Crossing the threshold felt like stepping into the heart of a frozen star.
The oppressive emptiness of the Null was gone, replaced by a forest of jagged, black crystals that towered around me.
They weren't simply dark; they were voids that drank the faint, pulsing light traveling through their depths, each shard reflecting a distorted, funhouse-mirror image of the desolation around us.
The ground was a carpet of crystalline shards that crunched underfoot.
It was mesmerizing, a geometric nightmare, and utterly horrifying.
But the sight was nothing compared to the sound.
A faint, high-pitched chittering. It wasn't loud, but it was everywhere, skittering across the surface of the crystals, echoing from every direction.
It was the sound of a thousand insectoid legs, of mandibles clicking together, a noise that bypassed the ears and went straight for the primal fear center of the brain.
My skin crawled. Every instinct screamed danger.
My grip on the dagger tightened.
Ding!
[Survive. No other directive provided.]
A wave of cold frustration washed over me.
That's it? Just 'survive'?
No stage number, no pretense of a game anymore. This was pure, unadulterated hostility.
The chittering grew louder, rising in pitch until it was a teeth-rattling screech.
The shadows cast by the pulsing crystals began to writhe and detach from the walls.
They emerged, not from hiding places, but from the substance of the crystals themselves.
Their forms were fluid, shifting between solidity and a ghost-like translucence.
They moved with a gliding, unnatural grace, their limbs elongated and jointed all wrong, ending in wickedly sharp claws that gleamed in the eerie light.
Where their faces should have been were only pools of sickly, glowing yellow.
Five of them. Then seven. Circling me, their movements a chaotic, jerky dance that was impossible to predict.
The first strike was a blur. One moment it was ten feet away, the next, its claws were slicing toward my eyes.
I threw myself backward, feeling the wind of the pass ruffle my hair.
I retaliated on instinct, a bolt of lightning leaping from my hand.
It struck the creature center-mass. The thing let out a piercing shriek, its form convulsing violently before dissolving into a cloud of shimmering, malevolent vapor.
No time. The others converged. They moved as one, a synchronized wave of lethal intent.
I spun, parrying a claw strike with my dagger, the impact jarring my arm to the shoulder, while unleashing a wide arc of lightning from my other hand.
The energy forced two others back, but they simply flowed around it, their forms flickering.
I fell into a desperate rhythm. Dodge, parry, strike.
My dagger sliced through a translucent torso; the creature dissipated like smoke.
A bolt of lightning erased another. But for every one I destroyed, two more seemed to coalesce from the crystalline walls.
The air grew thick and hot, heavy with the acrid smell of ozone.
My lungs burned. Sweat stung my eyes, blurring the nightmarish ballet.
A searing pain exploded across my back. I'd missed one.
Claws raked through my hoodie and into the flesh beneath.
I stumbled forward, my vision swimming. Warm blood instantly soaked the fabric.
"Damn it," I hissed through gritted teeth, whirling around and blasting the offender with a point-blank surge of lightning that vaporized it.
But the damage was done. The chittering intensified, becoming a deafening crescendo.
More yellow lights ignited deep within the crystal forest. An endless wave.
This is it. They'll just keep coming until I'm gone.
"Focus," I growled at myself, the word a command.
I stopped fighting the current. I stopped trying to control the flow. I let the dam break.
Energy, wild and torrential, erupted from my core.
It wasn't a spell anymore; it was a seizure of nature.
Lightning didn't leap from my hands, I became the lightning.
A storm of raw, incandescent power exploded outward from me.
A continuous, raging torrent of blue-white energy that filled the labyrinth.
There was no aiming, no precision. Just pure, obliterating force.
The creatures shrieked, their forms blinking out of existence as the energy touched them, vaporized into nothing.
The crystalline structures around me blackened, cracked, and shattered under the onslaught, the violent pulses of light within them extinguished forever.
The storm lasted for an eternity of ten seconds.
When it finally subsided, the silence was absolute, and somehow more terrifying than the noise.
I stood panting in the center of a scorched circle, my body trembling with the aftershocks of the release.
The air reeked of burnt stone and ozone. The labyrinth was a field of broken, blackened glass.
Ding!
[Stage Four Complete. Proceed to the Next Gate.]
A new doorway shimmered into view ahead, untouched by the destruction.
I didn't move. I just stood there, chest heaving, staring at the carnage I had wrought.
There was no satisfaction, only a cold, hollow exhaustion.
How many more gates? How many more stages?
The path forward was clear, but the will to take it felt like a distant, fading echo.