A grinding, teeth-gnashing scrape echoed through the flooded archive, refusing to relent. It sounded as if rusted steel were being drawn across ancient stone—yet beneath that metallic rasp lay something far more unsettling: the creaking of colossal bones stirring in the murky waters below.
Karrion leapt to his feet, brandishing the glowing rune-stone overhead in a desperate bid to pierce the inky gloom. Ripples danced on the water's surface, and through the silt and shadows a vague silhouette slid toward them with sinister purpose.
"Get ready!" Karrion bellowed, his battle-axe's runes flaring to life as he braced for impact.
Raine clutched the hilt of his blade, each sinew taut with adrenaline as exhaustion fell away—if only for a moment. Thalia's eyes glinted like frozen steel as she turned slightly, listening for sounds no ordinary ear could detect.
Then—in the instant before mayhem erupted—a new sensation crept through the chamber. It did not come from the swirling waters at their feet, but from every crevice of the submerged ruin. From the cracks in the walls, from the vaulted ceiling's ancient joints, from the icy, echoing puddles underfoot—a frigid, spiteful energy began to spread like a living web, suffusing every surface with its malignant touch.
The rune-stone's glow faltered, muted by this sudden tide of spectral sorrow. Raine felt his heart seize, a bitter sting in his blood at the recognition of something kin—an echo of the power that dwelt within him, now mangled beyond recognition by corruption's cruel embrace.
"Not right…" he croaked, voice hoarse.
Karrion's broad brow knit in alarm. "Much worse than whatever's lurking in that water—this is… different."
Thalia's features went drawn and grave beneath her hood. A single tremor ran through her lithe frame, betraying fear—and behind that fear, an abyssal sorrow.
"It's them," she murmured, so softly that Raine almost missed it. "The souls of the star-born… trapped here, corrupted into endless anguish."
"Star-born?" Karrion blinked. "You mean those wraiths we fought?"
Thalia gave a slow, sorrowful shake of her head. "These are not mere undead. They are the twisted spirits of scholars, guardians, keepers of this very archive—once noble star-kin whose bodies rotted away under the Blight, but whose souls remain bound by pain and hatred."
Before another word could pass her lips, the murals on the far wall—fractured constellations carved in stone—shivered to life. Inky tendrils trickled from the fissures like nightmares bleeding into reality. The water that had calmed now churned of its own volition, as though a hundred tortured spirits stirred beneath the surface.
From that darkness rose figures—first one, then several—each wreathed in the same half-formed mist that cloaked the vast hall. Their robes, once emblazoned with family crests and scholarly sigils, now clung in tatters. Their flesh was translucent as pale moonlight, yet rotted by corrosive whispers that slithered like vines through their incorporeal frames.
Most chilling of all were their eyes: hollow sockets aglow with sickly blue flame, burning not with knowledge but with a tortured, ravenous rage.
"These…" Raine whispered, dread tightening his chest, "were star-born—our ancestors, maybe, or their peers."
In that moment, every memory of dusty tomes and flickering starlight was drowned by the raw, pulsing grief in those flame-lit eyes.
One specter, closest to Raine, thrust out a skeletal hand. From its fingertip burst a shard of corrupted starlight—twisted by decay—lancing straight for his heart in an arc of crackling violet energy.
"Watch out!" Thalia hissed, weaving a curtain of shadow that shattered under the blast, sending sparks of black lightning dancing across the vault.
Chaos broke loose. More wraiths lunged, guided by unreasoning fury, casting fragmented spells and hurling shards of twisted star-magic. Some chanted shattered incantations, conjuring crystalline shards of obsidian night that fell like hail. Others brandished phantom weapons wreathed in icy violet fire, each swing scything through the gloom with bone-chilling precision.
Karrion roared and cleaved with his rune-axe, golden sigils flaring to repel the nearest horrors—but every blow only saw a new wraith coalesce from the drifting shadows. Their forms reknit as swiftly as he tore them apart.
Thalia flitted among the phantoms, her hands weaving sigils that bound and blurred their perceptions, slowing their jerky assaults—and yet, for every spirit she subdued, two more emerged, their anguished laments echoing off water-drenched pillars.
Raine drew his Starflame Blade, but found himself unable to strike home. These were his kin—once proud defenders of the stars—now shackled to pain beyond mortal reckoning. Each slash felt like profaning a family tomb. Guilt and sorrow tangled his blows until a searing beam of corruption striped across his shoulder, burning both flesh and spirit, snapping him back to the present.
"Raine!" Karrion roared as two wraiths closed on him from behind. "Focus or we all die!"
A wave of despair rolled across Raine's mind: memories of the library in his childhood, laughter and parchment, warm lantern-light falling on his sister's upturned face. He glimpsed the name "Raine" etched in an ancient ledger—names of the archived star-born—before the wraiths had torn it away.
He hesitated, a moment too long.
Then Thalia's voice cut through the haze like a shard of ice: "They suffer, Raine—this is more than vengeance or hunger. They are bound to this ruin, forced to relive their agony forever." Her words trembled with a stark compassion.
Her conviction sparked something in him—a gentle flare of empathy.
"They're not our enemies," she urged, voice low yet unbreakable. "They're victims. We must free them, not destroy them."
Purification, not slaughter.
Raine's blade brushed the water, and instead of channeling destructive force, he hesitated—and then let his inner star-power flow outward as gentle light. He envisioned a guiding path for each spirit, a release from their prison of sorrow.
When the radiant wave touched the nearest wraith, its anguished scream briefly paused, its form wavering… then began to unravel, dissipating as though sighing in relief into motes of silvery dust.
"Now, Karrion!" Thalia commanded. "Aid their release—strike only to break the bonds, not smite them!"
With a fierce cry, Karrion swung his rune-axe in a cleansing arc, the blade's runes burning with pure earth-fire. Each stroke cracked the chains of torment binding a soul—shard by painful shard—until each specter quietly vanished in a swirl of star-dust and darkness.
One by one, the hall emptied of its restless dead. Thalia's shadow-runes faded; Karrion's axes stilled; Raine's Starflame glowed brilliantly, then dimmed to a soft pulse that matched his own steadied heartbeat.
Silence reclaimed the sunken archive, but it was no longer oppressive. Instead, it hung with a reverent stillness, like the hush after a prayer's last word.
The coppery taste of sorrow lingered in the air, but each vanished spirit left behind a faint whisper of gratitude—an echo of release that drifted on Raine's ears like a blessing.
Karrion sheathed his axe with a weary grunt. "By the forges of my kin, never thought I'd be weeping over ghosts…"
Raine sank to one knee, the aftershocks of magic still rippling through him. "They were more than echoes," he murmured. "They were our brothers and sisters of the stars. We—" His voice cracked. "We have freed them."
Thalia, kneeling beside him, closed her eyes in silent tribute. "They can finally rest."
Despite their weariness, a shared sense of purpose kindled hope among them. The archive's waters, once a reservoir of dread, now reflected only the gentle glow of their runes and the proud sparkle of Raine's blade.
Ahead, deeper within this hallowed vault, lay the path to the Leyforge—the crucible of geofire that alone could awaken the Starflame's full potential. Their enemies lay vanquished, for now. Their comrades, long lost and bound by despair, were finally at peace.
Together, they rose, hearts bolstered by the fallen's release, ready to press further into the silence of the drowned archives—and confront whatever trials remained in the still-beating heart of this lost tomb.