They advanced.
Not because of a plan.
Not because the world offered promises.
They advanced because stopping would have meant accepting that the land had already decided for them.
Arhelia went first… or perhaps she didn't.
Order dissolved the moment blood and dust began to move.
From her shadow burst countless black hands: twisted fingers like starving roots, clawing at the air, searching for the monster's flesh.
Tentacles and whips of darkness tore through the void with a dry, final sound.
A column of shadow erupted beneath her feet and hurled her into the firmament, like a living oath against the will of the world; her horse rose with her, lashed in the open sky, while the world bent to watch and gravity contested every meter—cruel, stretching the very fabric of reality.
Kael was running.
His boots tore at the earth with every step as he hurled himself forward.
His face showed neither anger nor fear, but something deeper and more dangerous: urgency.
The Butcher's aura pulsed in his saber, red and weeping, like a wound that never closed.
The blade sought flesh.
It would find it soon.
Barely three meters ahead of them, barring their advance, Dhunark waited.
The Level 1 aura did not explode.
It weighed.
It spread across the land like a thick, crushing tide, reminding them of their small, insignificant place.
Each breath the monster took stole air; each pulse made the ground tremble.
Its pale face was a dead canvas: too smooth, too still.
There was no emotion, no intention.
Only presence.
A gravestone that knew how to breathe.
It looked at them.
Opened its mouth.
And the world answered.
There was no explosion.
There was no roar.
It was the earth's protest.
Rocks and dust rose in unison.
Pillars burst from the ground with a creak that wept centuries of neglect: massive cylinders, serpentine, twisted by a will of their own.
They were not obstacles.
They were limbs, measuring every heartbeat, every movement.
The field ceased to be a field.
It became a body.
The columns moved with cruel precision, closing paths and opening traps.
The land forced them to jump, to turn, to bleed.
Every false platform, every treacherous edge, was an announcement of death.
Dhunark did not walk.
It swam.
It slid beneath the surface as if the ground were a lake of tar.
It vanished, leaving behind a void that trembled and oozed darkness.
A pillar lunged toward Arhelia.
It did not aim.
It decided.
She was still descending through the open sky, arching her body to evade—just for an instant—the cylinder that pierced the space where her torso had been.
She spun.
And spun again.
The world was a crooked axis.
The wind tore the breath from her lungs, shook her eyes, twisted her tunic.
Each rotation tightened another thread in the very fabric of reality.
But there was no rest for the decadent.
More pillars.
More edges.
They rose in every direction, hungry for flesh.
There was no sky.
There was no pause.
There was no mercy.
She brought the hammer down.
She spun like a top of condemnation in mid-fall.
The pillar took the blow.
The stone screamed.
Shrapnel rained—
But one managed to catch her.
Her thigh was cut.
First, emptiness.
Then numbness.
Then fire with memory climbing her leg.
Blood burst forth, hot and obscene.
Arhelia drove the hammer into a surviving pillar, spiraled downward, and called to the shadows.
They came like a black river, crashing against stone.
It was not magic versus matter.
It was hunger versus resistance.
Brutal.
Fast.
Insufficient.
She landed rolling on the yellow sand.
Rose, hammer raised.
She turned slowly, calculating, surveying the shattered pillars and the twisted shadows fighting around her.
A sharp pain tore through her thigh.
She stopped.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Each heartbeat reminded her of the force of the blow.
Each spasm, the fragility of her flesh.
She breathed, though the wind seemed to deny her oxygen.
She looked at Kael.
He danced among columns that writhed like stone serpents.
Every movement was a negotiation with death.
Then, a sound.
It did not come from the ground.
Nor from the wind.
Cold sweat ran down her back.
She felt the tremor beneath her feet.
She spun, hammer raised.
The ground behind her split.
Dhunark emerged—implacable—from the shattered earth.
Its three jaws opened in unison.
Her weapon shattered.
One bite tore her left arm from her body, ripping it free.
Blood cascaded forth.
Shock stole even her scream.
A blinding blow smashed through her torso; ribs and lungs cracked beneath unleashed force.
It hurled her to the very edge of her endurance.
The claw fell without warning.
Her face broke into a spasm of disbelief.
She was thrown like a broken doll.
Trees and rocks received her body; each impact was a whisper of death.
Her right leg fractured.
Her remaining arm useless.
Her back reduced to a lattice of cracks and blood.
Finally, she slammed into a larger rock.
The world went dark.
She remained suspended.
Neither alive nor dead.
Just there.
The earth creaked beneath the monster, satisfied, as if it had fulfilled an ancient, dark promise.
Then, the All or Nothing reacted.
Not by command.
Not by human will.
It reacted because something had been placed at stake.
The sphere floated.
Trembling.
Awakening in a world it no longer recognized.
Its surface alternated between light and void.
The shadows did not answer.
Darkness fell silent.
Light responded.
Slowly.
Implacably.
The world grew hot, and Kael felt it in every heartbeat.
