"Jamie! Jamie, wait!"
Raileigh's voice echoed through the dark tunnel, but the girl ahead of him didn't slow. She moved with a strange, compulsive urgency, her boots crunching against the debris-strewn floor, her indigo hair swaying like a beacon in the gloom.
Behind her, Raileigh hurried to keep pace, his boots skidding slightly on the slick, algae-covered floor. He looked at her back, watching the slight sway of her hips and the firm, determined line of her shoulders.
"Where are you going?!" he called again, regaining his balance and scrambling over a fallen pillar.
Jamie paused just long enough to glance back over her shoulder. Her face was pale, a light sheen of cold sweat glistening on her forehead, but her sharp blue eyes were wide, glittering with a strange, almost dizzying mix of giddiness and intense longing.
"I... I don't really know," she admitted, her voice strained, catching in her throat as she suddenly winced, her right hand flying up to clamp tight over her left shoulder. She gasped, her fingers digging into her clothes as if trying to hold her flesh together.
"Agh—damn it! I just..."
Raileigh frowned, jogging to catch up, his hands hovering nervously near her arms, his heart doing a chaotic, erratic rhythm against his ribs.
'Gods, she looks so fragile right now, but so impossibly stubborn.'
"Is it the shoulder again? Let me look at it, Jamie—"
"I'm fine, Rai," she gritted out, taking a sharp, shaky breath as the agonizing sting slowly subsided into a dull, thrumming hum. She straightened up, a sudden, bright smile breaking through her pain.
"I feel like this is the right path! It's like... every time it stings, a map lights up in my head. A path where there shouldn't be one. It feels...It feels like... like something's waiting for us."
She turned and ducked straight through a narrow fissure in the solid bedrock—a crack so tight that Raileigh hadn't even noticed it until she slipped inside.
Raileigh followed, his face reddening slightly and biting his lower lip as he squeezed his shoulders through the narrow rock face after her.
'She called me Rai! We're o a nickname basis!' he shook his head.
'No no no, now's not the time for that. What does she mean by right path? Right path to what? The fragment?'
Then he heard it, the faint, ghostly whisper of Laplace echoing at the edge of his consciousness:
Keep your eyes on the girl, Raileigh. She is the heart.
'Huh? What heart? Heart of what?' he wondered, internally fussing.
'I just want to make sure she doesn't get herself killed!'
Laplace didn't respond.
'You're not helpful when you need to be. If I was in my room, by now you would have been chatting up in my ear.' He retorted mentally.
CRACK-BOOM!
A low, deep tremor rippled through the bedrock beneath their feet, sending a shower of fine dust and tiny pebbles tumbling from the ceiling. The air vibrated with a muffled, distant kinetic resonance.
Raileigh stumbled, steadying himself against the damp stone wall.
"Woah! The Enforcers and that Nastrod guy are really going at it," he muttered.
He glanced over his shoulder. The darkness behind them seemed to shift, to breathe. He could have sworn he heard footsteps—soft, deliberate—but when he strained his ears, there was nothing but the distant rumble of the battle beyond.
"Hey! Rai! Keep up or I'm leaving you to rot with the subterranean bugs!" Jamie's voice called out from further down the corridor.
Raileigh blinked, realizing she was already twenty yards ahead, blending into the shadows.
"Hey wait! Jamie, hold on!" he hissed, abandoning his backward glance for the moment and sprinting after her.
The deeper they ventured, the more the ruins degenerated into a nightmare landscape. The air grew thicker with a rancid, sulfurous stench as they passed by massive, stagnant pools of glowing, tar-like corruption. The dark black sludge that seemed to drink up light bubbled softly, clinging to the stone like living mold.
It made Raileigh's skin crawl. They skirted around them, careful not to touch the viscous, black liquid.
But the corruption had bred monsters.
Scary monsters.
A high-pitched, screeching swarm suddenly burst from the shadows above. A colony of corrupted, blind subterranean bats—their wings leathery and dripping with black slime—descended upon them, their eyes glowing red, their fangs dripping with venom.
Jamie reacted instantly, her hands flashing with fire. The flames engulfed the bats, their screeches cut short as they fell to the ground, smoking.
"Nice!" Raileigh called.
"Don't celebrate yet!" Jamie shouted, pointing ahead.
A mischief of corrupted rats—each the size of a large dog—blocked their path. Their fur was matted with black ooze, their teeth jagged and broken. They hissed in unison, their bodies trembling with unnatural rage.
