The lower tunnels beneath the castle were quieter than the battlefield above, but not calmer.
This was the same chamber where Valttair had stood earlier.
Now—
He stood alone.
Every ally who had descended with him was dead. Their bodies lay scattered across the broken stone, armor split, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Blood mixed with dark void residue in uneven streaks across the floor, pooling between cracked tiles and shattered fragments of masonry.
The air was heavy with mana distortion.
In front of him stood Icarus di Valtaron.
Beside him, the intelligent Void Creature.
And beyond them, rifts pulsed open and shut in unstable rhythm, releasing hundreds upon hundreds of Void Creatures into the chamber, their shapes overlapping in layered silhouettes of claws and fractured limbs.
Within this room, the rifts were densest around Valttair himself.
It was not coincidence.
The intelligent Void Creature had concentrated them there deliberately. Its focus was singular.
