passing the passasge At the end was a Door.
The door was massive—reinforced stone with veins of dull gold. A faint tremor pulsed behind it, like a heartbeat trapped on the other side.
Veyra touched the surface.
Cold.
A gust of frigid wind hissed through the crack beneath the door.
Sol shivered.
"That's… outside air?"
Veyra put her weight into the door.
It resisted.Then groaned.Then slowly—
Swung open.
Cold wind slammed into them instantly, brute and bone-cutting, carrying the scent of snow and abyss. Their torches flickered violently.
The hall beyond opened like a cathedral carved directly into the mountain's inner cliff. Pillars rose from the stone like ribs.Giant open arches looked out into the exposed drop of the mountain's inner hollow—the city far below like a mosaic of ruins.The sky was a swirl of black clouds.
And extending from the end of the hall was a long, narrow gallery…
At its terminus stood a Waypoint, glowing with a calm, moonlit sheen.
Relief flickered through the cohort like a weak pulse.
"…We're close," Vivi whispered.
Lily let her head fall back against the wall."Thank the old gods," she muttered.
Nolan smiled tiredly at his mother."We're almost out, Mom."
Sara touched his cheek."I know, baby. I know."
Sol looked to Veyra.
She wasn't smiling.
Her eyes were scanning the hall.
"Veyra?" Sol asked.
She didn't answer.
Because something moved.
A shadow detached itself from one of the pillars.
He stood nearly three and a half meters tall, a giant shaped not by nature but by purpose.
His armor was interlocked ivory plates etched with golden script that has long since blackened under corruption.The armor appears grown rather than crafted. It curves organically, like the ribcage of some extinct god wrapped around a knight.
Across his back trails a cloak stitched from torn prayer scrolls, each inscribed with ancient verses. Most are burned, smeared, or fused together into stiff parchment tatters.
Sol Immediately opened his system
___________________________________________________
Name: Aeon Croft
Title: Corrupted Warden of the Inner Peak...
________________________________________________________
Before Sol could read all the runes The knight moved. Sol sensed he was a layer 4.
The hall smelled of cold iron and old blood. Aeon moved like a verdict slow, inexorable, every step measured and final. The Souled Knight filled the corridor with shadow; the broken sun-shackles at his helm clinked like tiny dying bells as he advanced.
Veyra met him at the head of the column. She was pale and sweating; poison had gnawed out the edges of her movements. She raised her sword, but it was a tremulous thing in her hand compared to the discipline in her eyes.
"Hold them," she said, voice low. "Keep her safe."
Lily moved behind Veyra's line and set herself like a rock between Sara and the rest; Sara stood, hands trembling, trying to hide the way her feet wobbled. Solace felt cold spill along his spine. He tightened his fingers around his chains and ran through the options in his head like an artillery list.
This is a high layered one. But He remembered that he still had his ability cancel that would cancel any ability enemy throws at him, He also has The ring that would save his life in a critical moment.
Aeon's first motion was a test. He shifted the blade's weight to featherlight, and it became a silver needle that sang through the air. Phoebe reacted first — perception bent, her Thread of Time snapping into focus; her body blurred, she sped around a falling arc and stabbed at Aeon's back. The blade passed through chain-mail and bone like wind through reed; it opened a shallow line, But Aeon didn't bother to bleed.
He answered with the crescent arced, a burning wind that cut the ground at their boots.
Lex stepped in, bone skin braced, and took the shock. The arc tore through his shoulder — but the bone reinforcement saved his torso. The second blow ticked him on the ribs; his arms crumpled under a weight of Aeon's downward slash and the sound of snapping filled the hall. For a second Lex's forearm hung on his elbow like a rope of meat and bone; he screamed and fought like a trapped animal. Sol couldn't look at it for long.
Veyra made the choice she'd rehearsed a hundred times in her head: she pinched back one thread with bloody precision, sacrificing her whole Gate's Thread to pour every ounce of essence and speed into her chains and bone. The restriction burned like frost. Her chains roared to life — gigantic spectral links burst from her hands and wrapped Aeon's midsection. For a heartbeat it looked like the knight might be contained. But Aeon's reacted before she could finish the pull; he shifted the blade's weight to tenfold and slammed the flat of his sword into Veyra's chest.
The impact drove her through a broken column. Marble exploded like teeth. Veyra's breath left her as if someone had stabbed a bellows; she tasted iron. She spat, forced herself up. Aeon inhaled who knows how many dead, and the ashen mist around his joints pulsed with stolen life.
