The lift ground to a halt with a deep, rumbling groan, a shudder that rattled the platform down to their bones. Before them stretched a vast rocky expanse, titanic in scale, swallowed whole by the dark. No ceiling in sight. Only faint streaks of distant light, falling from above like pale wounds torn across the night sky.
The air was heavy. Every breath carried a metallic tang, a whisper of cold ash, the very imprint of the Umbra, a place where shadow gnawed at the weave of the world. Gaël shivered. The sweat on his nape seemed to freeze beneath an unseen, unspoken warning.
They were expected.
In the darkness, shapes slithered. Crawled. Their outlines wavered, caught between the real and the nightmarish. Gaël set down the pack, the one the Umbromancer had entrusted them with, packed tight with rations, vials, and climbing gear. His hands unburdened. His body tensed.
A sharp crack split the silence. Then a groan. A sound, raw and visceral, clawed up from the depths.
And the shadow shattered.
The first emerged. The Infested. Quick, twisted, their forms warped by corruption. Their humanoid shapes flickered, as if the very flesh wavered between existence and absence. Their translucent skin shimmered with a sickly glow. Their eyes… bottomless chasms, pits where light went to drown. They slid forward, slicing through the air, their arms extended into jagged, wailing blades. Every movement was a silent scream, a howl of agony locked into metal.
Behind them, slower, heavier, the Altered approached. Colossal silhouettes of solidified shadow, clad in black carapaces bristling with grotesque growths. Each step boomed like a funeral drum. Their massive, hooked claws tore at the stone, sending up bursts of shattered rock with every strike. They were relentless. Inevitable.
A horde. A tide of living darkness. And they, so small, perched atop their shrinking island of dying light.
Gaël felt the adrenaline surge through his veins, sharp, cold as a naked blade. Every heartbeat hammered the same command.
No running. No escape.
They would have to cut their way through.
_ _ _
Brann was the first to move.
His sword sliced through the air in a perfect arc. Not a wasted motion. Not a hint of hesitation. The very instant a growth lunged toward him, it was severed, clean, in a single stroke.
And then the Umbra flowed into him.
He drew in the surrounding darkness, inhaling it like a starving man denied sustenance for far too long. Shadows coiled around his body, serpentine, weaving into a living cloak. An animated veil that blurred his movements, unsettling the creatures before he even struck.
The air whistled, a pressure wave burst invisibly around him, snapping the bones of the monsters before his blade ever touched them.
The Art of Judgment, the technique he had honed in the depths of despair and blood, manifested here in its terrible, purest form. There was no flurry, no clash. Only a cut. An absolute cut.
The Infested who had rushed him were felled in a single motion. Like blades of grass before a divine, merciless scythe. Their half-formed bodies didn't even have time to reknit themselves. Brann hadn't simply cut their flesh. He had severed their very structure.
He took a step. Just one. And the world seemed to answer. A second wave burst from him, a circle of silent severance that split the air, cleaving clean through the claws of a reckless Altered. The dark carapace shattered, torn away like an empty shell.
Brann turned. His gaze remained steady. Cold. Without remorse.
A whisper slid into his mind. A voice from the abyss, from the Umbra itself. Smooth. Luring. Beckoning him to let go. To sink deeper. To never stop.
"Come…" it murmured. A voice ageless, yet hauntingly familiar. "Why do you resist? You know. You know you're already mine."
An image flashed before him. His fallen comrades. Cassandre, her eyes wide with terror, backing away from him. The light he had cut down. But more than that, the lies that had manipulated him.
"You severed the light of their order. You rejected their chains. You've already crossed over. Don't you see? Futile struggle. Useless resistance. Let me take you. The pain will end. The loneliness will end. You will become… perfect."
The weight of the Umbra thickened around him. Like a tide, rising from nowhere. The shadows undulated, whispered, weaving threads around his limbs, his mind, his soul.
"You're just a tool, Brann. A forgotten blade. But in my hands… you would be an absolute sword."
Brann closed his eyes for a moment. Just one moment. The span of a single breath. Then he opened them again.
'No.'
He cut the whisper. Just as he cut his enemy.
His blade cleaved the Altered clean in two before the beast could even bring its weight down upon him.
Brann wasn't killing.
Brann was executing.
_ _ _
Maera leapt, her body an arrow blazing through the screaming chaos of battle.
Her smile held no trace of mockery now. It wasn't a challenge, no longer a provocation. It was the smile of a predator who had found her prey. Her amber eyes, burning with a wild, untamed light, locked onto the movement of an Infested hurtling toward her.
The blade shot out, straight, precise, plunging into the creature's skull. The tip pierced the spectral energy like a shard of frost slicing through a vein of fire, carving a path toward the hidden shard at its core. The howling shadow froze. Trembled. Then collapsed.
But Maera was already gone.
A fluid step. A perfect twist of her body.
She spun, whirling like a storm of blood-red petals, her weapon tracing a deadly spiral. Flesh and shadow tore beneath her dance, dark splinters scattering across the jagged floor of the rift.
She had mastered her art. The Red Thread. Every strike traced a line. Every line called to the next. A thread, a path. One strike. One kill. One strike. Another. A deadly lullaby.
Her breath came short, but she didn't slow. Black blood beaded on her tight-fitting armor, sliding like ink along the gilded steel of her pauldrons. She paid it no mind.
A rumble rose. Low. Deep. Viscera trembling beneath it.
She looked up.
An Altered was charging. A hulking mass of muscle and blackened chitin, its claws as long as scythes, poised to reap.
She let it come. Closer. Closer still.
Then, at the precise instant, she leapt. A burst of speed. Her foot planted atop the still-warm skull of a fallen corpse. Her body arched in midair, an impossible curve. A silhouette of wing and blade.
And then… the Blood Butterfly unfurled.
A single line. A cut from an impossible angle. Swift as lightning. Final as a death sentence.
The monster's head tumbled before its body even understood.
Maera landed lightly, a soft breath escaping her lips. The adrenaline surged beneath her skin, thundering. Her smile widened.
She loved this. The scent of blood. The dance of death. The intoxicating thrill of combat. That suspended moment where only the strongest could hope to see the next dawn.