It was a roar — low, resonant, and vast, rolling through the cave like a tremor through stone. It came from the far end of the chamber, from the direction of the throne.
Then, slower and quieter, came the words.
"Come forward, young fighter."
Neither of them moved for a moment.
Renher's wounds throbbed. His hand instinctively reached for a weapon that wasn't there. Beside him — or rather, above and to the left — Kazuma had gone very still, his translucent form barely drifting.
They looked at one another.
The voice came again, its tone unchanged — neither threatening nor gentle, simply inexorable.
"Fear not. You are the future of the Vanguard. I will not harm you. Come. I am little more than a lifeless shell now — a single whisper of a soul, nothing more."
Kazuma moved first. He turned and began drifting slowly toward the throne, his form gliding soundlessly over the cave floor.
"Wait—" Renher's voice came out sharper than intended. "Are you out of your mind? We know nothing about that thing. His words could mean anything."
Kazuma paused and looked back over his shoulder, his expression carrying the particular calm of someone who had already run the calculations.
"Do we have a better option?" he asked. "We're trapped. You're injured. I can't interact with anything physical. The one being in this chamber that might know a way out is the one on the throne." He held Renher's gaze steadily. "If he wanted us dead, he's had ample time. It costs us more to ignore him than to hear what he has to say."
Renher did not answer immediately.
He looked around the cave — the cocoons pulsing their slow crimson light, the oppressive dark pressing in from every direction, the distant silhouette of the throne barely visible at the chamber's far end. He wanted to explore this place himself. He wanted to examine those cocoons, understand the space, find his own answers.
But his body was in no condition to refuse an exit, and Kazuma was right.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"You'd better be right about this," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet with considerable effort.
Kazuma glanced back with something almost like a smile.
"I mostly am."
Together — one walking, one floating — they moved toward the throne.
The walk to the throne was not a short one.
Though the chamber was not vast by any grand measure, the path cutting through it was treacherous — large stones jutted from the ground at irregular intervals, forcing Renher to pick his way around them with careful, deliberate steps.
His wounds made every stride a negotiation. Kazuma drifted ahead, unbothered by the terrain, his faint luminescence the only reliable light in the oppressive dark.
Neither of them spoke.
There was an unspoken understanding between them — a mutual instinct to stay quiet, to listen, to not disturb whatever presence waited at the far end of the chamber. Even Kazuma, who had been easy enough with words earlier, seemed to have turned inward, his translucent form drifting silently through the black air.
The ground beneath Renher's boots changed subtly as they went. It grew softer — tacky, almost, as if moisture had seeped up from somewhere far below. He kept his eyes forward and his breathing measured, using the faint glow that leaked from Kazuma's form to judge where to place his next step. Without it, he would have been blind entirely.
This place is wrong, he thought, not for the first time. Everything about it is wrong.
Slowly, the outline of the throne resolved itself from the dark.
Renher's pace faltered — just slightly.
The throne was enormous. Even from a distance, its scale was difficult to reconcile with the space around it. It rose from the cave floor like something that had always been there, carved from or grown out of the stone itself, high-backed and severe, its silhouette jagged against the faint ambient dark. And upon it sat a figure to match.
We're not even close yet, Renher thought, and the thing is already that large.
Kazuma had gone still in the air ahead of him, silently absorbing the sight.
They continued forward.
Kazuma arrived first, floating over the last of the scattered rocks to settle before the base of the throne. Renher followed, slower, stepping around the final obstacles with grim patience and pulling himself upright when he reached the open space before the dais.
He looked up.
The figure on the throne was massive — a man, or something shaped like a man, of a scale that made the word feel insufficient. Red armour encased him, dark and ancient, its surface dull in the way of metal that had not seen light in a very long time. A crown sat above hollow eyes. Beside the throne, leaning against its base, was a sword — its blade stained with old blood and touched at the edges with rust, yet still carrying the faint impression of something that had once been extraordinary.
The figure was still.
For a long moment, nothing happened. No sound. No movement from those hollow eyes. Renher's hand twitched again toward a sword that wasn't there.
Then the figure spoke.
"This is interesting." The voice was the same one that had rolled through the cave — low and immense, like the first tremor before an earthquake. "The first time I have seen something quite like this."
The words were not addressed to either of them specifically. He seemed to be speaking to himself as much as to them, studying them the way a scholar might study an unexpected entry in an old record.
Renher exhaled slowly and decided that if they were going to have any sort of conversation, he might as well begin it.
"Who are you?" he asked. "And more importantly — how do we get out of here?"
The hollow eyes drifted to him. There was something in them that Renher couldn't quite name — not malice, not warmth, but a depth that made him feel, briefly, like he was standing at the edge of something very old and very deep.