I. The Collapse of the Sanctuary
The roar was not a sound; it was a sentence. It was not heard with the ears, but with the blood. It was a vibration so deep that Kael's teeth chattered and the ground beneath his feet—once solid, mossy stone—suddenly behaved like the surface of a drum struck by a furious god.
The purple mist, which until moments ago had floated lazily, retracted violently toward the ground, as if the earth were inhaling before a scream. The light of the Bone Lantern, fueled by Eris's sacrifice of Qi, flickered with desperation. The gold and white flame struggled against a new darkness—a dense, oily darkness that sprouted from the cracks in the pavement.
—"Go!" Mother Oera shouted. Her voice, once laden with ancestral mysticism, was now the terrified squawk of a creature seeing its natural predator arrive.
The old woman struck the ground with her staff. A physical shockwave pushed Kael, Elara, and the two sisters toward the stone threshold that marked the exit of the clearing.
—"The pact has been broken!" shrieked a nearby Pale One, clutching his head while his blind eyes wept a black liquid. —"He has seen us! The King has seen us in his dream!"
Chaos erupted among The Forgotten. Those beings of stoic calm transformed into a mass of panic. Some ran toward their bone huts to hide under skins—a futile action against what was coming; others, the most devoted, threw themselves directly into the tower's flame, immolating themselves in a final desperate attempt to feed the dream and calm the beast.
—"Don't look back!" Kael ordered, carrying Violeta on his back. The girl, though conscious, was too weak to run at the pace death demanded. Her limbs still held the rigidity of the Void's cold.
Eris, leaning on Elara's shoulder, panted in pain. Her face was ashen; the ritual had consumed nearly all her Qi. Her reserves were dry, and her connection to the fire now felt like an open wound in her soul.
—"I can... I can walk..." Eris tried to say, but her legs failed her. Elara held her firmly, her pragmatic expression hardened by the urgency. —"Save your breath to survive, fire-girl," Elara said, pulling her along. —"If you fall, I'll drag you."
The group crossed the stone threshold just as the sanctuary's central tower split in half. A gigantic crack, glowing with a sickly, reddish light, opened from the base. There was no explosion of debris, but a groan from the earth. The structure of bone and stone was swallowed downward into the jaws of the earth, as if the ground were water.
The last glimpse Kael had of the refuge was of Mother Oera, standing before the crack, raising her staff against a tide of black mud rising like a wave. Then, the mist closed, and the safe world vanished.
II. The Geography of the Nightmare
Re-entering the swamp was like jumping into an acidic stomach. If before the swamp had been a dangerous but natural place, it had now mutated. The influence of the "Sleeping King" upon awakening altered reality itself. The environment no longer obeyed the laws of biology, but the incoherent and terrifying logic of a lucid nightmare.
The trees of rotten bark were no longer static. Their roots twisted and rearranged themselves, closing the path ahead of them and creating instant labyrinths. Stagnant water bubbled, and from it emerged shapes that never quite defined themselves: hands with too many fingers, faces screaming without mouths, columns of steam that smelled of burnt flesh.
—"Left!" Kael shouted, swerving sharply to avoid a vine thick as a trunk that shot from a treetop seeking to empale Eris.
Kael unsheathed his sword with his free hand. The steel sang, imbued with a crimson layer of Qi.
Blood Slash: Waning Moon.
The cut was clean, severing the vine in mid-air. However, upon being cut, the plant did not bleed sap, but a gray ichor that hissed upon touching the ground. The severed piece writhed in the mud like a wounded worm before dissolving into smoke.
—"The ground... the ground is alive," Violeta murmured near Kael's ear. Her voice was a mere thread, but her blue eyes, sharp and terrifying, scanned the space with a perception beyond the visual. —"Kael, we aren't running on earth. We are running on skin."
The revelation sent a chill down Kael's spine. He understood then the magnitude of what Oera had said. They weren't in a cave or a valley; they were literally walking on the physical manifestation of a Divine-Grade Beast or, worse, inside its manifested spiritual domain. Every step they took sent a signal to the host. They were parasites fleeing across the back of a titan shaking off an annoyance.
—"We need to reach high ground," Elara gasped, looking at the star map she had summoned in her hand, though the holographic stars flickered erratically due to the interference of the beast's aura. —"The coordinates are changing. North is no longer north. Space is curving toward the center."
III. The Dream Hounds
They stopped in a small flooded clearing, water reaching their knees. Kael stood up instantly, the water stained with his own blood from the vine cuts. But his blood did not dissolve in the water; it floated, condensing under his control.
—"Are you all okay?" he asked, breathing heavily. Elara surveyed the perimeter with two curved daggers in her hands. —"We aren't alone," she whispered.
