Falling felt… familiar.
That disturbed Voryn more than the monsters screaming around him.
Wind tore past his ears as the shaft swallowed him whole, stone walls blurring into a vertical tunnel of ancient carvings and half-dead runes. The monsters tumbled with him, claws scraping against rock, bodies colliding, shrieking in confusion and rage.
Voryn did not panic.
Panic wasted oxygen.
Instead, his mind counted.
Three seconds… four… five…
The darkness below wasn't natural. Shadows behaved differently here, thicker, heavier, resisting his call like stubborn animals forced into unfamiliar territory.
Not a pit, he realized. A layered containment zone.
Which meant the fall wasn't meant to kill him.
It was meant to break him.
At six seconds, the air pressure shifted.
Voryn twisted mid-fall, shadows coiling around his legs, absorbing momentum at the last possible moment. He hit the ground hard, bones rattling, vision flashing white, but not shattered.
The monsters were less fortunate.
Several smashed into the stone floor like sacks of meat, bones bursting, ichor splattering across ancient symbols etched into the ground.
Others landed… standing.
Voryn rolled, coughing, blood trickling from his nose.
"Well," he muttered hoarsely, pushing himself up, "at least gravity's still on my side."
The shadows around him stirred, agitated.
Something about this place irritated them.
The Chamber Below
The underground chamber stretched wide and circular, its ceiling lost in darkness. Broken pillars littered the floor, carved with old sigils that pulsed faintly when blood touched them.
Trap architecture.
Old. Deliberate.
Someone designed this to be fought in, Voryn realized. Not survived.
The monsters regrouped too quickly. These weren't mindless beasts. Their movements were erratic but coordinated, as if guided by instinct sharpened through repeated failure.
Failed awakeners.
Test subjects.
Or worse prototypes.
One lunged at him, jaws splitting wider than anatomically possible.
Voryn stepped aside, letting it crash into a pillar.
The pillar cracked.
He frowned.
"Durability's lower than expected," he noted aloud. "Good to know."
Another creature struck from behind.
Voryn ducked, shadows snapping upward like hooked wires, wrapping around its limbs and yanking it off balance. He didn't kill it.
He dragged it.
Across the floor.
Straight over a faintly glowing sigil.
The moment the creature crossed it, the rune ignited.
Chains of spectral force erupted from the stone, impaling the monster from below. It screamed once before being crushed inward, its body compacted into a twisted lump of flesh and bone.
Voryn exhaled.
"So the traps still work," he said calmly. "Excellent craftsmanship."
The monsters hesitated.
Just for a heartbeat.
That was all he needed.
Patience Over Power
Voryn didn't charge.
Didn't unleash everything at once.
He walked.
Each step deliberate, measured, drawing the monsters toward specific zones of the chamber. Shadows crept ahead of him, mapping faint distortions in the air, tracing the invisible outlines of dormant mechanisms.
Pressure plates.
Reactive sigils.
Delayed triggers.
This wasn't a battlefield meant for brute force.
It was a puzzle.
And puzzles rewarded patience.
"Come on," he murmured, voice low, almost encouraging. "You want me, don't you?"
One of the larger creatures roared and rushed him.
Voryn retreated exactly seven steps.
The monster followed.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
The floor collapsed beneath it, revealing a narrow vertical spike pit. The creature fell screaming, impaled repeatedly as it tumbled downward.
The shadows trembled as the Black Oath pulsed.
Cost incurred.
Voryn winced slightly, clutching his side as a sharp ache flared through his ribs.
"Still charging interest," he muttered darkly. "You're relentless."
More monsters surged forward.
Voryn adjusted.
He let one swipe graze his shoulder, intentionally using the pain to pivot, redirecting its momentum into another creature. They collided, rolling into a broken pillar that detonated into a cloud of stone shards laced with dormant sigils.
The shards activated mid-air.
The monsters were shredded.
Blood rained down.
