The chamber was quiet in the way deep places are quiet—thick air, stone that hasn't heard footsteps in centuries, and a faint hum that felt more like pressure than sound.
Sigrid knelt beside the base of the massive statue, fingers tracing the carved lines like she was checking the temperature of a kettle, not performing a ritual to awaken the sealed being. Urdan wasn't nearly as delicate. He carried a small glass vial in one hand, the liquid inside shifting like it hated being held.
"Finally," he muttered, almost giddy. "One hour playing tag with those brats for this." They had somehow evaded the other two to get to this room.
"You enjoy exaggerating your effort," Sigrid replied politely, gaze still on the etched symbols. "But yes. This completes it."
He crouched, placed the vial against the statue's foot, and pressed it onto the centre of the array carved into the floor. The moment glass touched stone, the entire pattern brightened with a dull iron-red glow—nothing showy, just a colour that didn't belong in a place untouched by sunlight. The statue responded first in the chest, a faint pulse, then a deeper shift as the stone's colour darkened. Something under its surface moved, slow and steady, like a creature waking up from a long, irritated sleep.
Urdan stepped back with the confidence of someone who believed he'd finally won. "There it is. The heart's waking."
Sigrid permitted herself a small exhale. "Good. Once it stabilises, we can control—"
She didn't finish. The statue's chest flared again, brighter this time, and its fingers curled with a grinding crack. Dust rained off its joints. The two of them watched with the calm of professionals who thought they controlled the situation.
They didn't.
The far hallway rumbled, stone shifting as two figures entered—Kazu and Levy. They took in the sight in a heartbeat: Sigrid and Urdan standing in front of a half-awakened giant.
And then it happened.
The statue moved faster than anything that size should. A single step forward, floor shaking. Urdan was closest. He had just enough time for his eyes to widen before a stone hand came down.
The impact sounded like someone dropping a boulder onto wet clay. When the hand lifted, there wasn't anything recognisable left.
Levy flinched. Kazu didn't even blink—his focus locked on Sigrid, who'd already sprinted toward the exit. Not away from danger, but toward them, because she clearly preferred passing him over facing the thing she'd just helped release.
She didn't get far.
The moment she crossed the doorway threshold, Kazu stepped in her path and delivered a clean, sharp kick straight to her midsection.
She shot backwards like a fired projectile, hit the ground, skidded across stone, and slammed directly into the statue's leg.
It looked down. And crushed her without hesitation.
'Deserve it. Though it's a shame that I couldn't torture them, oh well.' He glanced at Levy, whose face had gone pale.
Silence returned almost instantly, broken only by the slow cracking of the stone giant's shifting body. The red in its chest pulsed again, stronger, and now its full attention dragged toward the only remaining movement in the room: two teenagers standing in a doorway, very alive, very small.
Levy whispered, "Kazu… what is that?" She decided to ignore what had happened to Urdan and Sigrid.
He took a slow breath, eyes scanning its structure. The thing stood nearly three stories tall, carved from a dark mineral that had absorbed centuries of pressure.
Its limbs were bulky, built less like a statue of a warrior and more like a living blockade. Plates of hardened material layered across its body, overlapping like natural armour. Its face wasn't really a face—just deep-set indentations and a hollow ridge where eyes should've been. The chest was the only place with colour, a pulsing red vein spreading outward from the centre, fading as it reached the limbs.
"It's the thing that was sealed in this temple," he said simply.
'Guess, it was't a devil but something else.'
Then he grabbed Levy's shoulder and pushed her back. "Go outside. Now."
"What? I can—"
"No." His voice stayed calm. "If you enter this room, we die. Stay out."
She hesitated for half a second. His expression didn't change. She stepped back.
The giant stepped forward.
Kazu shot sideways just before its arm came down, the impact splitting the floor in a jagged crack that spread out like a spiderweb. Dust exploded upward. He moved fast—clean footwork, no wasted motion—circling around its leg to force distance. The thing rotated with a grinding, stone-on-stone noise, tracking him even though it had no visible eyes.
Kazu flicked a hand. Magic bullets fired, sharp bursts of compressed force. They hit its torso, chest, face—no effect. The surface didn't even flinch. It pushed forward again, pace steady and brute.
He clicked his tongue. "Yeah, thought so."
The giant swung its arm like a falling wall. Kazu vaulted over the arc, landing on a tilted slab of broken floor just as the swing passed beneath him. The shockwave from the impact still threw him off balance, and he had to roll to avoid being swept up by the follow-up strike.
Behind him, Levy shouted from the hall, "Kazu!"
"I said stay— outside—!" He cut himself off mid-phrase, diving aside as the statue's leg lashed forward like a battering ram. The kick shattered the spot he'd just been standing. Shards flew past him, sharp and heavy.
He kept moving, forcing the giant to follow, using its size against it—tight angles, small movements, spaces it couldn't fit through. But every time he tried to slip in a counterattack, the result was the same: nothing. His strikes landed with full force, his speed giving him free hits, but the giant didn't even register them. The hardened plates covering its body simply refused to crack.
"Great," he muttered. "Perfect time to meet something built like my worst nightmare." 'Destructive Interference is useless because whatever spell is powering his armour is hidden inside its body. He is even worse than Eris in that regard. I don't even have Laxus with me.'
The giant slammed both arms down. He created his strongest barrier—the Three Pillar Gods, meant to lock it in place. However, it easily broke it, slicing the shield into fragments like thin glass. Kazu barely managed to leap out of the collapse radius before the floor cratered inward.
Levy's voice echoed again, shaky but still trying to be steady. "Kazu, just retreat! We can regroup!"
"And let that thing reach the tunnels?" He ducked another sweeping strike. "Not happening!"
The giant didn't slow. Didn't tire. Didn't hesitate. It was a machine built for overwhelming force, and every blow carried the kind of raw power that made Kazu's instincts light up with the very-old, very-basic warning of you can't tank that.
One misstep. That's all it would take for Kazu to be human meat.
It raised its arm again. Kazu recognised the shift immediately—this one was different. Less of a swing, more of a downward plunge aimed to pin him in place. He tensed to sprint sideways, but the floor beneath him shifted from the previous cracks. His footing slipped. Not enough to fall—but enough to be late.
His pulse spiked.
'This one I can't dodge.'
The arm fell.
He tried to raise a barrier. His hands sparked with light as the spell formed, but even before it completed, he knew it wouldn't hold. The air felt wrong, heavy with the giant's weight, and he could practically hear the shield breaking before it existed.
"Kazu!" Levy cried out his name.
The giant's chest pulsed.
Bright red—then fading, shrinking, cooling back to the dull stone-grey it had originally been.
The arm froze mid-drop, suspended inches above Kazu's half-formed barrier.
For a moment, no one moved. Not the giant. Not Kazu. Not Levy peering around the corner with her hands clenched tight.
The red glow dimmed completely. The light around its core flickered once like a candle choking on its last breath.
The statue went still.
Its limbs sagged slightly under their own weight before locking back into a neutral stance. The grinding hum in the air faded. The entire thing became exactly what it looked like: a really big piece of stone.
Kazu exhaled—slow, shaky, the kind of breath people let out only after realising they're still alive by accident.
Levy rushed in despite his earlier instruction and grabbed his arm. "Are you hurt?!"
"Not physically." He eyed the unmoving statue, still ready to dodge if it somehow twitched. "Guess, whatever they did to awaken it was clearly not enough to sustain it."
Levy followed his gaze. "So it just… stopped?"
"Yeah. Like a puppet with its strings cut." He stepped back from the frozen arm. "Lucky for us."
***
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