The ruins were quieter now.
Too quiet.
Lian stood at the tower's edge, watching smoke coil from the scavengers' bodies where they had fallen. Most had fled after the Heart's outburst, leaving only ash and silence behind.
But silence in Arkenfall was never peace.
The Core King's gaze swept the shadows with the patience of a predator. "They came from below," he said at last, nodding toward a stairway half-buried under rubble. "The temple lies beneath this city. That's where the second Forbidden Core sleeps."
The Oracle, silent until now, finally stepped forward. Her eyes glimmered faint gold beneath her hood.
"You feel it too, don't you?" she asked Lian softly. "The pulse beneath the earth."
Lian almost said no. But the truth was… he did.
The Tyrant's Heart throbbed faintly with every step toward the stairway, like it was answering something deep below.
A call.
Or a challenge.
The stairway led into choking darkness.
Each step descended past carvings older than language, older than history itself—beasts with too many eyes, stars chained together in circles, men kneeling before flames that had faces.
At the bottom stretched a single vast door of black stone.
Its surface was carved with nine circles.
Eight glowed faintly.
One burned like a star trying to break free.
The one in Lian's chest.
The Core King pressed his palm to the door.
Stone shifted. Groaned.
And the temple opened like the mouth of something that had been waiting far too long.
The air below was thick with power.
Not the wild storm of the Forbidden Cores, but something older. Heavier.
The temple walls were carved with spirals of crystal veins, each pulsing faintly with light as if alive.
At its center rose a single altar…
…and upon it floated a shard of crimson light, caged in black metal like even the builders had feared it.
The second Forbidden Core.
The moment Lian stepped into the chamber, the Tyrant's Heart erupted in his chest.
Mine.
The word wasn't spoken aloud.
It slammed through his skull like a hammer.
Lian staggered, breath catching as power rushed his veins like fire.
Break it, the Heart whispered. Take it. Feed me.
The Oracle's voice cut through the roar.
"Careful," she warned. "Two Cores in one body… it could consume you before you even evolve."
But the Core King's eyes never left the shard.
He wasn't warning.
He was watching.
That was when the ground began to shake.
Slowly.
Rhythmically.
As though something beneath the temple had woken the moment the door opened.
From the walls crawled shapes of stone and light.
At first, Lian thought they were statues.
Then one moved.
A creature of obsidian plates and glowing veins lunged from the wall, its claws sparking with Core energy.
A temple guardian.
The Core King drew his blade. "They were left to protect the Cores," he said grimly. "Or to protect the world from them."
The creature struck first.
Its claws tore stone like paper.
Lian barely dodged, the Heart already flooding his limbs with raw power. His sword struck its chest—only to spark uselessly against the creature's shell.
Another crashed down from the ceiling.
Then another.
Three of them, each one moving with the same silent precision, Core energy burning in their eyes.
The Oracle whispered something sharp and strange, runes flashing around her hands, but even her light only slowed them.
The Tyrant's Heart pulsed violently.
More power, it urged. Break the second Core. Take it. Evolve.
Lian gritted his teeth, blade meeting claw again and again. The guardians didn't bleed. Didn't weaken.
And with every strike, his own body trembled harder, the Heart's strength tearing at his veins like it wanted to break him along with them.
Then one guardian's blow sent him crashing into the altar itself.
The second Forbidden Core hovered inches from his hand.
And it was singing.
The Heart roared.
Take it! We are one! We are the throne!
Lian's hand closed around the shard.
Power erupted like a star collapsing.
The guardians froze mid-strike.
The Oracle screamed something he couldn't hear over the roar in his skull.
The Core King's eyes widened for the first time since Lian had met him.
And Lian felt the world split.
Pain tore through every nerve as the second Core fused with the first.
His vision filled with fire.
His pulse became thunder.
The guardians shattered under the wave of energy blasting from his chest, the entire temple cracking as though the earth itself feared what he was becoming.
And for a single, blinding heartbeat…
…Lian saw something.
Nine Thrones burning in a sky of chains.
Nine Tyrants kneeling before a tenth throne drowned in shadow.
And on it sat no man.
No king.
But something else.
Something vast enough to look at the Nine and call them children.
Then it was gone.
The temple lay in ruins around him.
The guardians were dust.
And the second Forbidden Core pulsed faintly inside his chest beside the first, two hearts beating as one.
The Oracle's voice was a whisper now.
"You've awakened it," she said. "The second Tyrant's power… but also its curse."
Lian rose slowly, cracks of light running along his arms where the power had burned too deep.
He didn't feel like he was standing on his own legs anymore.
He felt like a puppet of something greater.
The Core King finally spoke, voice low.
"Two down," he said. "Seven to go."
But his eyes lingered on the cracks of light along Lian's skin, the way the Tyrant's Heart pulsed like it was laughing.
And for the first time…
Lian thought he saw fear in the man's eyes.