The Keeper moved first.
The armored figure blurred with speed unnatural for something so massive, spear arcing in a gleam of golden light. Carlos barely raised the shard in time to deflect the strike. The impact detonated like thunder, throwing him backward down the causeway. Stone cracked beneath his heels, sparks flaring as he slid.
The others reacted instantly. Thalor planted his shield before Carlos hit the ground, absorbing the next blow that crashed against it. The sound rang across the basin like the toll of a bell. The force drove Thalor to one knee, his teeth bared in a grimace, but he held.
"Move!" he roared.
Rina vanished in a flicker, shadow-stepping to the Keeper's flank. Her daggers flashed, striking at the gaps in its armor. Sparks erupted but no blood flowed — the steel bit stone, not flesh. The Keeper turned its helm, and for a heartbeat she saw her own reflection staring back: pale, exhausted, already defeated. She cursed and spun away before its spear could skewer her.
The First Wave
Lys loosed an arrow. The shot flew true, glowing with runes of her craft, but the spear swept it aside mid-flight. The Keeper advanced without pause, each step reverberating like drums of war.
Maren raised her staff, summoning a wall of flame that roared across the causeway. For an instant the figure disappeared within the blaze. Hope surged — then shattered. The Keeper emerged unburned, striding through the fire as though walking through rain. The mirrored helm turned toward Maren, and the flames guttered, consumed by a pull that dragged the energy into its armor.
Maren staggered back, staff trembling. "It… it feeds on magic!"
"Then we bleed it the old way!" Thalor snarled, charging forward. His shield slammed against the Keeper's chest, forcing it back a step. His sword followed, striking with all the strength of a seasoned warrior. The blade carved deep — but again, sparks flew, not blood. The Keeper caught the sword in its gauntleted hand, twisting, and hurled Thalor across the stone like a child's toy.
The Counterstrike
Carlos scrambled up, shard blazing. He swung it downward in a desperate arc. This time the shard's light cut through the Keeper's spear shaft, cleaving it halfway before the wound sealed instantly with molten brilliance.
But the strike had drawn blood — not from the Keeper, but from Carlos himself. His palm burned, veins glowing faintly where the shard's energy bled into him. He hissed, staggering, as if the shard had punished him for daring to wield its full strength.
The Keeper pressed its advantage. Its mirrored helm tilted, and suddenly every surface of the Spire flared. A thousand reflections of the companions appeared on its surface, each echoing their movements but twisted: Carlos collapsing in defeat, Thalor's shield broken, Rina lifeless, Lys weeping, Maren's staff shattered.
"Don't look at it!" Carlos shouted, dragging himself upright. "It wants us to believe we're already lost!"
Breaking Formation
The Keeper spun its spear in a dazzling arc, forcing the group apart. Rina darted left, Lys rolled right, Maren fell back to the pool's edge, and Thalor dragged himself to his feet to meet its charge again.
The clash was brutal. Thalor's shield rang with each blow, cracks spreading across its surface. His arm shook violently with each impact. At last, the spear shattered the shield entirely, fragments exploding across the stone. The warrior was thrown back, blood on his lips, weaponless.
The Keeper advanced for the kill — but Lys's arrow struck its helm, staggering it for half a breath. Rina used the opening to leap from behind, plunging her dagger deep between the plates at its neck. For the first time, the armor cracked. Golden light spilled from the wound, searing her hands. She screamed and fell away, palms scorched.
The Keeper turned, its faceless helm glinting. It swung the spear in a wide arc that swept both Lys and Rina from their feet, their bodies crashing against the causeway's edge.
Carlos's rage ignited. He surged forward, shard blazing brighter than ever, and slammed it into the crack at the Keeper's neck. The explosion of light blinded them all, the sound like shattering crystal. The Keeper staggered back, its armor fractured.
But Carlos fell to his knees, gasping. His veins burned with fire, his vision blurred with white spots.
Maren ran to him, grabbing his shoulders. "You can't keep channeling it! The shard is eating you alive!"
"I don't have a choice," he rasped.
The Keeper's Wrath
The guardian raised its spear again, though now its movements were slower, less precise. Cracks glowed along its chest and arms where their combined strikes had landed. It was not invincible — but it was far from beaten.
It slammed the spear into the causeway. The ground split, golden fissures racing outward. Shockwaves hurled the companions into the air. Carlos barely managed to brace himself, but Maren was thrown clear, dangling precariously over the glowing pool until Lys grabbed her wrist at the last second.
"Hold!" Lys gritted her teeth, hauling Maren back. The Keeper strode toward them with grim inevitability.
Thalor, bloodied but unbowed, staggered forward with a broken sword gripped in both hands. "Over my body," he growled.
The spear struck — and he caught it, deflecting it just enough for Carlos to rise again.
The Turning Point
Rina reappeared in a flicker of shadow, scorched but grinning ferociously. "Try stabbing me twice, tin man." She slashed again at the cracked neck joint.
Lys loosed three arrows in rapid succession, each striking the fractures across the armor. The golden light flared, spreading like cracks in glass.
Maren summoned what strength remained, her staff glowing not with flame but with raw memory drawn from the pool. She thrust it forward, a torrent of visions slamming into the Keeper — faces, voices, entire lifetimes flooding into its mirrored helm. The guardian staggered, its form flickering as if overwhelmed by the flood of history.
Carlos seized the moment.
He raised the shard high, ignoring the fire in his veins, and drove it down with every ounce of will he possessed. The fragment plunged into the largest fracture across the Keeper's chest.
The world erupted.
Shattering the Guardian
Light exploded outward, consuming the causeway, the pool, even the sky. The Keeper let out no scream, only a reverberating silence as its armor shattered into fragments. The pieces fell away, dissolving into motes of golden light that sank back into the pool.
When the brilliance faded, nothing remained but the echo of its presence. The spear clattered to the stone, lifeless.
The companions stood gasping, battered, and bloodied. The causeway was cracked and smoking, the rivers trembling with disrupted memory.
Carlos fell to his knees, the shard dim in his hand. His breath came ragged, every muscle screaming in agony. But the pull toward the Heart-Spire remained, stronger now than ever, as though the monument acknowledged their victory — and demanded they come closer.
Thalor staggered to his side, laying a heavy hand on his shoulder. "You did it."
"No," Carlos whispered. He looked at each of them — Rina scorched, Lys bruised, Maren pale with exhaustion, Thalor bleeding. "We did it."
The path into the Heart-Spire yawned open, roots curling aside like a mouth beckoning them inside.
The Keeper was gone. But the true trial was only beginning.