"Hmm… this dungeon is like… a maze," Raizen muttered, his voice flat as he stood once again before the same weather-worn griffin statue—its wings chipped, its claws buried in time and moss.
This was the eleventh time he'd passed it. Maybe the twelfth
'You're only realising that now?' The voice in his head, Kezess, sounded disappointed. Not angry—just quietly judgmental. As always.
Raizen didn't bother replying immediately. He took a long breath, letting the damp, earthy scent of decay and fungus settle in his lungs.
The corridor around him was narrow, the stone walls sweating moisture. Long veins of twisted roots punched through the cracks above, some of them dripping water down onto the moss-blanketed floor. Everything was a shade of green or grey, painted in gloom.
It had been hours. Or days. Time made no sense down here.
He turned a corner and stopped, face twitching slightly. The same damn griffin again.
"This place is cursed," Raizen said, kneeling before a patch of uneven stone in the wall.
The lines etched into it didn't match the rest—some form of encryption, the characters jagged and angular, almost clawed.
"That looks like a door to you?" he asked aloud, glancing at the wall.
'It does.' Kezess's voice came softly, this time with curiosity rather than disdain.
Raizen leaned in, brushing his fingers across the surface. Cold. Dusty. The grooves were shallow, too eroded to read, and the stone itself felt heavier than it should have. He crouched low, inspecting both sides, tapping along the edges.
"There's gotta be a latch... or pressure trigger…" he muttered, crawling slightly to check the lower ridges of the wall.
'Stop crawling. It looks… pathetic.' Kezess's disdain returned in full swing.
Raizen shot a sideways glare at nothing in particular. "Do you have any better ideas? Because last time I checked, you're not the one bleeding or starving down here."
'Touché…' came the sulky reply.
Raizen grunted. "Thought so." His fingers grazed a brick that jutted out by less than a nail's width—and the wall shifted with a deep, grating groan, stone grinding against stone.
With a hiss of dust and stale air, the slab receded inward, revealing a tight passage.
Darkness yawned ahead. The narrow tunnel was barely big enough to crawl through, and every inch was choked with webs—thick ones, glistening faintly with dew and dust.
At the center of the hidden room beyond was a lone chest. Clean. Untouched. Too perfect.
Raizen didn't even think about it.
Thunk!
A heavy stone flew from his hands and smashed into the chest's lid, cracking it down the middle.
Kezess sighed. 'I suppose… if it works…'
Raizen stepped in cautiously, spiderwebs clinging to his coat and hair as he swept through the tunnel. The new room opened up into a massive chamber, the ceiling lost in shadow.
Two floors surrounded him, each shaped like a hexagon, the walls lined with archways sealed by ancient stone gates. Four gates per floor. Eight in total.
Massive pillars supported the upper floor, each one as wide as a carriage, carved from stacked boulders. Strange red encryption slithered down their surfaces—the same as the door before. The stone smelled… old. Not just in age, but in memory. Something buried deep in the rock itself.
He barely had time to observe before the clicking started.
From every gate, shadows poured out—dozens of giant spiders, each one easily twice the size of the IronFang Wolves and Phantom Jaguars he had fought in the ruined forest days ago.
Their bodies shimmered with chitinous black, their legs long and bristled. And their faces—three rows of two blood-red eyes, aligned vertically, glowing with primal hunger.
"Seriously," Raizen muttered. "First wolves. Then phantom beasts. Now arachnids."
The spiders hissed, venom dripping from split mandibles.
Raizen's eyes glinted, his breath slowing.
"Let's get this done."
He vanished from sight.
---
Elsewhere…
The temporary settlement lay nestled in the foothills of the Aldross Mountains, built beside the ruins of the once-proud Helios Manor.
The estate had crumbled overnight—no warning, just a handful of survivors besides the two youngest heirs and the boy who had vanished shortly after the collapse.
The main hall was little more than stone outlines now, but the rest of the estate had been hastily reconstructed from salvaged timber and earth-packed walls.
Violet banners bearing the Helios crest hung loosely from posts. Makeshift towers were manned by guards loyal to House Helios—even broken, the name still carried weight.
Inside a refurbished meeting chamber, Countess Viola Helios sat in a cushioned chair, cradling the infant Sylvia. Her gaze was distant, fixed on the ceiling. Lanternlight flickered on her silver-stitched gown, its hems weighed down by exhaustion.
"So… Raizen took the child? Hours before the manor fell?" she asked quietly, her voice wrapped in disbelief.
Ryan Helios, barely nine, stood across from her—his golden eyes puffy and rimmed with red. His posture was stiff, too upright for someone his age. Too controlled.
"Yes," he replied, his tone flat. "Marvin's parents were going to be executed. Raizen said… said he was taking him to his aunt. Then he disappeared."
Viola didn't speak right away. Her eyes dropped to Sylvia, whose fingers clutched her shawl sleepily.
She remembered the moment she felt the wards break. The ground trembled with a silent scream—magic collapsing like lungs without breath. She had raced toward the estate, only to find scorched rubble and a crater where the manor's heart once stood.
Raizen had no elemental affinity. She knew that. She had tested him herself when he was ten—stone, water, flame, lightning… nothing.
The boy barely flinched under magical pressure. There was nothing in him. And yet… something unnatural moved that night.
Could he have caused it?
No. Impossible.
And yet…
Ryan's fists clenched. "He saved Marvin… and he saved me."
Viola raised a brow.
"I wasn't in the main wing when the collapse began. He told me to take Sylvia and hide in the lower cellar. Said he'd be back. He never came."
Viola's lips pressed into a thin line. "Why would he…? The boy was always strange. Quiet. But loyal."
Ryan said nothing.
Silence stretched, broken only by Sylvia's gentle hiccup.
"…Did he speak to someone who wasn't there?" Viola asked softly, narrowing her eyes. "Ever?"
Ryan hesitated.
Viola sat forward. "I need you to be honest, Ryan."
The boy gave a slow nod. "He… talks to someone. When he thinks no one's listening. Sometimes even during sword practice. I thought… I thought it was just him being weird. But he calls it… 'Kezess.'"
Viola inhaled sharply.
She'd felt something hearing that name once before. In an old archive sealed beneath the old estate. One of the ancient ancestors of Rënum—Kezess Dracaryn.
A herald of calamity, betrayed by his kin—said to have died in madness centuries ago, buried beneath what is now the plateaus of Drasia.
'Why did that name come to mind?' Viola quietly thought to herself.
And yet…
The weight of responsibility sat heavier on her now. She was the temporary steward of House Helios, its lands, its titles. Until Ryan came of age. Until Sylvia could speak her first words properly. Raizen was gone—lost, dead, or worse. The estate had crumbled. The nobles whispered betrayal. The vassals watched with wary eyes.
Viola looked out the window, past the rising smoke of campfires and the steady flow of soldiers rebuilding. The night sky shimmered faintly with stars.
"Ryan," she said at last, "should he return… do not speak of Kezess. Not to anyone. Not even me."
Ryan nodded solemnly.
And in the hills beyond, deep beneath the earth, a spider shrieked—and was silenced by the blade of a boy who remembered too much.