Cassius started to wonder, "What the hell was going on?" Everything was somehow connected to him.
At first, he had brushed it aside as people just mad and spitting nonsense as their last breath came, but maybe it's not nonsense? Maybe there's a purpose, but that still raises the question of what the world has in store for him.
Cassius, ever the fierce, thrust his longsword into the skull of the creature.
Cassius sighed, looking around for another exit, and surely enough, a door in front of him randomly appeared in the wall, marking his cue to leave.
Upon going through the door, the voice from earlier told him, "One last room..boy of flame.." he said as his laughter bounced from the wall.
Cassius, annoyed, just continued walking in the new hallway, approaching the door, opening it as if it were his own right.
Perhaps it was.
Cassius let the door slowly open, stepping forward, looking around for clues in this puzzling ruin, only to find a cathedral of bone and flesh living architecture as if it were cursed.
Corpses lying around the center wearing odd outfits, looking like cultists.
Cassius, putting the cathedral, the corpses, and the clothes together, arrived at one conclusion. They were giving sacraments, and since it's a cathedral, it must be some false god or forgotten god.
But now it wasn't about what the cathedral was, it was about what it did to them. Did their god give them that horrifying end? Or were the sacraments blessings that broke them?
He was about to curse when the corpses twitched.
The voice from earlier spoke once again, "Child of flame, you'll need to use that attunement now!" echoing throughout the cathedral.
Before Cassius could fully absorb the voice's words, one got up, turning slowly, bones and flesh ripping away from it. Then it stopped.
It wasn't just the creature that stopped. Cassius did too. He could feel the immense threat staring him down. And, as always with his shitty luck, it lunged faster than he could react.
He dashed sideways, slammed into the wall, then kicked off and vaulted over just as the cultist lunged. Before it could reach the wall, Cassius struck from above. The angle was clean. His longsword tore through.
But the celebration didn't last. The thing twitched, then moved again. No stagger. No delay. Just relentless purpose.
Cassius cursed under his breath and bolted back, stumbling into a sprint.
His lungs burned. His arms ached. His mind screamed, What the fuck is this thing?
The voice had said flame. He'd ignored it. Tried steel instead.
Now he was running, and it wasn't enough.
His feet slid across the stone. The thing was faster.
Cassius growled through clenched teeth. "God fuck me..."
Then click. A thought.
"The voice said flame. The cathedral's built to burn. The cultists are proof of it, charred, twisted. That's it. That's what it wants. It wants me to set it all on fire."
"Was there really no other choice?"The fact of the matter is, even if Cassius agreed to using his resonance, he didn't even know how, as he had never been taught how.
The voice chuckled."Burn, boy. Burn or be buried."
Cassius, absorbed in thought, tripped over a bench, giving the cultist a chance to lunge at his heart, but Cassius narrowly dodged it as it cut left of his throat open a bit, blood slowly pouring out.
One thing that had just become apparent was that the other cultists weren't active as if it weren't designed for one person.
Then the voice spoke, "It seems we have new guests," it said, showing Cedric, Liora, Avaia, and Lucius walking.
Cassius ' eyes narrowed hard as he exhaled in the cold cathedral, "Where are they?" the voice laughed, glitching, "Oh? Companions of yours? Ever more-" Cassius stopped dodging, grabbing the cultist by its arms, then putting his foot on its chest, ripping its arms off, then stabbing it.
The voice amused all the cultists at once. Cassius rose in key stance, dashing forward in a blur, dodging right at the same time, cutting at a knee, the cultist that he attacked with his arms extended, lunged at him.
Cassius raised his blade to the flat side, their claw sliding off his blade, but still cutting his cheek badly.
Cassius flipped his blade upward, trapping the cultist's arm. The others closed in, surrounding him. One slashed across his knees. Another carved into his back. His ankles burned with pain, but Cassius held still, gripping the trapped arm tight.
He roared.
With a violent twist, he ripped the cultist's arm off, spinning so hard his feet left the ground. He axe-kicked the next cultist in the skull. Another lunged. Cassius twisted midair, flipped upside down, and plunged his longsword into the chest of the cultist he'd just kicked, using the corpse like a stepping stone.
He flipped again, leaving the blade behind for just a moment. His arms wrapped around a cultist's neck. With everything he had, he throat-slammed it into the floor, cracking its skull.
That's when it hit him.
Every time he killed one, they came back. And stronger.
Cassius landed, teeth clenched, heart pounding.
"Why is it that I need my attunement?"
"Is it any attunement that works here? Or is this hell built specifically for me?"
Another cultist lunged. Cassius front-kicked it backward, straight into the one behind it, his sword still buried in its head.
Cassius dashed back again, breathing hard, blood slick on his palms.
He reached out with his mind, ready to materialize his longsword into his grip, then paused.
"What if..."
Cassius focused, locking his thoughts on the blade still embedded in the cultist's chest.
He willed it to shift. To move. To rip itself free and drive forward.
It did.
The blade snapped out, piercing clean through the front of the cultist's skull. The head popped off in an ugly crack.
Cassius didn't stop.
He reached deeper, sharper this time, materializing his bow and commanding it too. The process was harder. Slower. Like dragging his mind through sand. But it worked.
Good thing the relic had gone into his resonance and not his soul. If it had been absorbed into his mind, the strain might've torn him apart, not that there wasn't strain on his resonance, but it was minimal.
Cassius finally found a second to breathe.
He dropped to one knee, chest heaving, blood still dripping down his back. His ears were ringing. His pulse refused to slow.
"I need to use it..."
The resonance pulsed faintly. Quietly. Like it was waiting for something.
Cassius clenched his teeth. This was it. That moment. The one he had always avoided.
There were times you had to suck it up and do what you didn't want to do.
This was one of those.
And just like that.
It stirred.
The voice. That voice. It hadn't spoken in years.
"Yes... Yes... finally. Use it, Cassius. Use me."
Cassius didn't flinch this time. He looked into the dark inside himself, where it lived.
"No," he said. "Not you. Not anymore."
A low chuckle echoed in his head. Slow. Patient. Inevitable.
"You're not ready. You're not built for this kind of power. But go ahead. Claim it. Wield it. Burn the cathedral to ash."
"Just know when you're at your weakest, when your mind's breaking and your soul slips, I'll be there. Waiting. And I won't be giving it back."
Cassius said nothing. He didn't have a comeback.
He didn't need one.
He stood up.
And he reached for the flame.