Raileigh stepped forward, his bubbles manifesting around his hands.
"Allow me."
With practiced ease, his bubbles shot forward, expanding instantly upon contact with the rats. The rodents were sucked directly into the centers of the bubbles, trapped within isolated spatial vacuums where their movement was completely paralyzed. Raileigh clenched his fists, and the bubbles imploded with sharp, concussive pops, crushing the beasts into a puree.
They hurried deeper. As they walked, they would occasional feel a tremor or a quake, which reminded them that the Saints were still fighting the revolutionary.
From the side, a massive, seven-legged scuttling scorpion suddenly lunged from a large crack in the wall toward Raileigh's blind spot, its dripping tail raised to strike.
WHOOSH!
A pillar of ice froze its stinger just inches away from Raileigh's neck. Jamie leaped over over him, her right hand cloaked in a swirling vortex of freezing cold. She made an ice spear and drove it straight through the creature's carapace between its eyes and freezing it from the inside.
"Thanks," Raileigh said.
"Anytime," she replied, already moving again.
They reached a wide, subterranean stone bridge spanning a deep, still-water pool. As they stepped onto the span, the water rippled. A school of pale, eyeless, serpentine fish with razor sharp fangs appeared from the dark depths and floated just under the waters surface.
They didn't attack physically—instead, their scales flashed with a sickly violet light, launching a sharp, collective telepathic assault straight into the intruders' minds.
It was a call, beaconing them to draw closer to the water. Raileigh felt a pressure in his skull.
"Ah—!"
He stumbled, clutching his head and took an unconscious step towards the edge. Jamie quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him behind her, her blue eyes hardened, as her synesthesia projected a thick suffocating color of pure, unadulterated malice straight into the water.
The flashing lights grew even more brighter and chaotic as the fish fought back and Jamie's eye twitched as she strained against their assault and resistance.
"Tch." She quickly pulled out an artifact from her copper ring storage, the same one she had used in the warehouse where she met the shadow crew and threw it into the water which instantly sent a strong current of electricity through it.
The telepathic fish instantly froze, their primitive minds paralyzed by the sensation of pain as well as the color of Jamie's intent. They rolled over, floating belly-up on the water's surface in a state of catatonic shock.
Raileigh rubbed his temples, the headache rapidly receding as he stared at Jamie in genuine astonishment.
"No time to waste. Lets go." she said, rubbing her own temple as they continued jog-stepping through the winding halls. The ruins shook again.
They passed through a narrow corridor and Raileigh watched Jamie as they walked, his curiosity growing with every step. He had spent his days studying the grand archives of the royal palace, making it an absolute requirement to memorize the twenty-two divine traits, their domain authorities, and the specific Resonants unlocked at each stage of ascension.
'Knowledge was survival.' he had told himself.
If he was ever in a scenario where he had to fight someone, he needed to know their capabilities the moment they manifested their Flow so he could have the upper hand regardless of the odds.
But what Jamie was doing was contrary to the knowledge he had committed to memory.
He watched as she moved. She wasn't just casting fire and ice. She was actively altering the world around her. Particularly temperature, though that wasn't the only thing she seemed to be influencing.
When she struck, her physical speed momentarily amplified to a dizzying blur; when a corrupted lizard lunged at her, its momentum abruptly diminished, its movements dragging as if swimming through molasses. She created a localized pocket of absolute physical equilibrium around the two of them, effortlessly dampening environmental kinetic shocks.
'What authority is this?' Raileigh wondered.
'Is it an advanced application of an existential class trait? Or is it rather a cosmic class? I've never heard of a trait that allows a user to directly manipulate states like this. Unless of course its an application of a trait authority into something else?'
Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he caught up to her side.
"Hey, Jamie?"
"What?"
"Um...if you don't mind me asking, what is your trait?"
"Why do you want to know?"
Raileigh quickly raised his hands.
"I-I don't mean it in a bad way or anything, I, just, I'm just curious that's all. You don't have to answer if you don't want to. It's something that's personal and you should't-"
Jamie chuckled.
"Its Ok Rai, I'll tell you if you're curious. Elias already knows mine anyway and it'd be unfair if I knew yours but you didn't know mine."
Raileigh chuckled nervously.
"I'm sorry."
Another tremor.
Jamie hopped over a pile of shattered masonry, not missing a beat.