Voryn stood still as it splashed against his coat, expression unreadable.
"Patience," he said quietly. "Always be patient."
Limits Revealed
Minutes passed.
Then more.
The chamber is filled with corpses.
Voryn's breathing grew heavier, sweat soaking into his clothes. His shadows responded more slowly, now with delays of fractions of a second, but noticeable.
Shadow strain threshold approaching, he realized. I'm stretching too many threads.
The Black Oath whispered faintly, not words, but pressure. A reminder.
Power is not free.
He pulled back slightly, forcing himself to fight smarter, not harder.
He stopped controlling shadows directly.
Instead, he guided behavior.
He used sound tapping stones, snapping shadows together to herd monsters where he wanted them. He retreated into narrower paths, forcing larger creatures to bottleneck while smaller ones triggered traps meant for mass casualties.
Dark humor bubbled up despite the tension.
"Whoever designed this," he muttered, ducking as a claw missed his head by inches, "really hated inefficiency."
A monster leapt from above.
Voryn rolled aside, shadows snapping upward too slowly.
The creature clipped his leg, tearing flesh.
Pain flared.
Voryn hissed, collapsing behind a pillar.
For the first time, doubt crept in.
I can't do this forever.
The realization wasn't fear-inducing.
It was grounding.
Limits existed.
And understanding them was survival.
Adaptation
He waited.
The monsters snarled, circling, uncertain.
Voryn closed his eyes briefly, focusing inward.
The shadows responded not as tools, but as systems.
He wasn't meant to micromanage every thread.
He was meant to set conditions.
A slow smile touched his lips.
"Alright," he whispered. "Let's try something different."
He extended a single shadow strand not to attack, but to anchor, linking it to a cracked pillar humming with residual sigil energy.
Then another.
And another.
A network.
Not control.
Influence.
The monsters lunged.
The moment they crossed into the network, the shadows reacted, redirecting movement, nudging trajectories, turning reckless charges into fatal missteps.
Traps triggered without direct input.
The chamber became a killing machine.
Voryn stood at the center, breathing hard, doing almost nothing.
Efficiency skyrocketed.
The cost… stabilized.
His heart pounded.
"So that's the trick," he murmured. "I don't swing the blade."
He smiled thinly.
"I sharpen the room."
The One That Learned
The final monster remained.
Smaller than the others. Leaner.
Its eyes were different.
Aware.
It didn't charge.
I watched.
Voryn noticed immediately.
"Well," he said, straightening, blood dripping from his fingers, "you're new."
The creature moved cautiously, testing the floor with deliberate steps, avoiding sigils. Avoiding shadows.
Voryn's smile faded.
It's learning.
He advanced.
The monster retreated not toward traps, but away from them.
It darted sideways, leaping up a wall, claws digging into stone, climbing rapidly toward a shadowed opening near the ceiling.
Voryn reacted instantly, shadows lashing out.
Too slow.
The creature vanished into the darkness above, escaping the chamber.
Silence followed.
Voryn stood still, chest heaving.
For several long seconds, he said nothing.
Then he laughed softly, low, breathless, tinged with exhaustion.
"Stage 4," he murmured. "Or something close enough to scare me."
The laughter died.
His shadows recoiled.
The Black Oath stirred uneasily.
That wasn't prey.
That was a scout.
The chamber began to hum.
Runes across the walls activated simultaneously, not containment this time, but transmission.
Voryn felt it.
A signal.
Far above.
Far beyond.
And then a new presence brushed against his mind.
Cold.
I'm interested.
Amused.
A voice whispered not from the shadows, but from beyond them.
"So… you survived the lesson."
Voryn looked up slowly, eyes dark.
"Patience," he replied softly. "It's my best weapon."
The voice laughed.
"Good. You'll need it."
The shadows around Voryn twisted violently as the chamber began to ascend, lifting him toward something far worse than monsters.
Toward an enemy that had learned his methods.