Chapter 15 — Work in the Dark
By my count, it was the fourth dawn since I fell.
Down here, dawn was only a feeling—the Abyss didn't trade in sunlight. It traded in pressure and pulse. The rock had a heartbeat if you paid attention, a thrum that rose and fell as beasts moved in their warrens. The Elder's Essence sharpened my senses until the dark was ten shades lighter; I read the cavern the way a hunter reads wind.
Three days to make it back to the pick-up point. Three days to stop being prey and start being a problem.
The Titan Plate clung to me like I'd been born with it. Obsidian armor flexed over my limbs, seamless and alive. Only my mouth breathed open air; the rest was sealed behind black plates veined with faint indigo light. When I moved, the armor moved, sound swallowed as though the Abyss itself didn't want to announce me.
The first challenge came low and many.
Grunts. A scrape. The clack of tusks. I pressed against a rib of stone and peered into a trench the Beetle King had once carved. A herd of Bone-Horn Boars pressed through it—bristled hides, tusks like sawed ivory. They moved in a wedge, mean and hungry.
Warmup.
The Eclipse Armament answered my thought, extending into a spear. The front boar lifted its tusks and lunged. I met it head-on, driving the spear into its skull. The Titan Plate took the counter-blow on my chest like it was nothing. The tusks screeched across the armor, sparks flying, but not even a crack formed.
The herd howled and rammed me from both flanks. I didn't flinch. They hit with the force of battering rams—yet it was like shoving against a wall. The armor held, plates flexing but never breaking. I twisted, shoved them back, and slammed one to the ground with brute strength. The spear dissolved, the hammer replaced it mid-spin, and I brought it down on a skull. Bone split like fruit.
One after another, the Titan Plate let me stand in their storm until only I was left breathing. My hammer dripped gore. Four bodies steamed in the trench. The others fled, hooves drumming terror into the dark.
I pulsed my space ring and the carcasses folded into light, stored for later.
The armor hadn't let a single tusk break skin. I tasted the copper of effort in my mouth, not blood. That was the difference now. With Titan Plate, I wasn't surviving—I was dictating.
---
The tunnels opened into a cathedral of stone. Pillars joined floor and ceiling, ribs of a giant's chest. Above, something circled, skeletal wings tipped with embers.
The Ashfang Vulture spotted me as I spotted it. We solved our problem together.
It folded and dropped like a blade. Mid-fall, its eyes spat fire—searing beams cutting the air. I raised an arm. The Titan Plate drank both blasts, plates glowing hot for a moment before dimming. My arm smoked, but the flesh beneath was untouched.
"Not bad," I muttered—and leapt.
I met its dive with the hammer. The head crashed into its ribs and folded wings like brittle sticks. Fire sprayed as it screeched, eyes vomiting wild lines of heat across the cavern. I barreled through the wash, Titan Plate absorbing the sear, and struck again. This time its wing shattered at the joint.
It hit the floor ugly, still clawing, beak snapping. I dismissed the hammer and called the katana. One clean draw cut the beak. The return stroke severed the head.
Ash and embers scattered across the stone. The Titan Plate drank the heat until only a faint warmth lingered in the seams. I felt the System's whisper—a trait waiting—but I didn't bind it. That fire wasn't for me. It tucked away into the pocket where banked power waited, a promise I could trade later.
Two fights. Not enough.
---
The ground glittered in the next cavern. At first I thought quartz, but no—scales.
The wall itself unfolded into motion. Six legs uncoupled, a wedge-head twisted, and a mane of crystal spines rattled down its back. The Crystal-Spined Lizard, Noble rank, eyes burning with gemlight.
It moved with speed that mocked its size. One forelimb swiped across my helm. Sparks shrieked as claws scraped the Titan Plate, but the armor held. The force rattled my skull, but my head was still on my shoulders.
It came again, tail lashing like a whip. The blow cracked stone where it landed, but when it slammed into my ribs the Titan Plate shrugged it off. The impact rocked me, but I didn't bleed. That difference mattered.
I slammed forward, hammer in hand. The first swing clipped its jaw, sending crystals flying. It screamed high enough to hurt my teeth. It lunged to pin me, spines stabbing—but the armor blocked every one, leaving only scratches across the black surface.
We collided in a test of force. Claws raked my chest—nothing. Fangs bit my shoulder—nothing. The Titan Plate was a wall, and behind that wall I was free to swing.
I planted my feet, braced with the armor's strength, and drove the hammer into its throat. Crystals shattered. The beast convulsed, staggered, and fell. I didn't stop. The hammer rose and fell, rhythm unbroken, until the lizard's spine caved and silence returned.
The body slumped, glittering with broken shards. The Essence rushed me—clean, cold, a Noble's mark—and folded into my chest. A defensive trait shimmered at the edge of my awareness, Diamond Skin, but I banked it. I already had armor no one could pierce.
I wiped crystal dust from the Titan Plate. Scratches marked its surface, but no cracks, no weakness. I stood untouched, my breath steady, my mouth the only human thing showing in a body that no longer belonged to prey.
---
The Abyss shifted again. A draft, thin and cold, carried something sharper than stone. Not iron, not crystal—something like the sound of blades being sharpened, pressed into scent.
Across a wide rift, pale fungus glowed like drowned moonlight. Behind it, something moved. Long, deliberate, patient.