The air crackled with the imminence of decision. Milos advanced, a figure of cold, implacable intent, towards the burned circle in the heart of the ruins. Each step he took seemed to draw in the chaotic energy of the battle, pulling it towards him. Zack and Orpheus, posted on the shattered battlements, felt the weight of the choice crushing them.
"We can't let him reach the circle!" Orpheus's voice was a tense roar, his red eyes fixed on Milos. "Whatever he plans, it starts there! I'll intercept him!"
"And feed the echo with more power?" Zack retorted, his voice choked by the nausea the vibration of Black Moon caused him. The Boy's warning, however disturbing its origin, felt terrifyingly plausible. "He wants the direct confrontation there. There must be another way. The symbols... maybe we can cut off the source!"
"There's no time for maybe, Zack!" Orpheus didn't wait for an answer. With a cry of fury, he leaped from the battlements, his Scarlet Katana leaving a trail of fire in the air as he plunged towards Milos and the brute lieutenant guarding him.
Zack gritted his teeth, frustration and fear warring within him. Orpheus was right about the immediate danger, but the feeling of being manipulated, that every act of violence only served a larger, darker purpose, was paralyzing. He forced himself to act. Instead of following Orpheus, he focused on the corrupted soldiers and creatures still pressing the defenses, but his gaze swept the walls, searching for the ritual symbols Orpheus had mentioned.
The battle split into desperate focal points. Orpheus collided with the brute lieutenant in a duel of titanic strength, each blow echoing like thunder, while trying to bypass him to reach Milos. The scarlet flames fought against the unnatural resilience of the modified monster. Milos, meanwhile, stopped a few meters from the circle, raising his hands not to fight, but as if conducting an invisible orchestra of pain and Void energy, his mist lieutenants creating ethereal barriers and illusions to protect their master.
Zack unleashed his contained fury on the horde. Black lightning danced, but he felt Black Moon react strangely – sometimes responding with overwhelming power, other times seeming to hesitate, causing flashes of sharp pain in his mind, fragmented images of golden eyes fading. It was like fighting with a weapon that had its own will, a malevolent will that delighted in his agony. He spotted one of the symbols pulsing faintly on a partially collapsed wall and fired a concentrated bolt, trying to destroy it.
The symbol exploded in a shower of profane sparks, but instead of weakening the ambient energy, it seemed to cause an adverse reaction. The ground trembled, and for an instant, Zack had a staggering vision – not a memory, but a sensory impression: a primal scream echoing from the depths of the mountain, a vast, cold, hungry consciousness stirring in its sleep.
Meanwhile, K fiercely defended the Boy's hiding place. She noticed something strange: the corrupted soldiers and creatures seemed to bypass her position, focusing their attacks on other points, as if deliberately avoiding that specific area. Was it protection or... quarantine? The thought unsettled her. The Boy, behind her, was now completely silent, but his dark eyes shone with a disturbing inner light.
Orpheus, in a supreme effort, managed to break through the brute lieutenant's guard, plunging his flaming katana into the creature's shoulder. The monster roared, but before Orpheus could advance on Milos, he saw the hooded leader smile. A smile that didn't reach the hidden eyes, but conveyed a chilling satisfaction at feeling the wave of pain and power released by Orpheus's blow.
"Yes... more..." Milos's voice was a whisper the wind seemed to carry to Zack. "The heart awakens with pain..."
At that exact moment, as if responding to a command, the Boy spoke, his voice still monotonous, but with a final, almost annunciatory tone that chilled K's blood. "The heart is almost awake... the song is almost complete..."
Milos raised his hands towards the burned circle. The Void energy, fed by the battle, by the pain, by the raw power unleashed by Zack and Orpheus, converged on that point. The circle glowed with a sickly black light. The ground trembled violently. A pulse of pure, profane energy exploded from the center of the ruins, sweeping across the battlefield. It wasn't a physical blast, but a wave of psychic pressure and corruption that made everyone stagger, humans and monsters alike.
The mist around the mountain peak seemed to thicken, darken, and a low, guttural sound, like the grinding of ancient stone or the awakening of something colossal, began to echo from the heights, overriding the sounds of battle. The Echo of the First Scream had been disturbed. And something had answered.
