(ALARIC'S POV)
I hit the cavern wall hard enough to knock the breath out of me, stone biting into my back before I dropped to one knee. My lungs burned as I dragged air back in, vision swimming.
I barely had time to stand before the stitched monster charged with a roar.
"GRRRRAH!"
Lightning jumped from my hand on instinct—a crackling spear of mana that should have torn straight through it. The bolt struck its raised arms and spread across its body in branching veins of white-blue light.
It growled. Flesh blackened. Stitches smoked.
Then it stopped.
The glow didn't fade. It sank in.
I froze. "No—"
The monster swelled. Muscles knotted and ballooned, skin stretching tight as if it were being filled from the inside. The stitches strained, some of them snapping with sharp, wet sounds. It straightened, taller than before, broader, power rolling off it in a way that made my skin prickle.
I wasn't hurting it.
I was feeding it.
"…That's bad," I said aloud, because my brain needed something simple to hold onto.
It lunged.
I threw myself sideways as a fist—almost the size of Adam—smashed into the ground where I'd been standing. Stone exploded outward, the impact blasting a hole clean through the cavern wall. Dust filled my mouth. My ears rang.
I rolled, came up low, and slashed.
The spear blade bit deep into its leg.
The wound sealed shut before I could even pull the weapon free.
I stared for half a second too long.
The monster swung.
I barely got the shaft up in time. The impact rattled my arms, pain shooting up into my shoulders as the spear nearly tore itself from my grip. I skidded backward across the stone, boots scraping uselessly.
It was stronger now. Much stronger.
"Alright," I muttered through clenched teeth. "No lightning. No mana."
Another roar. Another charge.
"Back to the basics!"
I ducked under a wide, clumsy hook and drove my shoulder into its midsection. The hit knocked the air out of it—or would have, if it needed to breathe. I slammed the pommel of my spear into its ribs and felt something crack.
It screamed—high and broken.
I carved upward, blade sliding between mismatched bone and flesh, tearing a long gash across its chest. Black blood spilled out, thick and tar-like, splattering across the stone.
It backhanded me.
The world spun as I flew across the cavern. I slammed the spear's butt into the ground at the last second, the shock tearing through my arms as I stopped my own momentum. I hit the floor on one knee, coughing, vision flashing white at the edges.
The monster charged again.
I met it head-on.
Steel rang against bone. I stopped aiming for muscle and started cutting joints—knees, elbows, neck. Tendons snapped under my blade faster than it could knit them back together. It adapted quickly, guarding itself, forcing me back step by step. Every block numbed my fingers. Every mistake drew blood.
'This thing isn't natural. Even less than the normal Scourge-riddden,' I thought.
'It's something...that was made. Not twisted.'
_________________________________________
(ADAM'S POV)
I walked through the first path. Melina and Victoria were ahead of me.
Sound reached me late and warped, as if I were moving through water.
Stone passed beneath my boots, but it kept changing—turning to firelit sand, to beams collapsing inward, to streets swallowed by smoke.
I smelled burning wood that wasn't there. I heard voices with no mouths behind them. My shoulders ached from the weight of the pack, and when I realized how still Tani was inside it, my chest seized.
Too still.
My breath shortened without permission. In. Not enough. Again. My vision narrowed, the edges dimming, and suddenly I wasn't sure where I was standing or when. My legs kept moving, but I wasn't the one telling them to.
Run, something urged, sharp and familiar.
You're late.
You were late before.
The thought twisted and split. What if this wasn't real? What if this was another dream that hadn't realized it yet? I tried to place myself—happy faces, a lively village—but the images slid away, replaced by fire and screaming and the awful certainty that I was back there. My heart slammed hard enough to hurt.
'Alaric.'
The name clawed its way up my throat. 'Ser—'
"Adam."
Melina's voice reached me like a hand closing around my wrist. I didn't stop at first. Then she said my name again, firmer, closer, and the world broke back into pieces I could recognize.
"Are you okay?" she asked quietly.
I dragged in a breath that burned all the way down and forced my eyes to focus on her face. The shaking had reached my hands now, fine and relentless. I curled my fingers into my palms until the tremor dulled.
"I'm fine," I said. It sounded like a lie even to me, scraped raw by my throat. "Just… keep moving."
She watched me for another heartbeat, then nodded, though I could tell she didn't believe me.
Victoria had stopped ahead of us. Something in her posture went changed, and then she broke into a run. We followed without thinking. Fear burned cleaner than the haze, sharper, easier to obey.
The area we burst into was depressing, crystals offered dim light. Ophelia's group stood among the area, scattered and bloodstained.
And Victor—
I stopped short.
He was standing. Swaying, but upright, his face pale beneath the blood streaking his forehead, red hair matted dark. One arm was gone at the shoulder, the wound sealed roughly enough that I could tell it had been done in a hurry. He looked like a man who should not still be breathing and had decided to do it anyway.
Voices overlapped as they spoke—confused, urgent fragments. A monster wearing a bull's skull. A golem made of clay and bone. An ambush that had torn the fight apart.
Then Victoria spoke, steady but tight. "The thing struck him and threw him into a side cavern. I went to the edge." She paused. "No bottom in sight!"
The space filled with silence.
Ophelia's grip tightened on her staff. "Can he survive that?"
"Yes."
The word left my mouth before I knew I meant to speak. Everyone turned toward me.
"He's alive," I said, and this time there was no doubt in it. The certainty cut clean through the noise still rattling in my skull. "He won't die like that."
Victor drew himself straighter, pain etched deep into his face as he reached for his sword. "Then we hold," he said. "We wait for him."
Ophelia caught his shoulder. "You are in no state to—"
He eased out of her grasp, slow but immovable. "I will fight," he said simply. "As long as I am standing. I promised you that, remember?"
No one argued.
I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined him going up against some monster.
Still standing. Still fighting.
It gave me hope.