Solace flicked his wrists; chains lashed, binding Aeon's greatblade to the floor. He cast Still on the nearest joint, freezing Aeon's gauntleted wrist for two seconds. Aeon's swing clipped the catch and missed Sol's ribs by inches.
For the first time Vivi moved. She had not wanted to use Decay on a living thing — the thread's touch ate at being — but when Lex grunted and his arms crumpled, she lanced forward and drove her palm into the mailed thigh of Aeon . The decay ate through iron and bone; embers in the seams glimmered and opened. It worked, but only where her skin chilled against the armor; the effect sprayed white dust of erosion and the thing's joint buckled. Her hands stung afterward as if acid had been cottoned into her blood. Decay required contact, cost her stamina, and even then it was ugly and partial. She staggered back with one hand to Lex's shoulder to keep him upright.
Aeon stood still for a second absorbing the essence it loooked like he was preparing for something big.
Solace's mind stirred and he roared with a grunt "He's casting a Domain. MOVE!"
If they get trapped inside a domain. They were dead, There was no going around it They were layer 2. They couldn't survive a Domain of a Layer 4 Being.
Solace's mind raced 'Come on, Come on. think Dammit'
Just then Aeon's Domain bloomed. The hall turned red. Footsteps multiplied; every movement became echoing ricochets of themselves. Pain doubled.
'Fuck it'
But before the Domain could fully manifest. Solace Lunged forward with intensity restricting his glass and stilness thread. But he couldn't catch the knight off gaurd. The sheer amount of difference between a layer 2 and layer 4 was terrrifying.
Suddenly then Solace backsteped and touched the ground they were standing on.
Then with a loud shout he called forth "CANCEL"
Aeon's Domain which was about manifest turned white. A pristine white glow bloomed in the hall returning it to it's normal state.
Everyone felt relief knowing that the Domain didn't manifest, They didn't know how solace did it. But It wasn't time to ask questiions
"Push to the Waypoint!" Veyra shouted, voice ragged. "Vivi — get the glyphs, get it ready!"
Nolan drove his luminous shield into the first surge of Aeon's Strike, the greatsword in his other hand becoming a drag-anchor — he created a singularity point and Aeon stumbled, off-balance and caught in a stuttering gravity that ate its footing. That bought the team a narrow seam. Phoebe slashed and moved towards way point.
Aeon lunged. He did not rush so much as obey the geometry of a blade practiced against a thousand formations. His blade arced, weight multiplied; Lex raised what remained of his arm, bone-skin flaring, and took the horizontal slam. The greatblade crashed into Lex's forearms. Bone shattered. Tendons tore. Lex's arms folded in on themselves. He went down, screaming, blood and yellow marrow painting the marble. Vivi vomited and kept her hands moving; she worked decay on Aeon's greaves and the armor cracked but re-solidified as the knight ingested the stray essence with a guttural, soundless hunger.
Then Aeon pivoted and struck at Sara.
She had stood at the back with her hands folded, eyes haunted, looking thin and human in the middle of steel and ruin. Lily had planted herself before her, a live shield, but Aeon's blade is not content with flesh protection; it carved through the ankle strap of Lily's defense with a thought and then swung again — it did not hesitate. The sword's arc was surgical. It removed both of Sara's feet in a single, bright, brutal motion. The sound was not loud; the wet snap was intimate. Sara's scream was like a small animal sound. She fell, ankles gone, torso tipping forward, and Nolan dove, hands trembling as blood welled and the ground drank it. For a heartbeat Nolan tried to pull himself together and anchor a mother to life with his shield. Veyra howled and rushed forward, but Aeon had already pivoted; his blade caught Veyra on the shoulder like a sickle. Flesh and muscle yielded. The shoulderbone split, the humerus parting with a twang. She held the wound for a single painful breath and then — another arc — and her arm was gone at the elbow. The sight of Veyra standing, one shoulder bare bone and blood chalked down the front of her breastplate, was a line burned in Sol's vision.
"Nolan! Sara!" Sol's chain caught a crumbling statue and threw them backward. He felt his hands slick. He tried to bring his chains across Aeon's throat, hoping a bind and a freeze would hold. Stillness worked twice in a row, but Aeon moved like he had premonition and the knight twisted, the blade painting a new geometry. Phoebe screamed as a rib cracked beneath an Aeon's backward strike; she collapsed, coughing blood into her palm.