"Hmm, my Trait is The Emperor."
Raileigh nearly tripped over his own boots, stopping dead in his tracks. "The Emperor?!"
"Yeah. Why?" she asked, looking back at him with a puzzled expression.
The Emperor was the Trait of order and change—of systems and hierarchies. Its Resonants were not about amplifying and diminishing things. That wasn't how the Emperor worked.
'Unless...'
"It's nothing, thanks for sharing." He replied to Jamie as he shook his head. But the doubt lingered.
There was another tremor in the distance and this time, it seemed to have disturbed a beast nested right above them. A loud, horrific buzzing sound echoed from the high ceiling above. A giant, corrupted drain fly the size of a small house—its wings ragged and dripping with corrosive bile—slid out from a dark recess, its bulbous red eyes locking onto them.
It dropped down in front of them, causing them, crushing the ground under its weight. Its wings vibrated and it lunged, its proboscis extending like a spear. Jamie grabbed Raileigh's arm and sprinted forward. Jamie froze the ground under the creature and the two dropped and slid under the drain fly and diving through a tall, narrow archway at the end of the hall.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the oppressive atmosphere of the ruins abruptly shifted. The damp stench of decay vanished, replaced by an eerie, heavy silence. The air felt unnaturally dense, vibrating with a subtle, spatial hum.
They were near a seclusion, a domain that was severed from normal space.
'The fragment must be in there.' he said looking at the wall of shimmering air a few yards in front of them.
Jamie took a eager step forward, "It's here... I can feel it—"
Before she could dive in, Raileigh grabbed her arm, pulling her behind a pillar and covered her mouth with his hand. She gasped against his hand, her eyes widening in protest, but Raileigh pressed a finger to his own lips, signaling for absolute silence.
The Revolutionists appeared a moment later. Three of them, their eyes still glassy from the Black Dandy, their movements jerky and unnatural Their clothes were also more tattered than normal . They looked around, confused.
"Damn, that annoying bug. Where did they go?" one of the revolutionists hissed, wiping sweat from his brow.
"They were right in front of us!"
"Look," another muttered, pointing toward the shimmering, translucent barrier at the far end of the hall.
"Maybe they went in there?"
They exchanged glances. Then, without hesitation, they dove into the shimmering boundary.
Raileigh waited. Counted to ten. Then he released Jamie, stepping back with a sheepish, apologetic smile.
"Sorry about that. Needed to make sure they didn't spot us."
Jamie rubbed her mouth, looking at the shimmering boundary.
"It's fine. But... Rai, the fragment is in there. Right behind that wall."
Raileigh's expression grew serious.
"How can you be so sure?"
She touched her chest. "I can feel it. Like... a part of me is in there, like a piece of my own soul is beyond the boundary, calling for me to pick it up."
Raileigh looked at her. Suspicion flickered in his chest—everything about her was bizarre, impossible, unexplainable. But then he looked at her face, at the determination in her blue eyes, at the way her indigo hair framed her olive skin.
'I like it', he thought. 'I like all of it.'
Jamie winced.
"Ugh,... your intent is getting super loud again. It's weirding me out."
"Ah! Right! Sorry!" Raileigh squeaked, clearing his throat furiously and turning tomato-red.
Another tremor.
Jamie walked past him, stepping up to stand directly in front of the shimmering spatial boundary. Raileigh quickly caught up, standing beside her. They exchanged a brief, meaningful glance, nodded in unison, and stepped through the threshold together.
They materialized inside a grand, suffocating ossuary.
Inside, was a cathedral of death.
Walls lined with the bleached, yellowed bones of thousands—human and beast alike—stretched upward into darkness. They were an assortment in a myriad of shapes and sizes, all staring out with empty sockets filled with shadows. The air was thick with the smell of old decay, and the floor was slick with something that wasn't quite water.
CRACK! SCHLICK!
The sharp, horrifying sound of rending flesh and snapping bone echoed through the ossuary.
Raileigh and Jamie froze.
Just twenty feet ahead of them, one of the revolutionists who had entered moments prior was lifted ten feet into the air a hand griping his skull and left ankle. The figure holding him up unnaturally twisted the body in opposite sides before tearing him in half with a single pull, spraying a torrent of crimson blood across the bone-lined walls.
Standing in the center of the hall, ankle-deep in pooling blood alongside the mangled corpses of the other revolutionists and this man who had just torn a revolutionist apart, were four other figures.
