Dune walked through the forest, one hand pressed tightly against his shoulder. The wound still stung like fire, even though he'd been pushing Neba into it for a while now.
"This is taking too long," he muttered, frowning.
His fingers brushed the edges of the torn flesh, warm and sticky with half-dried blood.
Normally, a wound like this should've started closing by now. Especially with Neba. But instead, it just throbbed, slowly, stubbornly, and reminded him that something was off.
Who the hell was that man?
Dune gritted his teeth. The memory of the shot echoed in his mind. Whoever that bastard was, he knew what he was doing.
And he had left Dune with a wound that wouldn't heal right, even with Neba flowing through his veins.
As he walked, a wave of dizziness swept over him. His steps slowed.
"Poison…?" he wondered aloud.
He stopped and took a deep breath, planting his feet and letting Neba course through his body like a current.
He closed his eyes, focusing. Searching. If there was poison, he'd find it.
He knew how it felt, sharp, invasive and wrong. But as the neba moved through him, there was nothing. No resistance. No foreign presence. Just pain.
"No poison… then why the hell do I feel like this?"
He sat beneath the crooked tree, the rough bark pressing into his back as he stared out toward the distant wall of the labyrinth.
The air was still, heavy with the scent of moss and damp leaves, and the only sound was the wind sighing through the branches overhead.
Syras…
Are you still alive in there?
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to silence the doubts clawing at the edge of his mind. Every minute he waited here was a gamble.
The giant tree, the one that stood like a god's finger at the center of the Trial, was calling to him. He could feel it in his bones. The pull of answers. Of purpose. Of something beyond this chaos.
Dune exhaled slowly, then brought his fingers up to the bridge of his nose, pressing there as if to hold something fragile in place, his patience, maybe. Or hope.
I can't just leave him, what if he comes back? It can't be that hard to climb the labyrinth wall right?
If i give Syras some time, he might be able to heal his wounds with Neba, then use his strength and ability to change direction of gravity, and walk out from the labyrinth.
His gaze shifted toward the towering wall in the distance, then back to the forest behind him, tangled and dark.
He didn't finish the thought. Instead, he leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees.
Two days. That's all I can give you, Syras.
His jaw tightened.
You better make it.
He looked back toward the wall one last time, the weight of decision settling on his shoulders.
If you're not here by then… I move on. Towards the tree.
The first few hours passed easily. Dune had always been good at waiting, watching, calculating, staying still while others made noise. But he wasn't foolish. The ocean would fall soon.
And when it did, it wouldn't care who he was waiting for.
He stood from beneath the tree, brushing dirt from his pants and tightening the wrap around his waist. He needed fragments. That meant a hunt. He already had 3 fragments, all he needed was two more to make a barrier.
He moved swiftly through the underbrush, boots crunching through bone-dry leaves and twisted vines.
He followed signs in the ground, small markings in the soil, the disturbed rhythm of nature.
And then he found it.
Hollow stood between two decaying trees, still as stone, something like a mantis, but deformed.
Taller than him, six spindly limbs, its carapace glistened with green-veined patterns. The head was long and blade-shaped, lacking eyes. Instead, it had a circular mouth lined with twitching teeth and gills that flared like angry lungs.
It hadn't seen him.
Dune crouched low behind a rock, searching the ground. No weapon. No sharp object. He felt the weight of the moment and made a choice.
He grabbed a thick, broken branch, damp and heavy, and took a slow breath.
The creature moved. He moved faster.
He burst from cover, flanking it, then slammed the Neba enhanced branch hard into one of its forward legs.
It let out a shriek, a bone-rattling screech, and staggered. Dune dropped the branch, rolled beneath its lunge, and grabbed a stone the size of his fist.
He channeled Neba through it, and hurled it upward, smashing into the creature's exposed throat where the gills throbbed.
It reeled, flailing wildly, and Dune didn't stop. He leapt onto its back, grabbing hold of a jutting piece of bone, and began striking the base of its neck with brutal force using the same rock.
Again. And again. Until the creature spasmed and collapsed in a heap of choked, twitching limbs.
He climbed off slowly, breathing hard, spattered in blackish blood.
As its body stiffened, two glowing fragments appeared in his vision, floating, flickering like frozen embers.
"Perfect."
By the time he returned to the tree, the sky had started to ripple.
The world stirred. He looked up. The ocean was beginning to fall.
The land trembled beneath him as the heavens tore open. Water, impossibly vast, poured down from the sky like the wrath of gods.
Dune raised his hand and let the fragments combine, blue light circling round him. They spun faster and faster, streaks of blue Neba weaving between them, forming a dome of soft, humming light.