Dhunark tensed, its body becoming a bow of shadow, awaiting the invisible pulse of danger.
A beam burst forth without warning.
Straight.
Pure.
Unyielding.
The sand vitrified in its wake.
But it missed.
The other was more cunning.
It did not run.
It did not leap.
It sank.
It submerged into the earth, and the ground received it with sick obedience.
The sphere spun.
Another beam.
Missed.
The beast's power descended.
Tongues of stone rose, sharp as spears forged by a faceless god.
The terrain did not attack its owner.
It attacked the All or Nothing.
Surgical beams of light struck flesh and void, sometimes missing by a heartbeat.
Each miss weighed heavy.
Each hit tore a subterranean scream from the earth.
Kael stopped a few steps from the clash.
The roar faded behind him,
like a foreign echo.
His gaze, slow and heavy,
went searching for Arhelia.
There—where the fight no longer reached.
Beyond the reach
of blood
and steel.
She did not move.
Too still.
Fear climbed his throat.
Doubt gnawed at his bones.
He turned his head.
What he saw turned fear into ice spreading through his veins:
The sphere floated,
and beneath it, the earth tore open.
Dhunark rose from the ground,
appearing beneath the ominous gaze of the All or Nothing.
The sphere took the blow.
It reeled.
Wounded and out of control,
on the verge of being devoured.
Without a second thought, Kael hurled himself toward the disaster.
The saber carved a furrow through the haze.
A veiling cut appeared where no blade existed.
He rolled backward, dragged by the force of the strike he himself had unleashed.
Dhunark lost an arm.
Failed to devour the object.
Blood erupted like a confession torn out by force.
It roared.
Silence swallowed it.
One second.
Just one second—
Before the next impact.
Another cut bloomed in the air.
And missed.
The ground rose to crush him.
Columns stretched, twisted, hardened around Kael like jaws calculating his death.
He felt the danger.
He lunged forward.
Not from bravery.
From necessity.
The first pillar closed where his head had been a heartbeat earlier.
Rock fragments sliced his cheek and arms.
The second descended from an impossible angle.
His muscles protested.
His bones creaked.
He slid between stone shadows, brushing air displaced by tons of rock.
Each movement was a negotiation with gravity, stone, and blood.
The columns bit into the void where his flesh had been.
Dust blinded him.
Breathing hurt.
Not breathing was worse.
Time stretched.
Kael no longer thought about attacking.
Only about not being caught.
A pillar struck him.
His right foot sank into a crimson torrent.
Pain surged through him like an electric shock.
He screamed brutally; his face contorted under torment.
He was flung backward, crashing into a stone wall that split in two.
He fell wrapped in sand and dust.
He screamed.
Not in pain.
In denial.
The All or Nothing showed visible damage: cracked surface, erratic flashes announcing imminent collapse.
It was going to break.
It was going to fall.
Then, a claw emerged from the gloom.
Slow.
Inexorable.
Like the judgment of a patient predator.
The sphere trembled.
The world held its breath.
From a collapsed pillar, witness to the chaos, Kael burst forth wrapped in smoke and sand.
He jumped, unleashed the recoil one last time, and hurled himself into the air like a projectile barely holding together.
He screamed.
Presence enough to draw the attention of something still hunting.
Dhunark turned.
Saw him.
And fell into the trap.
Torrents of blood burst from its eyes.
Its head shook.
It screamed, disoriented.
Blind.
The world seemed to hold its breath for an instant.
The saber's power had condemned it in a single stroke.
Kael fell.
The sand embraced him as he slid.
Behind him, a dark trail stretched out, heavy and alive.
He breathed badly.
But he breathed.
The All or Nothing floated.
Damaged.
But whole.
Dhunark did not advance.
Not because it did not want to.
Because it could not see.
The field fell silent.
No victory.
No relief.
Only survival.
The world, watching, took note.
Arhelia awoke on the rock, as if she had been torn from the earth and dropped back into her own body.
Every muscle screamed. Every breath broke before completion.
It was not blunt pain—it was violent, relentless, impossible to ignore.
Each heartbeat was a knife; each inhalation, an impossible challenge.
Her eyes darted wildly. Tears welled and fell, offering no relief.
The rock beneath her was no support: it was an anvil.
Spikes, cracks, edges pressed into living flesh.
The circle around her was dead with silence, dense and oppressive.
The gray sand did not breathe—except for the dull vibration Dhunark emitted beyond, a metallic pulse that resonated in the bones.
Kael remained motionless. The All or Nothing too. Stillness was an act of war.
She clenched her jaw until pain flared at her temple, holding her mutilated leg above the sand like a living burden. Every movement was a stifled groan, forbidden to foreign ears.
Dhunark was there, wounded and blind. Its eyes—or what replaced them—moved frantically, searching without sight. Pure pain. Mute fury. Air turned to metal.
Every gesture of the monster forced the land to yield to its agony.
The pillars that once attacked now stood as silent witnesses.
