Silence.
Only the faint crackling of molten rivers echoed across the vast, underground cavern Shaurya had entered earlier. The corpses of the lava-rock serpents lay scattered across the stone floor — charred husks, broken scales, and cooling magma oozing from their wounds.
Shaurya stretched his arms lazily as he walked, expression calm but focused.
His boots crunched over blackened stone.
His shadow stretched long behind him in the red light.
He moved deeper into the cavern —
the rocky path narrowing, twisting, then splitting into a dead end.
But ahead of him…
The ground suddenly disappeared.
A massive cliff-edge.
A glowing, roaring lava pool spread wide in front of him — a shimmering lake of molten orange, bubbling and sloshing like a living creature.
Shaurya stopped at the edge and raised a brow.
"…A lava pool?"
He stared across the other side — a solid cliff wall far away, barely visible through the orange glow.
Between him and that cliff
