They advanced.
Not with a plan.
Not because the world offered promises.
They advanced because stopping would have meant accepting that the earth had already decided for them.
Arhelia went ahead… or maybe not.
Order dissolved the moment blood and dust began to move.
From her shadow sprouted black hands, countless: fingers twisted like hungry 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 rose beneath her feet and flung her into the sky, like a living oath against the world's will; her horse ascended with her, whipped through the open air, while the world curved to watch and gravity contested every meter, cruelly, stretching the very fabric of reality.
Kael ran.
His boots tore through the earth with each step as he lunged forward.
His face reflected neither rage nor fear, but something deeper and more dangerous: urgency.
The Butcher's aura pulsed on his sword, red and weeping, like a wound that would never close.
The blade sought flesh.
Soon it would find it.
Barely three meters from them, ahead of their advance, awaited Dhunark.
The Level 1 aura did not explode.
It weighed.
It spread over the land like a thick, crushing tide, reminding them of their tiny, insignificant place.
Every breath of the monster stole air; every pulse made the ground tremble.
Its pale face was a dead canvas: too smooth, too still.
There was no emotion, no intent.
Only presence.
A tombstone that knew how to breathe.
It looked at them.
It opened its mouth.
And the world responded.
It was not an explosion.
It was not a roar.
It was the protest of the earth.
Rocks and dust rose in unison.
Pillars emerged from the ground with a creak that cried centuries of neglect: solid, serpentine cylinders, twisted by a will of their own.
They were not obstacles.
They were limbs, measuring each heartbeat, each movement.
The field ceased to be a field.
It became a body.
The columns moved with cruel precision, closing paths and opening traps.
The earth forced them to jump, spin, 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 at Arhelia.
It did not aim.
It decided.
She was still descending through the open sky, arching her body to dodge—for an instant—the cylinder that passed through the space her torso had occupied.
She twisted.
Twisted again.
The world was a twisted axis.
The wind ripped away her breath, shook her eyes, whipped her tunic.
Each turn stretched another thread of reality's fabric.
But there was no rest for the fallen.
More pillars.
More edges.
They rose in every direction, hungry for flesh.
There was no sky.
No pause.
No mercy.
She swung the hammer.
Spun like a top of doom in mid-fall.
The pillar received the blow.
The stone screamed.
Shrapnel rained…
But one struck her.
Her thigh was cut.
First, emptiness.
Then, numbness.
Then, fire with memory climbing her leg.
Blood gushed, hot and obscene.
Arhelia drove her hammer into a surviving pillar, spiraled down, and called the shadows.
They came like a black river, crashing against the stone.
It was not magic against matter.
It was hunger against resistance.
Brutal.
Fast.
Insufficient.
She landed, rolling on the yellow sand.
Rose, hammer aloft.
Twisted with calculated slowness, observing the broken pillars and twisted shadows fighting around her.
A sharp pain pierced her thigh.
She stopped.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Each heartbeat reminded her of the blow's force.
Each spasm, of her flesh's fragility.
She breathed, though the wind seemed to deny her oxygen.
She looked at Kael.
He danced between columns that writhed like stone serpents.
Every movement was a negotiation with death.
Then, a sound.
It did not come from the earth.
Nor 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, relentless, from the broken earth.
Its three jaws opened in unison.
Its weapon shattered.
A bite tore off her left arm, ripping it from her body.
Blood cascaded.
Shock stole even her scream.
A blinding blow tore through her torso; ribs and lungs cracked under the unleashed force.
It threw her to the very edge of her endurance.
The claw fell without warning.
Her face contorted in a spasm of dismay.
She was hurled like a broken doll.
Trees and rocks received her body; each impact a whisper of death.
Right leg fractured.
Remaining arm useless.
Back turned into a lattice of cracks and blood.
Finally, she collided with a larger rock.
The world went dark.
She hung suspended.
Neither alive nor dead.
Just there.
The earth groaned 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 put at stake.
The sphere floated.
Trembling.
Awakening in a world it no longer recognized.
Its surface alternated between light and void.
Shadows did not come.
Darkness was silent.
Light answered.
Slowly.
Relentlessly.
The world grew hot, and Kael felt it in every heartbeat.
Dhunark tensed, its body arching like a shadow bow, waiting for the invisible pulse of danger.
A bolt shot forth without warning.
Straight.
Pure.
Relentless.
The sand vitrified in its path.
But it failed.
The other was craftier.
