[The Hall of the Stone Throne – Under the Shadow of the Axes]
The sky didn't just fall; it collapsed with the weight of a dying star. Six monolithic axes, each the size of a mountain ridge, descended in perfect, terrifying unison. The atmospheric pressure alone was a physical blade, screaming as it compressed the air, threatening to flay the skin from our bones before the cold obsidian metal could even make contact. My vision blurred under the sheer force of the descent, the world turning into a kaleidoscope of gray stone and impending doom.
I gripped the black cube in my palm, the edges digging into my skin. Wait for it... one second... My pulse was a frantic drum against my ribs. I watched the leading edge of the central axe, a jagged line of destruction, as it drew within a single meter of our skulls.
Now.
I slammed my thumb onto the interface.
[Activation: Partial Gravity Key.] [Range: 1 Meter. Effect: Zero-Gravity Nullification.]
"ZOOOOOOM!"
Sound didn't just stop; it was erased from existence. Within that tiny, shimmering circle surrounding us, the fundamental laws of the universe were rewritten. Time seemed to stretch into a thin, transparent wire. Outside our bubble, the axes struck the earth with a cataclysmic "TRAAAAAAAAKH!"
The resulting earthquake was biblical. The reinforced glass flooring shattered into a billion diamond-like shards, and the throne room erupted in a volcanic plume of pulverized stone and ancient dust. Yet, we were untethered. Borjan and I floated in a pocket of eerie, absolute silence amidst the raging maelstrom. Debris—massive chunks of masonry and splintered wood—drifted past our faces with the graceful, haunting slow-motion of deep-sea predators. We weren't crushed because, for those ten fleeting seconds, we were no longer part of the world the axes intended to destroy. We were ghosts in the machine.
Then, the timer hit zero.
"BOOM!"
Reality reclaimed us. We hit the fractured ground hard as the gravity field collapsed. We were alive, but we were exposed. The dust began to settle, revealing the six titans as they slowly retracted their weapons from the deep craters they had carved into the hall's foundation. They didn't stumble. They didn't show fatigue. They were silent, soulless sentinels of stone and ancient circuitry, already repositioning for a second, final strike. And my cube? It was a dead weight in my hand, flashing a cruel crimson light: Charging – 24 Hours.
Borjan pushed himself up, trembling. Blood, dark and thick, masked the left side of his face, dripping from his jaw onto the white rubble. His legendary sword was a jagged stump; his shield, a warped piece of scrap metal. He looked at the giants, then at me. He didn't need a tactical readout to see the truth. The tricks were over. The magic had run dry.
"You... you monster..." Borjan spat a glob of black bile, staggering back until his heel caught on a jagged ruin. "Is this it? Is this where the path ends?"
"Not yet," I whispered, my mind racing through a thousand permutations of failure. My eyes scanned the giants, searching for the impossible. "I need an opening. Just one second of diverted focus."
Borjan looked at the rising axes. He saw his own death reflected in the polished stone of the blades. The mask of the noble warrior shattered, replaced by a raw, jagged desperation.
"An opening?" He laughed, a hollow, bitter sound that echoed through the wreckage. He pulled a small, pathetic dagger from his belt—his last shard of defiance. "King Gorath sold me like cattle... and you... you used me like a whetstone. Now I'm to die like an insect under a boot." He turned his bloodshot eyes toward me, a flicker of mad resolve igniting in the depths of his pupils. "Take your opening, you devil. Make them bleed for every drop I've lost."
Borjan didn't charge with the grace of a knight. He charged with the frenzy of the damned. He sprinted toward the central giant, his voice tearing through his throat in a primal scream designed to pierce the mechanical apathy of our foes.
"HERE! I'M RIGHT HERE, YOU PILE OF REFUSE!"
He began to hack at the giant's mountainous ankle with his tiny dagger. The strikes were pathetic, sparks flying off the indestructible stone without leaving so much as a scratch. But it worked. The giant paused, its massive head tilting downward in a slow, ponderous motion. The annoying pest had drawn its primary directive. It didn't waste an axe swing. It simply lifted a foot—a slab of rock weighing a thousand tons—to erase the nuisance.
