Riel watches the titan's new arms form, regenerated from the blood-red brine it tore out of its stolen heart: limbs like colossal blades of liquefied night. Its chest has split open to accept the artifact it forced inside, and the wound refuses to close. Light leaks out in sick, rhythmic pulses that bend the air around it.
The monster towers over them, a silhouette carved from a starless era before fire learned to exist.
Riel's legs nearly buckle, but he forces himself upright. His chain drags behind him, scraping stone. Seris is hunched over to his left, sabre jammed into the ground to keep herself standing. Kaelith's breaths come ragged, the faint shimmer of his eclipse-soul already torn back into the Veil. And Varen, barely upright, trembles under the dying glow of the runes flickering across his arms like fading fireflies.
But they are standing.
For now.
The Shade steps forward.
The floor bows under its weight.
Pressure tightens around Riel's skull, sharp and suffocating, like a hand closing around his thoughts. He grits his teeth, shifting his gaze between his friends and the horror looming above them.
Then Varen breathes a single word, barely sound at all.
"Wait… It's feeding."
Riel turns toward him. "On what?"
"Faith. Twisted by fear," Varen whispers, face contorted. "We need to cut the flow. We have to purify it."
He slices his palm open before anyone can stop him.
"Varen!" Seris staggers forward.
"It needs an anchor," he says through clenched teeth as blood drips into the floating runes. "Faith becomes belief, belief becomes power, power needs grounding. I'll give it mine."
The runes shift, their edges warming into gold.
He raises his hand toward the Shade. His blood lifts from his skin, glowing like molten starlight, threading into the air and spiraling toward the heart embedded in the titan's chest.
Riel forces himself into position beside him, heart pounding. Seris limps to Varen's left, jaw clenched. Kaelith braces behind them, hands trembling yet already glowing with faint gold threads.
The Shade roars.
The chamber shudders.
Varen slams his bleeding hand to the ground.
Light erupts outward in a spiraling surge. Runes carve themselves into the stone, forming a vast geometric circle that rises like a buried sun forcing itself into existence. Air pressure bursts outward, sending clouds of dust into a swirling storm.
For the first time since this nightmare began, the titan recoils.
Varen gasps, barely breathing. "It's working."
The runes blaze brighter, threads of gold crawling over the Shade's body. The brine coating its form crackles. The heart pulses violently, resisting with every beat.
Then, slowly, painfully, the Shade's torso begins to turn translucent.
Crystal spreads across its ribs and arms, creeping steadily upward. Its movements slow. Its roars distort, muffled as if submerged underwater.
Riel's breath catches.
Hope—thin, fragile, impossible—flickers to life.
Seris whispers, trembling, "We're actually…"
Kaelith raises his hands. The fractured echo of his eclipse-soul flickers above him, a sliver of crescent-shaped light scattering radiant sparks across Varen's circle. The chamber brightens.
The titan shrieks again.
Riel tightens his grip on his chain. "Varen, keep going!"
"I'm trying!"
The crystallization spreads rapidly now: across the titan's ribs, up its throat, along its massive shoulder. Shadows drip from the hardened gold, evaporating on contact.
They are winning.
They are—
The heart pulses.
Once.
Twice.
The third pulse detonates.
The gold lines flicker. Air compresses until Riel feels his ribs threaten to snap. Varen screams as the runes buckle.
The gold crust fractures.
Cracks race across the titan's body like lightning made of night.
A corrupted shockwave blasts outward.
Riel is thrown to the ground, ears ringing. Seris skids across the floor. Kaelith hits the stone hard, breath driven from his lungs. Varen collapses to his knees, blood dripping from his fingers in molten streaks.
The titan emerges from the fading dust, crystal shell shattering and falling away.
But not all of it breaks.
Thin lines of gold still glow beneath, still eating the darkness, slower but persistent.
Seris forces herself upright. "We can't touch it. Nothing gets through anymore."
She's right. Her sabre leaves no mark. Kaelith's light dissolves. Riel's chain cuts vapor that reforms instantly.