The Mountain's Resonance
The pulse of profane energy swept through the ruins like a silent shockwave, but its effects were immediate and devastating. The ground trembled more violently, not a common tremor, but a deep, dissonant vibration that seemed to emanate from the very bowels of the mountain. The air grew heavy, charged with static that made skin crawl and metal hum. The psychic pressure crushed the mind, inducing nausea and a dizzying sense of disorientation in Zack, Orpheus, and K.
The corrupted soldiers faltered, some dropping to their knees, clutching their heads as if under sonic attack. The Void creatures reacted with greater violence, some entering a blind frenzy, attacking each other or thrashing against the walls, while others seemed paralyzed, trembling under the invisible influence. Chaos reigned for a tense moment.
But Milos... Milos stood motionless, head slightly tilted, not in pain, but in attentive listening. An almost clinical fascination gleamed in his hidden eyes as he observed the chaotic reaction around him and, more importantly, the mountain's response. The guttural sound from the peak intensified, transforming into a low, constant resonance, a fundamental note that vibrated in the stone, in the air, in the bones. "Fascinating..." The murmur escaped his lips, not directed at anyone in particular, perhaps to the Void he believed he heard. "The response frequency is... unexpected. The primary specimen reacts to external stimulation. The resonance chamber is active."
Orpheus, struggling to shake off the vertigo, saw Milos's posture. Initial fury gave way to cold recognition. "He's not fighting us," he gasped to Zack, dodging an uncontrolled blow from the brute lieutenant, who also seemed affected by the resonance. "He's... observing. This is all a damned experiment to him!"
Zack felt the resonance as a personal assault. Each vibration seemed to echo in Black Moon, amplifying the sense of fragmentation, the nausea, the flashes of stolen memories. The sword in his hands felt heavier, hungrier, vibrating in profane harmony with the awakened mountain. He fought to maintain focus, not to succumb to the internal and external cacophony.
In the hiding place, K tried to shield the Boy, who was strangely calm amidst the vibrating chaos. His dark eyes were fixed on the ruined ceiling, as if seeing through the stone. He no longer trembled, nor murmured. There was a stillness about him, a depth K had never seen. "It's listening," he said suddenly, his voice still monotonous, but with a new, almost ancient timbre. "The First Scream wasn't a scream. It was a song. And now... it remembers the melody."
The Boy's words were punctuated by a new development. The resonance began to manifest bizarre physical effects. Small stones and debris started to levitate erratically. The Void mist enveloping the peak seemed to writhe, forming impossible geometric patterns that dissolved and reformed. And from the higher slopes, new sounds joined the resonance – the scraping of stone on stone, the cracking of ancient ice, as if something colossal were moving in the depths or awakening in the heights.
Milos observed these manifestations with growing interest. He raised a strange device, an orb of dark metal and crystal that seemed to absorb light and measure the energy fluctuations. "Promising preliminary data," he murmured. "The initial disturbance was sufficient to initiate the resonance cascade. Phase two requires analysis and recalibration."
With unnerving calm, he gestured to his remaining lieutenants. The modified brute, still fighting Orpheus, seemed to receive a silent command and began to retreat, despite the flaming blows. The mist-being partially dissolved, merging with the ambient haze.
"The initial experiment is concluded for now," Milos's voice projected over the resonance, cold and dispassionate. "The results exceeded expectations. I leave you with... the side effects. Consider it part of the data collection on the resistance of different specimens to prolonged exposure." He turned, beginning to walk away into the thicker mist, as if the battle were simply no longer relevant to his purposes.
"You won't escape!" Orpheus roared, trying to pursue him, but a sudden avalanche of rocks and ice, dislodged by the mountain's vibration, blocked his path.
The mountain was alive, or something within it was. And it was responding to Milos's disturbance. The scientist's withdrawal brought no relief, only the terrible realization that they had been left behind to face the unpredictable consequences of his experiment. The ground continued to shake, the resonance increased, and from the shadows of the mist that now seemed to pulse with a life of its own, new shapes, older and less comprehensible than the previous creatures, began to creep forth. The battle against Milos was over for now, but the fight for survival against the awakened mountain itself was just beginning.