They were clad in high-collared, pitch-black robes that swept the floor. Their faces were completely concealed beneath terrifying, dark gasmasks fitted with long, curved ram horns that swept backward over their hoods. The air surrounding them was so suffocatingly cold that every breath they exhaled hissed through the filters of their masks in a rhythmic, labored wheeze.
Hiss-ah... Hiss-ah...
The five masked figures moved with unnatural fluidity, slowly turned their heads in unison, their dark, unblinking goggles locking straight onto the two kids.
Raileigh's blood instantly ran cold. An overwhelming, instinctual terror slammed into his chest, forcing him to take an involuntary step backward.
He grabbed Jamie's arm, pulling her back.
"What—" she started.
"Don't."
She looked at him, confused and looked back at the men. Her mind was flooded with a color she had almost never sensed—a flat, pitch-black, suffocating hue that carried only one absolute meaning:
Death. 💀
Acting on pure survival instinct, Raileigh thrust his hands out, instantly pillaging all ambient light within a twenty-foot radius, plunging the entrance into absolute darkness. Simultaneously, Jamie slammed her hands down, summoning a thick, dense wall of jagged ice to block the aisle.
CRASH!
The ice wall hadn't even fully formed before it was violently shattered into fine powder by a single, unseen strike.
"Run!" Raileigh grabbed Jamie's hand and, dragging her sideways before diving behind a into a pile of bones pulling the massive ribcage of some unknown beast over themselves to hide.
Outside their makeshift shelter, the heavy, rhythmic clicking of boots echoed against the stone as the five figures split up, fanning out to search the ossuary.
Hiss-ah... Hiss-ah...
"This is bad... this is very, very bad," Raileigh whispered in a frantic, barely audible breath, his back pressed against the cold bones.
"Who are those guys and why did they kill those men?!"
"They're from the Sacred Orthodox Church," Raileigh whispered back, his voice trembling slightly.
"The Church?" Jamie asked, her brow furrowing.
"Why are members of the church down here?"
"Listen to me," Raileigh urged, his charismatic tone completely replaced by cautious dread.
"The Orthodox Church believes in a single, supreme deity who possesses twenty unique, distinct personalities. Each of those personalities represents a divine trait granted to humanity. In the church, each trait has an order dedicated to it."
"Is this really the time for a lesson on the church? Gosh, you're beginning to sound like Elias."
Jamie snapped in a strained whisper as her shoulder burned with another sharp sting.
"Just listen!" Raileigh pleaded, his eyes wide.
"Those men out there... they are Thanatologists. They belong to the Fourteenth Order—the Order of Death!"
Jamie blinked. "Order of Death? So what? What does that mean?"
"It is alleged that aside from their duties catering to dead believers and maintaining the cemeteries, they are also unsanctioned executioners! Fanatical assassins who kill in the name of their god, leaving no witnesses behind!"
"You said alleged executioners!" Jamie retorted softly. "That means there's no proof!"
Raileigh gestured frantically to the blood-soaked floor outside.
"There are five of them standing right there in a secluded ossuary full of fresh corpses! What more proof do you need?!"
Jamie gritted her teeth, peeking around the pile of bones to survey the room.
"Look, proof or no proof, we came here for the fragment. We need to find it, grab it, and get the hell out of here before they find us."
She squinted into the gloom, trying to locate their positions, but the suffocating color of death floating in the air was throwing her synesthesia completely off.
"Keep your breathing down," Jamie whispered, ducking back under the ribcage. "Their masks make a lot of noise, but they might hear us if you breathe too loudly."
Raileigh frowned, turning his head toward her.
"Jamie... I'm barely breathing at all. I thought that was you."
"What? No, I'm holding my breath—"
Hiss-ah... Hiss-ah...
She opened her palm and a small flame blossomed to illuminate the dark.
Jamie and Raileigh slowly turned to the side and froze, their muscles locking in absolute terror.
Poking directly through a gap in the dragon's bone ribcage right above them was a terrifying, gas masked face fitted with curved ram horns. Two dark, reflective goggles stared straight at them.
Hiss-ah... Hiss-ah...
Before either of them could scream, the remaining four Thanatologists materialized out of the shadows, silently surrounding the pile of bones.
One of them raised his cleaver.
Raileigh grabbed Jamie's hand.
The cleaver fell.