From the dark water, silhouettes began to emerge. They were not beasts of flesh and blood. They were Dream Hounds—creatures formed by the swamp's mud and animated by the residual will of the King. They had no eyes, only cavernous maws filled with teeth made of sharpened stones.
There were five. Then ten. Then twenty.
—"There are too many," Eris said, biting her lip until it bled. —"Kael, let me try an explosion. If I burn my vital core..."
—"Don't even think about it!" Kael barked at her with a ferocity that silenced her. —"You just saved Violeta. I'm not losing you now. No one dies today. That is the order."
Kael stepped forward, away from the girls. His control of the Void was at its lowest stage, useful for hiding but useless against a horde. However, his Blood mastery was at the Refined Beginner stage. And there, in that cursed swamp, there was one thing in abundance: rotten organic life and his own spilled blood.
Blood Art: Red Vein Net.
Kael drove his sword into the water. His red Qi shot through the stagnant liquid like electricity. The drops of his own blood floating in the water expanded, turning into razor-thin, nearly invisible threads that interlaced around the legs of the Dream Hounds.
The beasts lunged in unison. Kael twisted the hilt of his sword. —"Contract."
The threads of blood tightened with the force of a steel cable. The first line of mud beasts was instantly sliced apart. But they had no real blood, so Kael could not absorb energy from them. It was a battle of attrition.
Suddenly, a crushing pressure fell over the clearing. The Hounds stopped and dissolved, returning to the water. The water in front of them began to boil. From the depths emerged a figure five meters tall made of interlaced ancient bones, covered by a layer of black moss that pulsed like a heart. It had no face, only a single giant rune glowing where a face should be.
The Guardian's Projection. It was not the King, but it was his antibody. It pointed a branch-arm at Violeta. A voice resonated in their minds like grinding stones:
«What the Void touches... must be purged. Return the stolen flame.»
IV. The Fusion of Siblings
The Projection struck—a shockwave of mental and physical energy. Kael leaped forward, crossing his arms in an X. BOOM! The impact sent him flying back, his feet plowing deep furrows in the mud. He felt his ribs creak. This thing was at the peak of the Golden Core Realm or even touching the Nascent Soul Realm in terms of raw strength.
Kael spat blood. —"Tough nut to crack, huh?"
—"Kael..." Violeta whispered. Her voice was weak but clear. —"You can't kill it with blows. It will reconstruct itself. Its face... that rune... It's a spatial knot. It holds the materialized dream together. You have to hit it exactly in the center."
—"Void?" Kael asked, rolling to avoid a stomp. —"Yes... but your Void is too weak," Violeta said with brutal honesty. —"And I have no energy to launch an attack."
Eris, who had been catching her breath, stood up wobbling. Her golden eyes burned with cold fury. —"Then let's make a cocktail," Eris said, moving behind Kael. —"Brother, you provide the vehicle. Violeta provides the direction. I provide the fuel."
Kael understood instantly. It was madness—combining their Qis this way—but there was no choice. —"Do it!" Kael shouted.
He sprinted directly toward the monster. —"Now, Eris!" Eris placed her hands on Kael's back as she ran behind him, pouring every last drop of her vital essence—not as projected fire, but as pure explosive energy injected into Kael's meridians.
Kael's body glowed like a furnace. The pain was unbearable; his veins felt like lava. But he channeled that power into his sword. —"Violeta!" Violeta closed her eyes, visualizing the spatial knot. She linked her mind to Kael's sword. «There. Three centimeters to the right of the center. Depth: variable. NOW!»
Kael leaped. The thrust of Eris's energy shot him like a rocket. He passed between the closing arms of the monster.
Eclipse Thrust!
The sword penetrated the glowing rune. For a microsecond, nothing happened. Then, the sound of the world inverted. A sharp screech, like shattering glass, pierced their ears. The spatial knot unraveled. The five-meter monster didn't fall; it simply ceased to be. It crumbled into a torrential rain of old bones and rotten mud.
V. The Threshold of Wakefulness
The Sleeping King had stirred, sent his guardian, and upon its defeat, decided the annoyance was not worth the effort of fully waking. He went back to sleep.
Kael fell to the ground, landing heavily on one knee. Eris collapsed in the mud, laughing hysterically between coughs. —"We... we just kicked a god in the shins... and it worked."
Kael embraced his sisters, resting his chin on Violeta's head. —"I told you we'd bring you back," Kael whispered. —"I never doubted it," Violeta lied, burying her face in her brother's chest.
They left the Womb of the Sleeping King behind, carrying the marks of the darkness. And in the depths of Violeta's gaze, the Void still whispered—no longer as an enemy, but as a part of her waiting to be understood.
[End of Chapter 97]