codex unlocks another rune.
The chamber gave way in a storm of dust and thunder. Pillars toppled, slabs of stone crashed like falling mountains, and the ruin screamed as though the Guardian's death had torn out its very heart.
The outcasts broke into a frenzy, scattering toward the fractured corridors, their shouts swallowed by the roar of collapsing walls. Some clawed at each other to escape, others tripped and were buried where they fell, their hands still reaching out from beneath the rubble.
The Prince did not flee. He strode forward, black flame wreathing his frame, each step cutting a path through the choking dust. His presence became a beacon amid the chaos, a dark light that drew the survivors to him.
"Stay close!" he thundered, his voice echoing over the ruin's death cries. "The ruin devours the weak first—prove you are not among them!"
A crack split the floor beneath their feet, opening into a void of endless black. One man screamed as he slid toward it, his fingernails tearing bloody grooves into the stone. The Prince caught him by the collar and hurled him aside with a single arm, the Codex's bone-armor flaring as he absorbed the strain. The man lay gasping, too stunned to speak, but alive.
The ceiling groaned above. Shards of crystal rained down, glowing with the Guardian's last vestiges of power. Each fragment burned where it landed, searing stone into molten streaks. Lira loosed an arrow that shattered one mid-air, sparks scattering harmlessly across the chamber. She landed at the Prince's side, her breath ragged, her eyes unyielding.
"They'll never make it in time," she shouted above the din.
"They will if they follow me," he answered, voice ironclad.
A wall of rubble blocked their path forward, jagged boulders locking the only visible exit. Despair surged through the outcasts as they pressed together like cornered prey.
The Prince stepped toward the barrier, his shadow stretching long across the stone. The Codex whispered in his bones, the wolf snarled in his blood, and he pressed his burning palms against the wall.
"Then I will carve the path."
With a roar that tore from his throat like thunder, he unleashed the Codex's hunger. Black fire surged into the rock, devouring it from within, while bone-armor rippled outward, bracing his straining form. The ruin fought to hold, but it was no match for the will of a man who refused to kneel.
Stone cracked. Light burst through. A tunnel yawned open, jagged but clear, the night air beyond spilling in like the breath of freedom.
The Prince staggered, his body trembling on the edge of collapse, but he lifted his head and met their eyes—each survivor, each trembling soul.
"Follow," he rasped, his voice more command than plea. "Or be buried here with the ruin."
And though terror gripped their hearts, one by one, they moved. Not because they trusted him, not yet—but because they had no choice but to believe in the man who tore open the earth itself.
The Prince turned last, his gaze lingering on the ruin's dying glow. The Guardian's ashes still pulsed faintly in the rubble, a reminder that power demanded blood.
He bared his teeth in a grim smile and stepped into the night.
The ruin collapsed behind them.