It did not run.
It did not jump.
It sank.
Submerged into the earth, and the ground received it with sick obedience.
The sphere turned.
Another bolt.
Failed.
The beast's power descended.
Tongues of stone arose, 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.
Each hit tore an underground scream.
Kael stopped a few steps from the fight.
The roar fell behind,
like a foreign echo.
His gaze, slow and heavy,
went to find Arhelia.
Where the fight no longer reached.
Beyond the reach
of blood
and steel.
She did not move.
Too still.
Fear rose in his throat.
Doubt gnawed at his bones.
He turned his head.
What he saw turned fear into ice coursing 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 hit.
It wobbled.
Wounded and uncontrolled,
on the brink of being devoured.
Without thinking twice, Kael hurled himself into the disaster.
The sword cut a groove in the mist.
A guarding slash appeared where no blade existed.
He rolled backward, dragged by the force of the blow he himself had unleashed.
Dhunark lost an arm.
Failed to devour the object.
Blood gushed like a confession wrenched by force.
It roared.
Silence enveloped it.
One second.
Just one second…
Before the next impact.
Another cut sliced through the air.
And missed.
The ground rose to crush him.
Columns stretched, twisted, and hardened around Kael like jaws calculating his death.
He felt the danger.
He leapt forward.
Not out of courage.
Out of necessity.
The first pillar closed where his head had been a heartbeat before.
Rock fragments cut his cheek and arms.
The second descended from an impossible angle.
His muscles protested.
His bones cracked.
He slid between stone shadows, brushing air displaced by tons of rock.
Each move was a negotiation with gravity, stone, and blood.
The columns bit the void where his flesh had been.
Dust blinded him.
Breathing hurt.
Not breathing was worse.
Time stretched.
Kael no longer thought of attacking.
Only of not being caught.
A pillar struck him.
His right foot sank into a crimson torrent.
Pain coursed through him like an electric shock.
He screamed brutally; his face contorted under torment.
He shot forward, crashing into a stone wall that split in two.
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 shadows.
Slow.
Relentless.
Like the judgment of a patient predator.
The sphere trembled.
The world held its breath.
From a fallen pillar, witness to chaos, Kael emerged, wrapped in smoke and sand.
He jumped, unleashed recoil one last time, and launched into the air like a projectile barely held aloft.
He shouted.
Presence enough to attract something still hunting.
Dhunark turned.
Saw him.
And fell into the trap.
Torrents of blood gushed from its eyes.
Its head shook.
Roared, disoriented.
Blind.
The world seemed to hold its breath for a moment.
The sword's power had condemned it in a single strike.
Kael fell.
The sand embraced him as he slid.
Behind him, a dark trail spread, heavy and alive.
He breathed poorly.
But he breathed.
The All or Nothing floated.
Damaged.
But whole.
Dhunark did not advance.
Not because it didn't want to.
Because it could not see.
The field fell silent.
No victory.
No relief.
Only survival.
The world, watching, took note.
---
Arhelia woke on the rock, as if torn from the earth and dropped inside her own body.
Every muscle screamed. Every breath broke before completion.
It was not brutal pain; it was violent, relentless, impossible to ignore.
Each heartbeat was a knife; each inhale, an impossible challenge.
Her eyes darted frantically. Tears sprang and fell, relieving nothing.
The rock beneath her was not support: it was an anvil. Spikes, cracks, edges pressed into raw 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 resonating in the bones.
Kael remained motionless. All or Nothing too. Stillness was an act of war.
She clenched her jaw until pain shot through her temple, holding her mutilated leg over the sand like a living hindrance. Every movement was a stifled moan, forbidden to foreign ears.
Dhunark was there, wounded and blind. Its eyes—or what replaced them—darted frantically, searching without seeing. Pure pain. Silent fury. Air turned to metal.
Every gesture of the monster forced the earth to yield to its agony.
The pillars that had attacked before were now mute witnesses.
The whole world held its breath…
Then the All or Nothing sphere moved.
Swiftly, slicing the air like lightning.
It fired rays: concentrated fire of pure, absolute light.
The earth shook.
Roared.
Twisted.
Each strike of the sphere against Dhunark tore screams from the earth, tore out pain and fury.
The entire confrontation was a heartbeat: a violent, cruel, beautiful, and horrible rhythm.
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 advanced slowly, while blood and pain conspired to drag him back.
He passed Arhelia. His companion. His fire. His torment.
