There was a path.
Made of clouds—dense, soft, pulsing like living flesh breathing beneath his feet.
Above it, there was no sky.
Below... fire.
Not ordinary fire, but the gaping mouth of a volcano, where breaths of sulfur rose like sighs from a sleeping deity.
Dórian walked.
Or maybe floated.
The heat bit at his skin with invisible teeth, but he saw no burns.
No blisters. No blood.
Only sweat.
Liters of it.
Rivers running down his temples, down his back, mixing with the mist of the abyss.
'Am I dead?' he thought.
But even that thought felt distant, as if it came from another body, another world, another time.
The path trembled beneath his feet.
The clouds began to darken.
From white to gray.
From gray to soot-black.
And then, the veins.
They began to pulse.
The first was on his neck. A deep throb. Hot.
Then his arm.
His chest.
His face.
A liquid, searing pain, as if his own blood were trying to boil and escape through his pores.
He dropped to his knees.
The clouds below quivered, revealing a flash of hungry lava.
The heat now came from within.
He opened his mouth.
Blood burst out like a crimson flower.
His nostrils, his ears, his eyes—everything bled.
His skin began to wrinkle, to sink, to crack like clay left in the desert.
Even so...
He crawled.
With clenched teeth. With clenched fists.
But his fingers were melting.
His nails fell off. His phalanges vanished like wax beneath a flame.
All that remained were bloody arms and exposed bone.
And still... he pulled himself forward.
Crawled with what was left.
Each movement left pieces behind.
Strips of flesh, exposed ribs, blood boiling like soup in an iron cauldron.
The path narrowed.
His breathing was a gasp of ashes.
The air, a blade.
And then he saw it.
The mountain.
Up ahead. Alone. Majestic.
The final mountain of the dungeon.
So tall it pierced the dead sky. So dark it swallowed even the shine of its own agony.
At its peak, something was waiting for him.
A creature that belonged to no world.
Its eyes appeared first—twenty violet orbs, from its face to its belly, blinking in incomprehensible patterns.
Then the arms:
Six chitinous claws like those of a grasshopper, sharp as obsidian axes.
A tail coiled behind it, ending in a scorpion's stinger, dripping with unreal venom that seemed to dissolve the air around it.
The body was that of a centipede.
Segmented, covered in plates that opened and closed like war gates.
And the head...
Oh, the head...
It was his own.
Dórian's face, fused with a black serpent, smiled at him with endless rows of teeth.
"You failed, knight."
The voice didn't echo.
It invaded his mind like a burning nail.
The creature moved.
Leapt.
Came down toward him.
And the instant the shadow of his own monstrosity covered him—
He woke up.
**
Air. Cold.
The pain came back first.
The real pain.
Not the dream's.
Every bone screamed. His skin throbbed. His chest burned as if someone had used it as an anvil.
But he felt a presence.
A heat opposite to the volcano's.
Gentle. Healing.
Dália was there.
Sitting beside him, her hands trembling, circles of light dancing between her palms.
"The bald guy's gonna make it," she whispered.
Dórian blinked.
The world was still blurry, but the ice dome was gone.
But the beast...
The beast was no longer there.
**
I didn't hear the ice break—only the dense silence, heavy like mourning before it begins.
From the moment I entered the mountain, something felt wrong.
My veins, which normally pulsed with the comforting glow of healing, had grown sluggish, heavy, as if even the light itself hesitated to touch me.
The deeper we went, the weaker my regeneration became. The warmth that should have radiated from my hands was suppressed by something... viscous. Shadowed.
That's when I understood.
The mountain's energy hated me.
The creature's affinity—pure darkness, distorted and spatial—was the exact opposite of mine.
No matter how much I focused, everything within me was repelled, as if the world itself wanted to erase my existence.
Aeloria, with a swift gesture, sealed me inside this sphere of ice.
It was to protect me—help comes best when it doesn't hinder, and I understood that.
Since then, I've been trapped here.
The translucent dome gave me sight of the battle, but no sound reached my ears. It was a theater of shadows and lights, explosions and silent screams. A mute nightmare.
And I… powerless.
With my hands pressed against the ice.
Gnawing my nails. Literally.
The first impact nearly made me shatter the dome.
"GLENN!!" I screamed, without reply.
The mountain shook as he slammed the guardian back into the ground, his energy spent, his eyes dimmed.
I saw his muscles convulse, saw the energy collapse detonate through his body like a blown fuse.
"No, Glenn… NO!"
My nails bled. My breath faltered.
His final lightning bolt tore across the sky like a dying star.
And he fell.
Dórian was next.
The creature's roar echoed—even in silence.
I saw him run. I saw him shout something, his mouth wide, desperate.
And then the guardian's body crushed him.
Everything quaked. The ground folded under the impact.
Dórian's own sword pierced through his flank, pinned between him and the cosmic mass that struck.
His eyes lost focus.
He stopped moving.
I trembled. Wanted to vomit.
But I couldn't.
I had to watch.
"Seraphine..." I called hoarsely.
She was still fighting.
Her spear spun like a ray of wind in human hands.
As the guardian fell, to avoid being crushed to death, a defense mechanism activated. A flickering shield barely saved her.
But at what cost? Her artifact drained her completely.