Vivi's hands were red with decay and exhaustion; she staggered to Sara and pressed her palms to the stump where flesh used to be. Her heal thread trembled under the strain; she could staunch, not regrow. Sara signed through clenched teeth, white-faced; where once she had moved with motherly certainty she now looked like a child stranded in a storm. Lily was wild with panic but refused to run.
They fought through the gallery, every movement a bargain with pain. Blood sprayed on the white marble like red paint. Aeon's blade marked them in memory: Lex's arms ruined, Phoebe's ribs stabbed and shattered, Sara immobilized and sobbing, Vivi spent to a husk, Nolan using radiant shields like barricades,
They reached the Waypoint platform with Veyra last. She had been bleeding through her arm which was cleanly cut off. Sol was the one— dragging Veyra's weight along the marble, one arm around her waist, chain in the other, breath in his throat like a rasping animal. Someone had to light the glyphs; Vivi crawled to the Waypoint pedestals with fingers that trembled, palms stained with the taste of what she had touched. she said, voice thin, "It needs essence. A lot."
"Do it," Veyra breathed. Her face was a mask of white ambition. She flung whatever remaining strength she had into her chains; she could feel the restriction bleeding her Gate, but the chains were necessary to anchor Aeon and buy a second. Aeon found them, swinging his blade like the end of the world. He sliced again — this time at Solace's face as Sol tried to drag Veyra over the threshold.
Sol felt the world stop where his eyes were. Blood slicked his cheeks. He keened and fell forward; wetness filled his mouth. His hands clawed at the floor, reaching for a world he no longer saw. For a breath Sol tasted iron then nothingness. Panic flooded him.
Aeon did not stop. He thrust his blade into Solace's chest with the Soul Rend, and the pain that followed was not only flesh — a tearing inside that sounded like a thousand whispered names being unwound. Sol's knees gave. But amidst this the ring of Cassia Otheryon shined bright. Just then, Nolan and Lex dragged at him their mouths screaming, hands slick and useless.
"Vivi! The glyphs!" Veyra croaked, voice torn out of a throat gone hoarse. She pushed herself up with both legs locked and half a body falling apart and crawled forward, stars of agony bursting across her vision. Her remaining hand tapped into the Waypoint. The glyphs responded to essence; a tiny pool of light shimmered above the stone.
Veyra poured herself into it. She gave the last of her breathing threads and every rationed ounce of essence into the waypoint's lock — a white scream made of the small noises living bodies make when they tear themselves for others. The platform screamed awake like a heart under pressure. Aeon, drawn by the ritual, surged.
"Go!" Veyra screamed. The word was a fracture. She shoved with everything and something that was more than flesh; with a hand that still had command. She pushed towards the body of Solace which lay across the threshold, flinging him toward the waypoint circle as if the motion of the world could be bent by will. Nolan and Lex wrapped ragged arms around Sol and pulled. Phoebe, bent and coughing blood, dragged at Sol's other side.
They looked back.
In the doorway, Aeon cleaved.
The knight split Veyra from throat to pelvis in a motion that was impossible. For a heartbeat there was nothing but red snow and the smell of copper and salt. Her eyes never dimmed. With the last of her essence she had set the Waypoint's destination — the dirt road below, the world where they had first been wrenched away. She had anchored them home.
Veyra's torso fell. The severed halves slid apart as if an invisible hand parted a curtain of meat and blood. Aeon's blade came down and through the last arc like the closing of a book.
Sol felt himself lifted on light and sound into the Waypoint's breath. He tasted everything. He felt the world unstick and then bang into focus. He had no sight; he had lungs screaming and a heart that nearly stopped. Around him the others dragged and screamed. He heard Sara wail. He heard Phoebe curse, a sound of someone who'd always kept teeth and now lost them. He heard Lex groan and Nolan sob like rain.
The Waypoint spat them into motion. The last thing anyone inside the hall saw before the portal closed was Aeon standing over Veyra — a steady black monument whose face slit glowed with a dead horizontal light. The Souled Knight turned his head with the slow confidence of the condemned. He spoke no words. The marble drank the blood.
When the waypoint closed, Sol's world went dark and the cadence of his heartbeat became the only map he had; he tasted metal and dust and the echo of Veyra's voice — a memory of warmth that would now have to live inside him like a hollow jewel.
They were away. They were alive. They had paid the exact price.