The leading glass-worm didn't move like the sand-eaters Asteria was used to. It didn't lunge, nor did it move with frantic grace. The creature launched itself from the crumbling rafters, its transparent body catching the light until it was nothing more than a distortion of the light — a ripple of lethal intent that made her skin crawl.
Asteria swung the [Obsidian Glass].
CLANG
The sound was sickening. It wasn't the deep thud of metal hitting flesh, but the high-pitched, vibrating ring of glass striking glass. The impact travelled up Asteria's arm, rattling her bones and making her teeth ache. Her dark longsword, usually so sharp it could part the wind, simply skidded off the worm's crystalline appearance.
The beast lashed out with its needle-like head, the vibration intensifying into a sonic shriek. Asteria's vision swam. The world doubled, then tripled. Even with her resistance to mind attacks, the frequency was like a physical drill boring into her skull.
"This isn't working," She hissed, ducking a sweep of the creature's tail that shattered a nearby pillar into diamond dust. Gritting her teeth at what happened to the pillar, she continued: 'How do I shatter them so I don't end up cremated like that pillar?'
The other twenty nightmare creatures were pouring out of the ruins now, a shimmering tide of violet-hearted nightmares. They moved with a terrifying, clicking synchronicity.
Asteria backed away, her mind racing at a speed that made the world feel slow. She reached into one of her pockets with an idea and a dream. Her gaze landed on an Awakened soul shard, one of her many she collected.
'If I can't absorb you, maybe my sword can' She thought, mind flicking back to the updated description of [Siren's Blessing].
She — fed — the shard to the sword. She pressed the soul shard against the hilt of her blade. The dark, light-drinking glass of the weapon seemed to pulse, its hunger now matching her own. The sword consumed the shard.
[Memory: Obsidian Glass has absorbed an Awakened soul shard. Active enchantments can be used without essence temporarily.]
'That's more like it!'
The dark blade didn't just grow in length; it bled. A viscous, ink-like shadow erupted from the tip of her sword, hardening instantly into a jagged, one meter extension of obsidian. It wasn't smooth like the original blade; it was crystalline, rough. and carried the weight balance of a sledgehammer.
"Can you handle this for size?" Asteria growled.
The leader of the pack lunged again. This time, Asteria didn't try and parry. She stepped into the strike, swinging the ink-extended blade in a brutal, vertical arc.
CRACK.
'Exactly like a sledgehammer on glass.'
The heavy obsidian sledge-sword caught the worm square in its head. The transparent carapace wasn't cut — it detonated instead. Shards of glass flew in every direction, whistling past Asteria's armour like shrapnel. The creature's violet-sac burst, spraying neon across the street.
[You have slain an Awakened Monster: Glass Centurion]
But there were still nineteen left, and they were closing in. Fast.
Asteria realized she couldn't take them all one-by-one; the ink extension was draining the shard's essence fast. She needed to think of a plan. A genius plan, in fact. Her [Glass Eyes] scanned the environment, landing on the crumbling hall. The structure was a graveyard of tension, the only thing keeping the roof up was a single, fractured glass weight-bearing pillar.
Her eyes widened at the idea. 'It's going to have to work...'
She turned, sparing the glass creatures a glance — and ran.
"Come on, you transparent bastards!" She shouted, her voice still dreamy and sweet with the [Siren's Song] of her memory.
The worms couldn't resist. The vibration of her voice acted like a magnet, drawing the entire horde into the narrow confines of the ruined hall. They scrambled over each other, their glass bodies clicking and clashing, desperate to reach the source of the melody.
"Perverts," She grumbled.
Asteria leaped over a pile of rubble, twisting her body mid-air. She didn't aim for the monsters. She aimed for the pillar.
SHATTER.
The pillar practically disintegrated. For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then, the ceiling of the ancient building gave up its ghost. Tonnes of reinforced glass and ancient stone came thundering down.
Asteria dove through a window just as the world collapsed behind her.
The sound was tectonic — a roar of grinding glass and settling sand that sent a cloud of silver dust billowing into the street. When the dust cleared, the hall was gone. In its place was a heap of rubble, with the twitching, shattered limbs of a dozen worms sticking out beneath the gargantuan weight.
The spell whispered in her ear, a caccophany of sound.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast: Glass Crawler.]
[You have slain...]
[You have slain...]
[You have slain...]
...
They weren't all dead, but the survivors were pinned — making her life much easier than it would've been otherwise.
She walked back into the ruins, her boots crunching on the remains of the city. One by one, she found the survivors. She didn't use her blade for all of them; she used her hands, tearing their glass carapaces from their transparent flesh, her boots and the sharpest shards of their own slaughtered kin.
[You have slain...]
[You have slain..]
...
Silence. A deafening, eerie silence — a silence of Asteria's own making.
Through the shattered carapaces, she tore out the violet sacs. And regrettably, started to eat.
The meat of the Glass Crawlers wasn't soft, or tasty at all. The flavour alone made her stomach churn — thankfully, one bite from each creature would suffice for the Spell to count her fragments.
She went around, "collecting" parts of them.
[Your Dream has grown stronger.]
[Your Dream...]
[Your Dream...]
...