He stopped. His jaw tightened; fingers curled into an unconscious fist.
The world seemed to hold its breath with him. His eyes blinked too fast, as if each blink contained an impossible instant of decision.
He heard her, barely a whisper between gasps and blood:
—Kael… help me… I beg you…
A shiver ran through his shoulders. His breath caught, and a brief tic on his lower lip revealed the conflict devouring him from within.
Fear climbed his throat. Doubt gnawed at his skull. Everything wanted him to flee. Every muscle screamed: run. Every thought: abandon everything.
He stayed still an instant too long, chewing over the response. And finally said:
—To hell with it.
He advanced. Each step, a condemnation and an act of faith. He reached her, her broken body, and held her. His arms were walls, his chest a refuge.
A sharp slap with his palm on her chest made her vomit blood, but breathing returned: controlled, in pain, but alive.
Kael tore off his cloak and used it as an improvised bandage for Arhelia's amputated arm, stemming the bleeding.
He held her against him, resting all his weight on her shoulders.
They advanced.
The forest opened before them, white and cruel, leaving behind the zone of Annihilation.
Every slip of Kael, every stumble, was a reminder of his incomplete body. Trees struck his shoulders; roots trapped his missing foot.
Arhelia, still aware of the All or Nothing, summoned shadows that helped hold the sphere and fight Dhunark. A shadow hand caught her lost arm and hurled it toward him.
—Catch my arm, Kael! —she shouted.
Kael looked down: the severed limb floated like a fragment of himself, and he caught it. Each second was a miracle of coordination and desperation.
They moved beyond the forest. The injured children ran ahead, fleeing the chaos, while they pursued and protected them.
They looked at the map: they were close to their master's location. Explosions and tremors reached from afar. The battle was not over.
Arhelia called the All or Nothing. The sphere responded at the speed of light.
—Stop —she said firmly.
Kael obeyed. Trees and shadow beneath their feet responded.
A shadow pillar launched them upward.
The air received them with indifference.
Kael shouted, but not from fear. The day's blue sun cut his gaze like a knife, and for an instant everything else vanished. The world stretched beneath them: empty, too vast.
And the shadow pillar disintegrated in a heartbeat.
Beyond, Dhunark pursued, constant, silent, an ancient mistake that did not know surrender.
He drew his sword. Each push received propelled them forward, faster, more brutal. Each meter they advanced was a record of survival, an act of faith. Their eyes met briefly: no fear, only the urgency learned when the world decides there will be no tomorrow.
Ahead, the fortress appeared. Emerging from the mist, it loomed above the forest.
The open terrain around it was white. Not clean white. Not kind.
White of old stone, tired, that had seen too many suns and too many deaths to still call itself alive.
Kael noticed first. Each stone block was fractured, like ancient ribs, torn and exposed. The ground was not soil; it was a record of time and violence. Between the cracks grew white, thin, tall trees, like polished bones twisting skyward. Leafless, without real shadow, just splinters and memory. Each branch seemed a contained scream.
Arhelia leaned on Kael's shoulders and watched.
The buildings. The terrain. The light falling from above, harsh, relentless.
The wind did not move. Not because it didn't exist, but because this place did not tolerate unnecessary sound. Each broken leaf, each stirred dust, was witness and threat.
The central building was not ruin: it was an emptied body.
Reddish, sick, eroded walls like flesh in the sun. Windows without glass, incomplete arches, hallways leading nowhere, rooms open like cages without bars. Nothing collapsed by accident. The cracks were calculated scars. Everything had intent. Everything waited.
Arhelia saw the inner ground: furrows, deep marks, as if someone or something had been dragged there again and again, always in the same direction.
The main hall at the back seemed like a throat open to the sky. White trees grew inside, breaking geometry but not invading. Reclaiming. Light fell from above without mercy, exposing everything. Everything could be seen, and yet the feeling of being watched was overwhelming.
Kael felt the same. It was not fear. It was respect. Ancient pressure. Brutal certainty: this was not made for humans.
The empty center was an oath.
The landscape knew it. Every stone, every tree, oriented toward that central point as if constantly remembering its purpose.
They landed. Painful. Exhausted.
Dhunark was still there: blind and wounded, but relentless.
Then they saw him.
Above the fortress, a young man.
Crimson eyes. Steady gaze. Rigid posture.
Still. Unflinching.
He smiled.
It was not welcome. Not friendship. It was a reminder: this place forgives nothing.