Riel's frustration curdles into desperation. "Then what do we—"
His gaze falls downward.
The dagger.
The blade born from his nightmares, tied to something older than fear.
It feels heavier now, humming faintly in his hand as if recognizing the monster ahead.
He doesn't know if it can hurt this thing.
He doesn't expect it to.
But they have nothing left.
He steps forward.
The Shade turns toward him. Its breath washes over him, cold and vast as an open tomb.
Riel charges.
He leaps, raising the dagger. The blade meets the titan's crystal chest and sinks in, smooth as water parting.
A perfect wound.
Black fluid sprays, hissing as it strikes the air.
The titan recoils in shock, howling.
Riel lands, staring at the blade in disbelief.
Seris lets out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. "It actually— Riel, do it again!"
He doesn't think.
He moves.
The second strike cuts deeper, slicing through brine, crystal, and shadow. The titan howls louder.
Kaelith's voice breaks with sudden hope. "It's the only weapon that can reach the heart!"
The Shade shudders, veins of gold fighting through the darkness. Its heart pulses harder, choking the room with pressure.
The chamber groans. Pillars bend inward.
Riel tightens his grip on the dagger. He still doesn't know why it works, and he has no time to care.
Seris tries one more strike, sabre blazing, but the blade skids uselessly across the titan's side. Sparks scatter. She stumbles, breath ragged.
Kaelith summons a radiant bolt from his claymore, a star-shaped flare that would annihilate weaker creatures, but it melts in the air, swallowed by the abyssal pull around the heart.
"Nothing is reaching it!" Seris cries.
The titan steps closer, dragging its limbs with a grinding roar.
Kaelith catches Riel's eye. Riel understands the plan instantly.
"Get ready," Kaelith says, voice steady despite the tremor in his hands. "You're going in."
"Kaelith—"
He slams his palms together.
Runes blaze around Riel's feet, forming a dome of thin golden light that vibrates like a fragile heartbeat.
Kaelith steps between Riel and the titan, claymore raised despite his shaking arms. Seris moves with him, sabre blazing.
The titan screeches again, throat vibrating with crystal.
Kaelith's voice rasps. "When the opening comes… run."
The Shade lunges.
Seris deflects its massive wrist by inches, the force still hurling her across the chamber. Kaelith meets the strike with a burst of radiant energy from his claymore, slowing the titan for the briefest heartbeat.
Enough.
"Go!" Kaelith screams.
Riel sprints.
The titan shifts to crush him. Kaelith throws himself in front of the blow. The strike slams him to the ground, his eclipse-soul flickering like a dying ember.
But Riel reaches the titan's chest.
The heart pulses behind cracked crystal, reality warping around it. Riel climbs, shadows clawing him as Kaelith's barrier weakens with each step.
He reaches the shoulder.
The heart glows beneath him, black and gold and dying red.
He lifts the dagger.
The titan's mouth opens in a howl of starving souls.
The barrier fails.
Riel strikes.
The dagger plunges into the heart.
White light engulfs everything.
The titan screams as its history is torn apart, faith and stolen memories ripping free in a blaze of agony. Light floods its body from within, crystal exploding into star-bright shards.
The titan convulses and Riel is thrown across the chamber.
He hits stone hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, but he forces himself upright to see the end.
The heart cracks open, a sun bursting inside a corpse. Every fracture ignites. Pressure builds.
The titan explodes.
A wave of crimson-gold fire tears through the temple, dissolving shadow and carving molten veins through the walls. Pillars collapse. Stones fall like dying stars.
Riel coughs, lungs burning, but crawls toward the others.
Kaelith is alive, barely. Seris drags him upright, shaking. Varen lies blinking at the fading remnants of his ritual circle as the runes dim one by one.
Gold dust drifts through the collapsing chamber like falling snow.
The Shade is gone.
Riel slumps beside the others, exhausted, trembling.
For the first time since entering this cursed ruin, there is silence.
And beneath it, soft as a prayer:
hope.