Then the water hit.
It crashed down over the barrier with crushing force, but inside, it was still. He sat beneath the same tree, the world now submerged, yet perfectly calm around him.
The water had drowned the world in silence, and the only light came from the faint blue glow of the core spinning slowly inside the barrier. A perfect sphere of shimmering Neba that kept the weight of the ocean at bay.
He glanced around. As always ocean was full of Calamities. Shapes moved in the dark. Massive, slow moving silhouettes, creatures swimming silently through the blue, drawn to the unnatural light that marked his presence.
His eyes drifted to the nearby labyrinth wall, looming, endless, cutting through the ocean like the spine of the Trial itself. He stared up at it, half-hidden behind floating shadows and currents of silt.
I need to see it. From the top.
He hesitated, glancing down. The barrier had saved him, but if he stepped beyond it, even for a second, the monsters in the ocean would crush him.
He approached the wall anyway, slow and careful, his boots echoing softly inside the bubble.
As he neared it, he placed a hand against the damp surface, smooth, worn, strangely warm beneath his fingers.
Dune pressed his palm against the core of barrier. The light pulsed gently in response. Instinctively, he pushed upward.
The barrier responded and it moved.
He blinked as the Neba shifted and revealed barrier's true form, not just a dome, but a full sphere, wrapping around him entirely.
Beneath the soil. Into the earth. A complete globe of protection, cutting through stone, bark, and air alike. That was why no water had seeped in. The ocean hadn't just been pushed aside, it had been sealed out completely.
Satisfied, he turned back toward the wall and scanned for anything climbable. His eyes landed on a crooked tree, its roots twisted into the cracks near the base of the stone.
Plante also survived the fall of the ocean somehow, half its branches pressing into the barrier, the other half drowning outside.
He climbed. Carefully, gripping bark slick with moisture, he pulled himself up, branch by branch, until the tree bent against the wall's height.
From there, he grabbed onto the ancient stone itself, handholds carved by time and erosion, and began to scale the side.
He pulled himself over the final ledge and stood on the edge of the labyrinth wall.
The ocean rolled in every direction, pressing against the edges of his barrier, slithering with shadows. But here, on this thick strip of ancient stone, he was still safe.
He turned slowly, inspecting the surface of the wall beneath his feet.
"Nothing different," he murmured. He stepped forward and glanced down over the edge. Endless blackness stared back at him.
The space between the walls of the labyrinth was so deep it looked like a canyon, a shadowed divide that devoured all light.
Dune narrowed his eyes. Something was wrong.
Carefully, he crouched, pulling the glowing core of his barrier closer, dragging it by instinct and thought, so the protective sphere shifted with him. He made sure he didn't lean too far. One slip, and he'd be crushed by the ocean.
He peered down again. Then, slowly, he extended a hand over the side… reaching into the narrow space between the walls.
His fingers passed the barrier.
And then, nothing. His brow furrowed. He waved his hand deeper. No weight. No resistance. There was no water.
He whispered, startled. "My hand isn't wet…"
His heart skipped. "What…? But how? The ocean is all around me…"
He stared into the abyss below. All logic said it should be flooded, drowned like everything else. But his hand was dry. Perfectly dry.
"If I…"
He hesitated, the thought turning in his mind. "…If I go down there…"
Suddenly, he spun as something shifted near him. The barrier glowed bright ahead, like it was warning him.
He took a breath, stepped forward, and reached slowly toward the outer edge. This time, he extended his hand outside the barrier, into the surrounding water.
Instantly, cold and crashing pressure. Wetness wrapped his fingers like a vice. Dozens of shadows darted toward him from the depths.
Dune yanked his hand back just as a swarm of pale creatures slammed against the barrier wall with a deafening crack. Teeth. Claws. Eyes wide with hunger.
"Ah! bastards!" he cursed, stumbling back. The eyes lingered. Some pressed against the barrier, watching him… with a hunger eyes.
He sat down, heart thudding, catching his breath.
"I don't understand…" he whispered, voice barely audible under the hum of the ocean. He looked back down into the canyon between the walls.
"There's no water down there. But ocean is all around me… How's that possible?"
The questions began to coil in his head, thick as the darkness below.
"There's nothing blocking the water from entering the labyrinth. No walls, no barrier. Maybe there's something like… An invisible force?"
He rubbed his hand slowly, still feeling the ghost of cold water on his skin. His eyes drifted across the vast ocean pressing against his glowing shield.
"What the hell is going on?"
He stared back into the deep.
"This place doesn't make any sense."