The air cracked.
The Flame Warden emerged — twelve feet tall, its body a living furnace of molten armor and skeletal flame. Each step it took scorched the marble beneath it. Its eyes were hollow, yet burned with purpose:
"Two fragments enter.One Core leaves."
Jinryu raised Haeryun.Maeryn drew Shinma.
No words.Just understanding.
The Warden attacked.
A flaming greatsword descended like a judgment. Jinryu barely deflected the blow, the impact driving him half a meter into the stone. Maeryn launched over him, blades of Qi igniting from her hands as she slashed across the Warden's exposed shoulder.
It didn't flinch.
Instead, it exhaled a wave of purging fire, engulfing the chamber. The cat vanished in a blur, shielding itself behind a flickering rune.
Jinryu took the flames head-on.
His Core responded. Symbols lit across his skin, golden-orange, burning away the illusion of control.
"If it fully awakens now—"the cat hissed."You'll both die."
Maeryn landed beside Jinryu, panting. "Its Qi is… ancient. It's reading us like enemies."
Jinryu nodded. "It doesn't recognize who we are. Only what we represent."
"Fragments," Maeryn said."Incomplete."
"Threats."
They moved in tandem.
Maeryn ignited her flame-step, zipping around the Warden in blinding arcs, launching pressure strikes to break its stance. Jinryu mirrored her from the opposite side, every slash from Haeryun targeting key joints — shoulder, knee, ribs.
But the Warden adapted.
It caught Maeryn mid-flashstep, hurling her into a pillar of memory-stone. She coughed blood but pushed herself up, fury overtaking form.
"You're not him!" she shouted at the guardian. "You're just their fear made flesh!"
The Warden replied with silence, then raised its sword — pointing directly at her chest.
And charged.
Jinryu moved without thinking.
He stepped between the strike.
Caught the blade.
With his bare hand.
For a moment, time stopped.
Maeryn's eyes widened — not at him.
But at the Core pulsing in his chest, now half-unsealed.
The ninth glyph had opened.
Behind him, a flame lit across her skin — the seventh glyph pulsing with shared rhythm.
Their Cores were synchronizing.
And the Warden reacted violently.
It howled, not in pain, but in denial.
Chains erupted from the ground — old sealing marks trying to suppress the harmonization. The room shook. Cracks split the walls of the Sanctum. Runes began to fail.
"It's not just a guardian," the cat whispered."It's a failsafe."
"To stop this exact moment."
But it was too late.
Jinryu and Maeryn stood side by side, their blades humming in perfect resonance. Sparks of shared flame danced between them.
They no longer moved separately.
Each strike, each motion, wove through the other.
The Warden swung — and Maeryn deflected it upward.Jinryu stabbed through the exposed ribs, embedding Haeryun to the hilt.The Warden roared, trying to unleash its flame—
—but Jinryu raised his hand.
And took the flame into himself.
Maeryn stepped forward, blade in reverse grip.
Shinma pierced the Warden's core.
A burst of blinding crimson-gold light flooded the Sanctum.
When it cleared…
The Warden was gone.
Only molten armor remained, cooling in silence.
Jinryu and Maeryn stood together, both breathing heavily.
Their Cores still pulsed in unison.
But the glyphs had stopped glowing.
The synchronization was incomplete.
And from the far wall, where once only stone stood — a door opened.
No fire.
No light.
Just an old staircase spiraling downward.
Into Babel's Root.