Riel watches the titan's new arms form, regenerated from the blood-red brine it tore out of its stolen heart: limbs like colossal blades of liquefied night. Its chest has split open to accept the artifact it forced inside, and the wound refuses to close. Light leaks out in sick, rhythmic pulses that bend the air around it.
The monster towers over them, a silhouette carved from a starless era before fire learned to exist.
Riel's legs nearly buckle, but he forces himself upright. His chain drags behind him, scraping stone. Seris is hunched over to his left, sabre jammed into the ground to keep herself standing. Kaelith's breaths come ragged, the faint shimmer of his eclipse-soul already torn back into the Veil. And Varen, barely upright, trembles under the dying glow of the runes flickering across his arms like fading fireflies.
But they are standing.
For now.
The Shade steps forward.
The floor bows under its weight.
Pressure tightens around Riel's skull, sharp and suffocating, like a hand closing around his thoughts. He grits his teeth, shifting his gaze between his friends and the horror looming above them.
Then Varen breathes a single word, barely sound at all.
"Wait… It's feeding."
Riel turns toward him. "On what?"
"Faith. Twisted by fear," Varen whispers, face contorted. "We need to cut the flow. We have to purify it."
He slices his palm open before anyone can stop him.
"Varen!" Seris staggers forward.
"It needs an anchor," he says through clenched teeth as blood drips into the floating runes. "Faith becomes belief, belief becomes power, power needs grounding. I'll give it mine."
The runes shift, their edges warming into gold.
He raises his hand toward the Shade. His blood lifts from his skin, glowing like molten starlight, threading into the air and spiraling toward the heart embedded in the titan's chest.
Riel forces himself into position beside him, heart pounding. Seris limps to Varen's left, jaw clenched. Kaelith braces behind them, hands trembling yet already glowing with faint gold threads.
The Shade roars.
The chamber shudders.
Varen slams his bleeding hand to the ground.
Light erupts outward in a spiraling surge. Runes carve themselves into the stone, forming a vast geometric circle that rises like a buried sun forcing itself into existence. Air pressure bursts outward, sending clouds of dust into a swirling storm.
For the first time since this nightmare began, the titan recoils.
Varen gasps, barely breathing. "It's working."
The runes blaze brighter, threads of gold crawling over the Shade's body. The brine coating its form crackles. The heart pulses violently, resisting with every beat.
Then, slowly, painfully, the Shade's torso begins to turn translucent.
Crystal spreads across its ribs and arms, creeping steadily upward. Its movements slow. Its roars distort, muffled as if submerged underwater.
Riel's breath catches.
Hope—thin, fragile, impossible—flickers to life.
Seris whispers, trembling, "We're actually…"
Kaelith raises his hands. The fractured echo of his eclipse-soul flickers above him, a sliver of crescent-shaped light scattering radiant sparks across Varen's circle. The chamber brightens.
The titan shrieks again.
Riel tightens his grip on his chain. "Varen, keep going!"
"I'm trying!"
The crystallization spreads rapidly now: across the titan's ribs, up its throat, along its massive shoulder. Shadows drip from the hardened gold, evaporating on contact.
They are winning.
They are—
The heart pulses.
Once.
Twice.
The third pulse detonates.
The gold lines flicker. Air compresses until Riel feels his ribs threaten to snap. Varen screams as the runes buckle.
The gold crust fractures.
Cracks race across the titan's body like lightning made of night.
A corrupted shockwave blasts outward.
Riel is thrown to the ground, ears ringing. Seris skids across the floor. Kaelith hits the stone hard, breath driven from his lungs. Varen collapses to his knees, blood dripping from his fingers in molten streaks.
The titan emerges from the fading dust, crystal shell shattering and falling away.
But not all of it breaks.
Thin lines of gold still glow beneath, still eating the darkness, slower but persistent.
Seris forces herself upright. "We can't touch it. Nothing gets through anymore."
She's right. Her sabre leaves no mark. Kaelith's light dissolves. Riel's chain cuts vapor that reforms instantly.