"Now."
I moved. I didn't run; I launched. Using the giant's momentum and the shifting rubble as a springboard, I leaped into the air. It was a suicidal arc, aimed directly at the titan's colossal chest.
Below me, the world groaned. "SUUUUUUUKHHH!"
The sound of Borjan's bones being pulverized was sickening, a wet, crunching thud that signaled the end of a man. Borjan was gone, turned into a crimson smear beneath the titan's heel. But his death had bought the heartbeat I required.
I slammed against the giant's chest, my fingers clawing into a jagged tectonic fissure in its armor. With my other hand, I drew Void's Fang. I was eye-to-eye with the glowing core—a miniature sun of malevolent red light pulsating behind a crystalline layer.
"Goodbye."
I plunged the obsidian glass blade into the center of the light.
"TZZZZZZZT!"
The dagger acted as a lightning rod for the void. The red glow shrieked, flickering violently before plunging into a dull, lifeless gray. The giant froze mid-motion, its colossal frame turning into a static monument of silent stone.
I pushed off, somersaulting through the air and landing roughly on the debris. I expected the titan to collapse, to shatter, to cause some kind of chain reaction. But it remained standing, a frozen god of granite.
"One down," I breathed. Then, the world turned sideways.
The remaining five giants didn't hesitate. Their synchronization was terrifying. One was already upon me, its speed defying its mass. It didn't use its axe. Instead, it backhanded me—a casual gesture, like a man swatting a fly, but delivered with the velocity of a freight train. I couldn't dodge. I barely had time to cross my arms in a pathetic reflex of self-preservation.
This is it, I thought. I remembered the soldier who had been vaporized by a mere touch. I remembered Karl, crushed by the sheer air pressure of their movement. This was a direct hit. I was about to become dust.
"BOOOOOOOOOM!"
The impact was a white-hot explosion of agony. I was a projectile, hurtling through the air until I slammed into a massive basalt pillar at the far end of the hall. The stone cracked under the force, and I crumpled to the floor like a broken doll.
"Aghh... huff..." I coughed, and a spray of blood painted the floor. My ribs were a choir of screaming pain. My left arm hung at a sickening angle. Every nerve in my body was on fire. But... I opened my eyes. I looked at my hands. I looked at the ruin of my clothes.
"I'm... I'm still alive?"
How? Seconds ago, the mere wind from their strikes was lethal. Now, I had taken a direct hit from a hundred-ton limb, and while it had shattered my bones, it hadn't obliterated my existence. The force was... lighter?
I forced myself up, leaning against the cold stone of the pillar, my eyes fixed on the five remaining sentinels. I noticed it then—the subtle shift. The red light in the chests of the remaining five was no longer a blinding sun; it had dimmed, flickering like a candle in a draft. Their movements, once instantaneous and blurring, were now heavy. Slower by a fraction of a second.
[System: Damage Analysis.] [Damage Received: Critical (Regenerative status active).] [Observation: Target Power Output decreased by 16.6%.]
My eyes widened. A bloody, jagged grin tore across my face.
"I see..." I spat a mouthful of dark blood and forced myself to stand straight, ignoring the grinding of my fractured ribs.
"You aren't separate gods," I rasped, my voice echoing in the vast, ruined hall. I looked at the dead giant, then at the five living ones. "You're a network. A single reservoir of energy distributed across six vessels."
"Your absolute strength, your impossible speed, your invulnerable hide... it all depends on the circuit being complete."
I gripped Void's Fang with my good hand, feeling the hum of the stolen energy within the blade.
"When one of you dies, the flow is disrupted. The output drops. You're weaker now."
The five giants stepped toward me, their footfalls still shaking the earth, but the aura of absolute despair that had preceded them was gone. They were no longer an invincible wall of fate. They were monsters. And monsters could be killed.
"Five left," I whispered, feeling the system's healing nanites beginning to knit my ribs back together with a searing itch. "The more of you I kill, the slower you get. The weaker you become."
"The equation has changed. And I'm the one holding the pen."