All her life force spent to protect her.
And then she too collapsed, eyes shut, body trembling, in full shutdown.
I screamed.
Even soundlessly—I screamed.
But the worst came after.
Aeloria.
Aeloria was made of ice and logic. Always unshakable.
But there… there I saw fear.
He fought the guardian—alone.
The dome had trapped the serpent. Spears pierced the ceiling, the floor, the walls. The thing writhed, lost limbs, spat darkness.
And still it adapted.
It severed its own body to escape.
Ran like a living shadow, flaming in darkness, and swallowed Aeloria in a dilated strike, as if space itself had folded into distorted reality.
The last thing I saw was him screaming.
He screamed. And vanished.
My fists pounded against the ice. I wanted to break it.
To tear myself out.
To die with them, if needed.
But I stayed alive. Only alive.
And the sphere cracked.
The serpent froze from the inside.
Aeloria killed it.
But at what price?
The dome collapsed. The barrier that protected me dissolved into mist.
The ground, once vibrating with darkness, turned… still.
The lesser serpents died with the guardian.
A field of corpses.
A field of the undead.
My friends were there.
All… fallen.
And I was still standing.
**
Dália was pale. Not the usual delicate, graceful kind.
It was a pallor of fear, bleached white, like the light was being drained from her body piece by piece.
Her eyes scanned the devastated field in front of her with a desperation bordering on panic, but her body, still weakened by the darkness's influence, could barely keep up.
She knew.
She knew—silently, hypocritically—that Dórian and Aeloria were on the brink of death. And that maybe not even she could bring them back. Still, she ran.
First to Glenn, her first instinct.
He lay partially buried under gravel and ice.
But when she pulled him free and checked his vital signs, a sigh of relief escaped her lips.
"Alive…" she murmured, almost in disbelief.
Glenn was unconscious. Drained to the point of collapse. But alive. No major injuries. The energy collapse hadn't damaged his organs or caused internal anomalies in his energy pathways. She arranged him carefully, shielding him with a passive recovery seal. Then she stood. It was time to face hell.
When she turned and saw Dórian, the world seemed to double in weight.
The warrior's body was partially buried, his own weapon impaled in his abdomen, the bones in his chest crushed, his skin blackened by still-pulsing venom. Every inch of him screamed death.
And just beside him, lying among the frozen remains of the guardian's mouth—Aeloria.
He had dragged himself out. But the price—oh, the price was madness. His legs had been torn off by the creature's fangs. Blood spilled at a sluggish rate, almost weak. His eyes half-open, breathing labored, as if surviving on sheer pride alone.
"You're not… dying. You're not… dying!" Dália dropped to her knees and placed her hands on his chest.
She was about to begin the desperate stabilization process when she remembered.
Seraphine's words, spoken back on the fifth mountain, returned like a cold blade in her mind:
'The Chalice isn't just a relic of healing. It protects the mountain. The structure itself... the magic. Maybe it protects the next one too.'
Her blood ran cold.
Of course.
Of course the sixth mountain was still intact because the parasite guardian was inside. He was the shield.
The beasts didn't dare enter because they feared him. But now?
Now there was nothing between the mountain's interior and the swarm outside.
Mutant centipedes. Blade-winged locusts. Walking carrion.
Without thinking, she stood.
Her eyes sought the mountain's summit, the central peak where a faint glow flickered among the rocks and ice. She ran, stumbling through debris, stepping on the corpses of dead serpents, dodging stones and puddles of still-evaporating black blood.
Until she reached the top.
There, she found an altar—just like the one on the fifth mountain. Embedded at the center of a circle of golden inscriptions faded by time. In front of it, a slot shaped exactly like the Crimson Chalice she carried.
Dália pulled the object from the holster at her waist, hands trembling. Placed it gently into the slot. A red light flickered in the chalice, pulsing, demanding something.
She understood.
It needed an offering.
Just like the fifth mountain, which had accepted acidic swamp fluid.
She immediately grabbed the first thing she could—remains of the serpents.
Scales, flesh, venom glands.
Nothing.
The chalice remained still.
The red glow pulsed with something almost like irritation.
She didn't give up.
Ran back and brought a chunk of frozen guardian flesh.
Deposited it.
Nothing.
Panting, she went to the serpent eggs scattered across the lair's edges. Emptied them into the chalice.
Nothing.
The rim remained dry.
The reddish glow dimmed now—disappointed.
Only one thing remained.
Something she'd been trying to ignore since she woke up.
Something still dripping from her fingertips.
Blood.
She hesitated.
Looked up to the dungeon's purple sky, to the rifts that already trembled with distant presences.
No time.
She raised a dagger.
Slashed her forearm firmly—blood poured hot, vivid red.
She filled the chalice to the brim.
And in that instant, the altar erupted in light.
A golden beam cut across the sky, akin to her life affinity, spreading in all directions.
The faded inscriptions blazed with brilliant yellow.
And a translucent barrier rose like a dome, engulfing the entire mountain in a protective field.
Outside, at the mountain's edges, the approaching beasts froze.
Hesitated.
Retreated.
Dália collapsed to her knees.
Blood streamed from her arm.
But her eyes… her eyes remained open.
She still had a group to save.
And time was against her.