The silence Kael left behind was as abrupt as the silent scream of the shadows that lunged at them. Azrael had no time to think, only to react. His body, trained by Ethan and honed by fear, moved before his mind did. The sword Ethan had given him vibrated in its grip, not with fear, but with a kind of ancient hunger.
"Back! Form a circle!" he shouted, drawing the blade with a metallic ring that echoed in the stone chamber.
The blade, which in the forest had seemed like merely well-tempered steel, now emitted a faint bluish glow upon contact with the first shadow. It didn't cut it; it dissolved it, like a hot knife through butter. An agonizing hiss, more mental than audible, filled the air.
"It works!" exclaimed James, throwing one of his enhanced potions. The vial shattered against the floor, releasing a cloud of silver dust that made the creatures recoil as if it were fire. "But there are too many!"
Sara already had her arms extended, a cold sweat on her brow. "They're not entirely physical!" she warned, as a shield of luminous energy, trembling but firm, expanded from her palms to cover them. "They're echoes, corrupt magic! They attack the will directly!"
Azrael felt it immediately. Every time a shadow crashed against his guard or brushed his aura, a chill of hopelessness ran down his spine. Distorted memories, not his own, invaded him: the sensation of falling into a void (but it wasn't his leap, it was another's), the taste of betrayal in his mouth (but the broken promise wasn't his), the cold of a cell he had never set foot in. It was a psychological attack, an invasion of foreign and painful memories.
It was then that Antoni, who had stood frozen with wide eyes, spoke. His voice wasn't a shout, but a painful recognition.
"I know them," he whispered, and all heads turned toward him. "They are like me… but they no longer have anyone to remember them."
He pointed toward the central mural, where the runes still glowed with a sinister light. "The mural is the nucleus! They are prisoners, not guardians! Echoes of the first summoned, those discarded by the gods or who failed! Their pain is the fuel!"
The revelation hit Azrael with the force of a hammer. They weren't fighting monsters, but ghosts of ancient pawns, souls trapped in eternal punishment for not being useful enough in the gods' war. Like Antoni, but with no one to rescue them.
"We have to break the mural!" shouted Azrael, fighting his way toward the center of the hall. His sword drew blue arcs in the gloom, each impact dissolving a shadow with a groan of agonized relief. But for every one that fell, two more materialized from the cracks in the walls, as if the ruins themselves were bleeding pain.
"We can't keep up!" panted James, whose next potion only managed to hold back a wave for seconds. "They're regenerating!"
Antoni closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and when he opened them, there was no fear left, only immense sadness and quiet determination. He stepped forward, ignoring the shadows swirling around him. He stopped before the great mural of the divine war and extended his hands, without touching the stone.
"I see them," he said, and his voice now had an echo, as if he spoke from a very deep place. "I see the man who lost his family for an empty promise. The woman who gave up her kingdom for power and only found slavery. The child who just wanted to go home…" A tear traced a path down his cheek. "You don't have to protect this place anymore. You can rest now."
The shadows stopped dead in their tracks. Their undulating forms calmed. Their bright white eyes lost their fierce intensity and became… tired. Confused.
"Now, Azrael!" shouted Antoni, without taking his eyes off the mural. "Break the anchor!"
Azrael gathered every ounce of his strength. He didn't think about techniques, or ranks, or the gods' war. He thought of his father selling the family lands. Of his mother going hungry so he could eat. Of Nikol offering him his stuffed toy. Of the life he had, against all odds, learned to love. All that feeling, that human root Dam hadn't accounted for, he channeled it into a single guttural cry and a downward strike with all his soul.
The sword struck the central rune of the mural.
There was no explosion. There was an unfurling. A sound like a thousand sighs released at once. The light of the runes burst into a blinding, white radiance, so pure it momentarily erased all the shadows in the hall. Then, the light faded, absorbed by the stone, which was now dead, dull, and cracked.
The silence that followed was absolute. The last shadows had dissolved, not with groans, but with something that seemed like a silent thankfulness before fading into nothingness.
Sara let her arms fall, the shield flickered out, and she slumped to her knees, exhausted. James held her, looking around in disbelief. Antoni still stood before the mural, trembling slightly, as if he had borne the weight of all those souls and had now set it down.
Azrael took a deep breath, the cold sweat making his clothes cling to his body. He planted the tip of his sword on the ground and leaned on it. The blade no longer glowed.
"Kael was right about one thing," he said, his voice hoarse from the effort. "Feeling is a luxury in a gods' war." He paused and looked at his friends, one by one. "But it's the only luxury that makes us human. And it's what we're going to fight for."
He looked toward the new passageway revealed in the northern wall of the chamber, a stone archway leading to an ascending path lost among the mountains. Toward where, according to Kael, "the two peaks weep."
"The Threshold is there," he stated, straightening up. "Where the gods gather their new pawns. Those who still believe their lies."
"And what are we going to do?" asked Sara, getting up with James's help.
Azrael pulled his sword from the ground and sheathed it. His eyes, the same ones that once stared into the void seeking an end, now burned with a different flame.
"We're going to give them the truth," he replied. "The same truth Antoni gave these shadows. The same truth Dam gave me, even if it was mockingly. The choice to fight for something of their own, not for the whim of a god."
Antoni turned toward them, and for the first time since they'd known him, there was a shadow of peace on his face, not the peace of surrender, but that of having found his place.
"They won't be easy to convince," he warned.
"I know," nodded Azrael, and a weary but genuine smile touched his lips. "But if this journey has taught us anything, it's that even the darkest echo yearns, deep down, to be heard."
They walked toward the passageway, leaving behind the chamber of liberated echoes. The mountain air, cold and sharp, greeted them as a reminder of the arduous path ahead. But now they would walk it not just as fugitives, but as bearers of a fragile and dangerous hope: that in a war of gods, the power to choose for oneself could be the most revolutionary weapon of all.