The stone door didn't slide open; it dissolved. Under the touch of Kaelen's blackened hand, the ancient granite didn't crumble into dust, but rather into fine, grey ash that swirled into the room as if sucked in by a vacuum. The room beyond was a perfect sphere of smooth, polished quartz, illuminated by a single object floating in the center: a jagged shard of cobalt crystal suspended within a cage of rotating silver rings.
"An Echo-Lens," Elara whispered, her eyes widening. She took a step forward, her scholarly instincts momentarily overriding her fear. "That's a Pre-Calamity focus. It doesn't just store mana; it amplifies the natural resonance of the environment. If we had this, I could cast for hours without tiring."
"We aren't here to keep it, Elara," Ria reminded her, her spear leveled at the shadows dancing along the curved walls. "Kaelen, do it. Feed the beast before something decides we're the intruders we clearly are."
Kaelen approached the pedestal. The hunger in his chest was now a physical roar, a vibration that made his teeth ache. The dragon-brand was no longer just glowing; it was pulsing with a rhythmic, molten light that shone through his ribs. He reached out his hand, his fingers trembling as they neared the spinning silver rings.
Suddenly, the quartz floor beneath them shifted.
The smooth surface rippled like water, and from the very stone of the chamber, a shape began to rise. It wasn't a creature of flesh and bone, but a construct of hardened Echo—a Guardian. It stood seven feet tall, a faceless humanoid made of translucent blue glass, its chest cavity filled with the same shifting "static" that Elara had encountered at the entrance.
"Intruders," a voice echoed, sounding like a thousand grinding stones. "The cycle must not be broken. The spark must remain contained."
"Ria!" Kaelen shouted, stumbling back as the Guardian swung a massive, crystalline arm.
Ria was already moving. She was a blur of motion, her spear whistling through the air as she thrust at the Guardian's joints. But her steel head simply skidded off the glass-like surface, leaving nothing but a faint scratch. The construct didn't bleed; it merely hummed, the static in its chest glowing brighter.
"My magic won't take!" Elara cried, her hands frantically tracing runes that dissolved into smoke the moment they touched the air. "The Lens is feeding the Guardian! It's absorbing the ambient Echo to reinforce its structure!"
The Guardian turned its faceless head toward Kaelen. It recognized the dragon-brand. It recognized the "Calamity" within him. With a speed that defied its bulk, it lunged, its hand closing around Kaelen's throat.
Kaelen felt his breath hitch, but he didn't feel the crush of bone. Instead, he felt a horrific drain. The Guardian was an anti-theft device; it was designed to pull energy out of anything that touched it.
"IT STEALS FROM US?" Ignis roared in Kaelen's mind, a sound of pure, draconic outrage. "A MERE SHADOW OF GLASS DARES TO DRAIN THE ETERNAL CINDER? IMITATE ME, ECHO! DO NOT PUSH—PULL!"
Kaelen's vision began to swim. He could feel the seven-day clock accelerated by the Guardian's touch. Six days... five days... the black scales on his arm began to itch with a terrible intensity.
"Kaelen!" Ria screamed. She leapt onto the Guardian's back, driving her spear into the gap between its head and shoulders, trying to pry the construct away. The Guardian swat her aside like an insect, sending her crashing against the quartz wall.
Elara rushed to Ria's side, but the Guardian was already raising its other fist to crush Kaelen's skull.
Don't push, Kaelen thought, his fingers clawing at the Guardian's crystalline wrist. Pull.
He stopped trying to resist the drain. Instead, he opened the "void" in his own chest. He stopped being a boy trying to survive and started being a hole in the universe. He imitated the dragon's hunger—the absolute, bottomless greed of a dying star.
The effect was a violent reversal of the flow.
The blue static within the Guardian's chest suddenly flickered. The translucent glass of its arms began to turn grey and brittle. Kaelen wasn't just taking back his own energy; he was devouring the very essence that held the construct together.
The Guardian let out a sound like a shattering mountain. Its form began to fracture, long cracks spider-webbing across its torso. Kaelen felt a rush of cold, clinical power flowing into him—the "Stone-Echo" of the Guardian. It was dry and sharp, but it was fuel.
With a final, guttural roar, Kaelen twisted his blackened arm, his fist slamming into the Guardian's chest. The construct exploded into a million shards of harmless silica.
Kaelen didn't stop. Driven by a feverish trance, he lunged for the pedestal. He grabbed the Echo-Lens, ignoring the silver rings that sliced into his palms.
"Kaelen, wait!" Elara called out, her voice full of dread. "If you take it all at once—"
He didn't listen. He pressed the cobalt crystal directly against the dragon-brand on his chest.
The world turned white.
A pillar of orange and blue fire erupted from Kaelen, hitting the ceiling of the quartz chamber. The cobalt shard didn't just break; it dissolved into liquid light that was absorbed directly into Kaelen's skin. The sensation was agonizing—like being filled with molten lead—but then, the "Hunger" finally, mercifully, went silent.
Inside his mind, the seven-day clock stopped. The ticking vanished, replaced by a deep, satisfied purr.
"Better," Ignis whispered, his voice sounding distant and sleepy. "The spark is fed. The core is stable... for now."
Kaelen collapsed into the dust of the Guardian, his breathing heavy. The blackened skin on his arm hadn't retreated, but it had stopped spreading. The orange glow in his veins had settled into a steady, low hum.
Ria limped over, clutching her side, while Elara knelt to check Kaelen's pulse.
"You're alive," Elara breathed, her eyes watery with relief. "But the Lens... it's gone. You consumed a Grade-Three artifact in seconds, Kaelen."
"I had to," Kaelen rasped, looking at his hand. He closed his fist, and for a second, the air around his knuckles distorted with a shimmer of heat. "The clock has reset. But I can feel it, Ria. The dragon isn't just full. He's... changing. He's waking up."
"Then we need to get out of here," Ria said, glancing at the entrance. "The explosion of mana we just released... every Guild seeker and Warden within ten miles just felt that. The Whispering Crevice isn't a secret anymore."
Kaelen stood up, his movements smoother, more predatory than they had been that morning. He looked at the pile of ash that used to be a door.
"Let them come," he said, his voice holding a new, metallic edge. "We have what we need. We have the Core."