Solum awoke in the crack of stone where he'd collapsed, limbs stiff, ribs aching. His body throbbed with the memory of the last encounter—the fall, the fire, the fracture. Pain greeted him like an old companion.
He felt broken and forgotten.
His skin had begun to change—thickening in some places, peeling in others, like the Shaded who had lost their Ember and wasted away in the Outer Sanctum. There was no glow in his chest, no warmth beneath his ribs. Just a spreading hollowness and veins of cold.
"Why am I corrupting?" he muttered. "The flame rejected me. Why suffer the consequence without a single blessing in return?"
But he already knew.
It was the blood. That foul, dark substance from the Fractured's corpse that had seeped into his wounds. It wasn't just gore. but some crude remnant of corruption, Something that didn't belong in him but refused to leave.
"This place... it's not part of Nyxara," he whispered. "Not the world I know."
The cave stretched in every direction, branching into hundreds of narrow corridors and veins, like the broken roots of a dead tree. Some cracks narrowed so tight a breath wouldn't fit. Others yawned wide and vast.
Solum pushed himself upright with a groan, clutching the stone wall for balance. His body trembled with effort. He bent down and picked up the bone daggers he had fashioned the day before—crudely shaped from the Fractured's ribs, wrapped in scraps of hide.
'Time to leave'
He limped forward, dragging himself past the corpse of the beast that had nearly ended him. Scavengers had already found it. Its hide had been torn apart, flesh picked at by crawling things. It looked like it had been rotting for days, though the fight had only happened the night before.
The path ahead led into a wider chamber—so vast he could no longer see the ceiling. The air shifted here, cooler, damp with mist. He heard it before he saw it: the slow trickle of flowing water. And... was that rustling? Not rock, not claws—something softer. Leaves?
He stepped out into a hollow so wide it could've been another world.
Vines clung to rock walls. Gnarled trees—thin, colorless, and sickly—rose from cracks in the ground. Yet no sunlight touched their bark. The only illumination came from thin veins of dull, imprisoned light embedded in the walls, as if something radiant had long ago been buried alive.
"So this is my new home?" he muttered bitterly. From nearly a king in the Outer Sanctum to a crippled failure, crawling in forgotten stone.
Irony was the only thing he had left.
His stomach growled, sharp and angry. He hadn't eaten in two days—unless rotten moss counted. His body was burning through itself, breaking down faster than it could heal.
It wasn't much, but it was life.
Solum weaved between the bark and brush, pushing deeper into the overgrowth.
And then—he froze.
A low growl, distant but long and deliberate, rolled through the hollow space.
It wasn't close. Not yet. But his instincts lit like kindling. His heart thudded.
That wasn't meant for him. it was too far and deliberate, hunting.
He crouched lower, eyes scanning the shadows.
That damned First Ember, he thought bitterly, must have been corrupted to draw so many Ashborn here.
He didn't know what lay at the heart of the cavern. But it was calling them—pulling them inward like moths to a flame.
And he was caught in it.
Eventually, he pushed through the brush into a clearing. A wide lake stretched before him, its waters still and dark. Mist clung low across its surface. He couldn't see the other side.
He fell to his knees and drank greedily, hands cupping the cold water as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful.
Relief. Temporary, but real.
"One problem solved," he whispered."But food... that's another story."
Then he looked at himself.
His skin was bruised, slashed, and blackened. Parts of him were flaking, others hardening like stone. His veins pulsed with something thick and cold not blood.
Corrupting him.
It crawled through him like it had a mind of its own—veins of dark threading deeper into his limbs, wrapping around his bones like roots in the dirt.
He clenched his fists.
He had no core. No Ember to contain or control it.
And the corruption was growing.
but survival came first.