His chains shot out, wrapping around the nearest Chainborn, but as they touched its form, a shock of resistance threw them back like oil against water.
The Chainborn's shackles reared up, intercepting his, and from the contact, Aelric felt a glimpse of endless punishment. A soul screaming for release but finding only more shackles.
[They repel your bindings with their own,] the Voice said sharply. [You will have to overpower them not physically, but spiritually. Break their sorrow and override it.]
He growled and leapt into the fray. Veyra's illusions shimmered to life behind him, scattering half-formed phantoms of flames and blades to distract the Chainborn.
They clawed at her constructs, howling in silence, and Aelric slammed a chain into the ground, activating Devourer's Bloom.
With the success of Veyra's illusions, they started to fight each other. The Aelric leeched the remnants of vitality from his enemies who have fallen; they are not just flesh but fragments of memory.
For a heartbeat, he had become them. He saw chains driven into sounds. He felt the betrayal of those they once served. He frowned in a sea of regrets that had no shore.
And then he came back to himself, gasping. Too many at once would break him.
The fight became a grim dance. Aelric adapted, combining the timing of Iron Bind to lock their legs while using Devourer's Bloom surgically, stealing just enough sorrow to weaken them without drowning.
He learned the rhythm of their grief, tuned his strikes to their mourning, and began unraveling the cords of regret that kept them whole.
When the last of them fell, he was covered in grime and whispers. They had left bi corpses just chains, slack and weeping black ichor into the dust.
Aelric sank to one knee. The air had not changed, but something inside him had changed
"You stole their pain," Veyra said quietly. "Piece by piece."
"No," he corrected. "I shared it, I needed to know why this layer hurts so much."
He stood up, swaying. The Voice hummed, thoughtful.
[Your instincts serve you well. But be warned, empathy is a blade with no hilt. The deeper you plunge, the more you bleed.]
They moved on. The landscape darkened further, the chains beginning to arc with faint lightning.
In the distance, Aelric saw shapes that dwarfed even the skeletal titans they had passed.
Living colossi chained not to hold them down, but perhaps to keep the Abyss from being torn apart by their wrath
He whispered, looking at the sky. "This place…it's not a layer. It is something else."
The scent of scorched marrow thickened the deeper Aelric pressed into the Chained Wastes.
It clung to his skin like oil, heavier than aur heavier than guilt. Around him, the chains grew more erratic, no longer silent, dangling monuments of torment they had first appeared to be.
Now they twisted and arced as if agitated, swaying to unseen pulses. Some slithered across the ground like serpents, others trembled in place as though straining against some unseen command.
The Voice said, [ This place is aware of you now. You have trespassed upon more than territory.]
Aelric said nothing; his body was still sore from the battle with the Chainborn. Their sorrow lingered in him like echoes, pressing against his thoughts.
But more than that, there was a sense of anticipation. A pressure was building in the marrow of the land; this silence wasn't emptiness.
It was an expectation. Then came the tolling. One chain, which was so massive it looked like a bridge to nowhere, swung violently in the distance, striking a shattered tower with enough force to split the heavens.
The shockwave hurt Aelric and Veyra like a punch, the sound more like a groan from a dying god than any metal he had ever known.
And then he appeared out of nowhere. A mountain of shadow, flame-wreathed armor, and pulsing sigils carved deep into skin that was more iron than flesh. The Chainlord.
He stood over thirty feet tall, shoulders wrapped in chains that moved as though alive. Where his eyes should have been were black pita spewing molten smoke.
His face, not it should be his mask, was fused to his skull, bearing a permanent sneer of judgment.
Veyra froze. "That's not a warlord," she said. "That's a judge."
The Chainlord spoke, his voice like a forge screaming.
"YOU BEAR THE SHACKLES OF CHALLENGE.*
Aelric's Soulbound Shackles pulsed against his wrists, reacting as if responding to an ancient code.
Aelric stepped forward slowly, instinctively raising his arms in defence.
"I didn't come to challenge you," he said, with a firm voice.
"YOU CARRY THE FORGE BORN CHAINS. YOU HAVE STOLEN THEIR SING. THE LAW DEMANDS TRIAL."
Before Aelric could protest, the ground surged. Chains burst from beneath the earth, forming a jagged arena of rusted links and embedded bones.
A dome closed overhead, sealing him inside with the towering behemoth.
[Trial by conquest,* the Voice said grimly. [Survive, and he may listen to you.]
Before he could see around, the first attack was launched. Aelric barely managed to dodge the first blow.
The Chainlord's chain first crashed into the arena, sending shockwaves that rippled the ground like water.
Aelric leapt into the air, swinging his shackles towards the demon's midsection, attempting to bind and pull.
But the moment contact was made, his chains unraveled as if torn by sound itself. He landed hard, rolling to his feet.
"He is resisting the bind."
[His links are ranked far above yours,] the Voice answered. [You will need to learn the language of his chains and steal it.]
Another strike, Aelric twisted and dashed beneath the blow, the air crackling as the giant's knuckles missed him by inches.
Veyra's illusion surged outwards the dime's edge, distracting the Chainlord for a breath.
Aelric dove into a shadow, activating Devourer's Bloom and pushing it hard. The aura around him ignited, his body surged with strength not entirely his own.