Asteria stood in the center of the delightful carnage, her breathing heavy, her face smeared with neon-violet blood whilst licking her own lips in satisfaction. The ink extension of her blade had receded, the soul shard finally spent. She looked at her runes, her heart skipping a beat.
[Dream Core: Dormant]
[Spell Fragments: 142/1000]
In a single afternoon, she had gained more power than in a month of hunting worms. She looked further into the distance, where the Glass Temple should be waiting.
"Well," she whispered, wiping the violet stains from her face and belatedly licking it clean off her hands. "That was one hell of a breakfast."
The violent hum of the battle had faded, replaced by the heavy, crystalline silence of the ruins. Asteria stood amidst the carnage, her pulse slowing as the violet ichor on her chin began to dry. She should have felt satisfied; she had survived an ambush, fed her core, and proven that her "Hunger" was a weapon in its own right.
Yet, as she turned to leave the collapsed hall, a sharp, tugging sensation ignited in the center of her chest. It wasn't the gnawing emptiness of her stomach or the cold weight of the Spell. This was a pull — a magnetic, spiritual gravity that seemed to originate from deep within the city's heart.
It felt like something she already owned but had somehow forgotten.
'Follow it,' a voice whispered in the back of her mind — a voice that sounded suspiciously like the appearance of the violet ink swirling in her soul.
She began to walk. Her boots, slick with the neon-violet remains of the Glass Crawlers, left luminous, sticky footprints on the translucent pavement. She moved deeper into the residential district, past villas that looked more like frozen dreams than houses.
As she walked, a strange, prickling sensation crawled across her skin. The architecture was alien, the materials were impossible, and yet... it felt familiar. The way the light refracted off the sharp angles of the roofs, the specific geometric patterns etched into the stone foundations — it all resonated with the frequency of her own soul.
'Why does this feel like home?' she wondered, her brow furrowing. 'I've never been here, right?'
The feeling of the calling intensified, becoming a physical force that yanked at her ribs. She rounded a corner and stopped dead.
Standing at the end of a long, glass-paved plaza was a structure that made the previous palaces look like toys. It was a cathedral of soaring, impossible height. Its spires were made of a dark, smoky glass that seemed to absorb the sunlight rather than reflect it, and its windows were vast mosaics of weeping stars.
The calling was screaming now, a silent siren song coming from behind the heavy glass doors.
Asteria pushed. The doors groaned on hinges that hadn't moved in centuries, swinging open to reveal a cavernous interior. Rows of glass benches stretched toward the horizon, and the air was thick with the scent of ancient incense. At the far end, a raised platform stood in the center, bathed in a single, divine beam of light falling from the vaulted ceiling.
And there, standing behind the altar, was the source of the pull.
It was a statue of breathtaking beauty, carved from a single block of flawless, crystalline glass. It depicted a woman clad in flowing robes, her arms strong and her stance unwavering. She held a massive shield before her, planted firmly into the ground, acting as a sentinel for the entire realm.
Asteria walked down the center aisle, her breathing coming in shallow gasps. Was this a God? The statue radiated a sense of absolute protection, of a peace so profound it was almost suffocating.
But as Asteria climbed the steps of the platform, the "Hunger" flared up, hot and ugly. Her soul wanted to devour the statue — to strip the essence from the glass and make that peace her own.
She reached out, her fingers trembling as she neared the statue's face. Then, her [Glass Eyes] shifted. The violet ink in her pupils flared, and the world of the "beautiful sentinel" fractured. She saw through the illusion. She wasn't being drawn to the statue or the goddess it represented. She was being drawn to a thin, nearly invisible layer of material resting atop the statue's features.
It was a mask.
A delicate, translucent mask made of glass so thin it was flexible, layered over the statue's original face like a second skin.
Asteria reached out, her fingertips brushing the cold, smooth surface. With a grace she didn't know she possessed, she hooked her nails under the edge of the mask and peeled it back.
The moment the glass moved, the statue changed.
Without the mask, the face beneath was revealed to be one of absolute, soul-crushing despair. The woman's mouth was twisted in a silent, jagged scream. Her eyes weren't looking forward in protection; they were wide with the horror of someone who had watched their entire world vanish into the void. It wasn't a goddess. It was a victim.
As the mask came free, it dissolved into a flurry of white sparks that rushed into Asteria's chest, making her heart skip a beat.
[You have received a Memory.]
Asteria staggered back, her breath catching as the runes manifested before her eyes.
Memory: [Mask of Glass]
Memory Rank: ???
Memory Tier: ???
Memory Type: ???
Memory Description: ["???"]
Asteria stared at the flickering question marks in front of her.
'This isn't a standard Memory.'
It didn't have a rank or a description provided by the Spell. It sat in her soul sea like a cold and silent void.
"What?" she whispered into the empty cathedral. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
She looked back at the statue. Without the mask, the cathedral felt different. The "peace" was gone, replaced by the lingering echo of a scream that had lasted for centuries.
The familiarity she had felt earlier suddenly made sense — it wasn't the beauty of the city she recognized. It was the tragedy. She turned the mask over in her mind, feeling its weight. It was a lie made of glass. A way to hide horror behind beauty.