"We stepped into the light of the corrupted shard," I said, my voice echoing flatly against the damp, bioluminescent walls of the root chamber.
But as the words left my mouth, I realized "light" was the wrong word for it. It was more of a heavy, oily radiation. The Life Fragment didn't glow; it throbbed. Every time the black, crystalline veins on its surface pulsed, a wave of nausea rolled through me, hitting my Level 10 constitution like a physical punch to the gut. It smelled like a basement that had been flooded with stagnant water and then left to rot for a decade—metallic, earthy, and sweet in a way that made your teeth hurt.