Riel's frustration curdles into desperation. "Then what do we—"
His gaze falls downward.
The dagger.
The blade born from his nightmares, tied to something older than fear.
It feels heavier now, humming faintly in his hand as if recognizing the monster ahead.
He doesn't know if it can hurt this thing.
He doesn't expect it to.
But they have nothing left.
He steps forward.
The Shade turns toward him. Its breath washes over him, cold and vast as an open tomb.
Riel charges.
He leaps, raising the dagger. The blade meets the titan's crystal chest and sinks in, smooth as water parting.
A perfect wound.
Black fluid sprays, hissing as it strikes the air.
The titan recoils in shock, howling.
Riel lands, staring at the blade in disbelief.
Seris lets out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. "It actually— Riel, do it again!"
He doesn't think.
He moves.
The second strike cuts deeper, slicing through brine, crystal, and shadow. The titan howls louder.
Kaelith's voice breaks with sudden hope. "It's the only weapon that can reach the heart!"
The Shade shudders, veins of gold fighting through the darkness. Its heart pulses harder, choking the room with pressure.
The chamber groans. Pillars bend inward.
Riel tightens his grip on the dagger. He still doesn't know why it works, and he has no time to care.
Seris tries one more strike, sabre blazing, but the blade skids uselessly across the titan's side. Sparks scatter. She stumbles, breath ragged.
Kaelith summons a radiant bolt from his claymore, a star-shaped flare that would annihilate weaker creatures, but it melts in the air, swallowed by the abyssal pull around the heart.
"Nothing is reaching it!" Seris cries.
The titan steps closer, dragging its limbs with a grinding roar.
Kaelith catches Riel's eye. Riel understands the plan instantly.
"Get ready," Kaelith says, voice steady despite the tremor in his hands. "You're going in."
"Kaelith—"
He slams his palms together.
Runes blaze around Riel's feet, forming a dome of thin golden light that vibrates like a fragile heartbeat.
Kaelith steps between Riel and the titan, claymore raised despite his shaking arms. Seris moves with him, sabre blazing.
The titan screeches again, throat vibrating with crystal.
Kaelith's voice rasps. "When the opening comes… run."
The Shade lunges.
Seris deflects its massive wrist by inches, the force still hurling her across the chamber. Kaelith meets the strike with a burst of radiant energy from his claymore, slowing the titan for the briefest heartbeat.
Enough.
"Go!" Kaelith screams.
Riel sprints.
The titan shifts to crush him. Kaelith throws himself in front of the blow. The strike slams him to the ground, his eclipse-soul flickering like a dying ember.
But Riel reaches the titan's chest.
The heart pulses behind cracked crystal, reality warping around it. Riel climbs, shadows clawing him as Kaelith's barrier weakens with each step.
He reaches the shoulder.
The heart glows beneath him, black and gold and dying red.
He lifts the dagger.
The titan's mouth opens in a howl of starving souls.
The barrier fails.
Riel strikes.
The dagger plunges into the heart.
White light engulfs everything.
The titan screams as its history is torn apart, faith and stolen memories ripping free in a blaze of agony. Light floods its body from within, crystal exploding into star-bright shards.
The titan convulses and Riel is thrown across the chamber.
He hits stone hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, but he forces himself upright to see the end.
The heart cracks open, a sun bursting inside a corpse. Every fracture ignites. Pressure builds.
The titan explodes.
A wave of crimson-gold fire tears through the temple, dissolving shadow and carving molten veins through the walls. Pillars collapse. Stones fall like dying stars.
Riel coughs, lungs burning, but crawls toward the others.
Kaelith is alive, barely. Seris drags him upright, shaking. Varen lies blinking at the fading remnants of his ritual circle as the runes dim one by one.
Gold dust drifts through the collapsing chamber like falling snow.
The Shade is gone.
Riel slumps beside the others, exhausted, trembling.
For the first time since entering this cursed ruin, there is silence.
And beneath it, soft as a prayer:
hope.