The whole world held its breath…
And then the All or Nothing sphere moved.
Fast, slicing the air like lightning.
It fired beams: concentrated fire of pure, absolute light.
The earth convulsed.
Roared.
Twisted.
Each strike of the sphere against Dhunark tore screams from the land, ripped pain and fury free.
The entire clash was a heartbeat: a violent rhythm—cruel, beautiful, and horrific.
Kael did not hesitate.
He fled from everything.
Each step was fire on the leg that no longer existed.
Each push, a cruel reminder of his vulnerability.
He moved slowly, while blood and pain conspired to drag him back.
He passed Arhelia. His companion. His fire. His torment.
He stopped.
His jaw tightened; his fingers curled into an unconscious fist.
The world seemed to hold its breath with him.
His eyes blinked too fast, as if each blink held an impossible decision.
He heard her, barely a whisper amid gasps and blood:
"Kael… help me… I beg you…"
A tremor ran through his shoulders. His breath caught, and a brief tic in his lower lip revealed the conflict devouring him from within.
Fear climbed his throat. Doubt gnawed at his skull.
Everything urged him to flee.
Every muscle screamed: run.
Every thought: abandon everything.
He stood still an instant too long, chewing on the answer.
And finally, he said:
"Fuck it."
He advanced.
Each step, a sentence and an act of faith.
He reached her—her broken body—and held her.
His arms became walls; his chest, a refuge.
A sharp strike with his palm against her chest made her vomit blood, but her breathing returned—controlled, painful, but alive.
Kael tore off his cloak and used it as an improvised bandage for Arhelia's amputated arm, stopping the hemorrhage.
He pulled her against him, bracing her weight on his shoulders.
They advanced.
The forest opened before them, white and cruel, leaving the Zone of Annihilation behind.
Each slip of Kael's, each stumble, was a reminder of his incomplete body.
Trees struck his shoulders; roots snared his nonexistent foot.
Arhelia, still aware of the All or Nothing, summoned shadows to help sustain the sphere and fight Dhunark.
A shadow hand seized her severed arm and hurled it toward him.
"Catch my arm, Kael!" she shouted.
Kael looked down: the amputated limb floated like a fragment of himself, and he caught it.
Each second was a miracle of coordination and desperation.
They pushed beyond the forest.
Injured children ran ahead, fleeing the chaos, while they followed and protected them.
They checked the map: they were close to their master's location.
Explosions and tremors echoed from afar.
The battle was not over.
Arhelia called to the All or Nothing.
The sphere answered.
"Stop."
Their advance shattered.
The ground obeyed.
Trees and shadows folded beneath their feet.
A dark pillar hurled them upward.
The air did not welcome them.
It tolerated them.
Kael screamed—not in fear.
The blue-day sun cut into his vision like a clean blade.
For one heartbeat, nothing else existed.
Below, the world stretched out—vast, empty, indifferent.
The shadow pillar disintegrated.
Beyond, Dhunark still followed.
Constant.
Silent.
An ancient error that had never learned to surrender.
The saber left its sheath.
Each thrust received hurled them farther, faster.
Strike, advance.
Strike, advance.
Each meter gained was a survival record.
An act of physical faith.
Their gazes met briefly: no fear. Only urgency.
The kind learned when the world decides there will be no tomorrow.
Then the fortress appeared.
It rose through the mist above the forest.
The open ground surrounding it was white.
Not clean white.
Not kind white.
White of old stone.
Tired.
Saturated with suns and deaths.
Kael sensed it first.
Each block was fractured, like ancient ribs laid bare.
The land was not ground: it was record.
Time compressed into violence.
Arhelia leaned over his shoulders and looked.
Buildings. Terrain. Light falling from above—raw, merciless.
The wind did not move.
Not from absence, but because this place did not accept unnecessary sounds.
Every broken leaf, every stirred dust mote, was a witness.
And a threat.
The central building was not a ruin.
It was a hollowed body.
Reddish walls, sick, eroded like flesh under the sun.
Windows without glass.
Incomplete arches.
Corridors leading nowhere.
Rooms open like cages without bars.
Nothing was broken by accident.
The cracks were scars with intent.
Arhelia saw the interior ground: deep grooves. Drag marks. Again and again. Always toward the same point.
The great hall at the back was a throat open to the sky.
Light fell without mercy.
Everything was exposed.
And still, the sense of being watched crushed them.
Kael felt it too.
Not fear.
Respect.
An ancient pressure.
A brutal certainty: this had not been made for humans.
The empty center was an oath.
The landscape knew it.
Every stone, every tree, was oriented toward that point, as if remembering its purpose.
They landed.
Badly.
Painfully.
Exhausted.
Dhunark was still there.
Blind.
Wounded.
Implacable.
Then they saw him.
Atop the fortress, a young man.
Crimson eyes.
Steady gaze.
Rigid posture.
Still.
Unperturbed.
He smiled.
It was not a welcome.
It was not friendship.
It was a reminder:
This place does not forgive.