Chapter 9 — Pressure on Gold
Rei climbed away from the basin on hands that wanted to shake.
The wall-grip gloves caught on a seam and held. He trusted that traction more than his ribs. Ember Circulation ran steady through his core, tempering tremor into control while he hauled himself up in pulls. Behind him, the bright pool churned in uneven ripples, and the pressure it left on his skin made his throat raw every time he swallowed.
Coins slid above in soft streams around half-buried relics. Metal whispered. A deeper grind traveled through the hoard where treasure shifted over worked stone. Rei chose exposed masonry whenever he could. When he had to step onto gold, he stayed low and wide, guarding the line that kept him away from the widening seam.
At the rim, Jinx and Vesper flickered. Their fox-shapes held for a heartbeat, then smeared at the edges and snapped back with the chamber's pulse. They watched him without moving.
Rei reached the top of the rise and paused on a narrow strip of worked stone. He flexed his fingers once. The gloves answered with a quiet bite. He called the new toggle for a single heartbeat.
Aetherclaw gathered along his knuckles as a thin pressure sheath—clean, sharp, contained.
The pull behind his eyes hit; he released it at once.
"Short," he muttered. "Off."
A passive jitter flickered across his HUD and cleared before he could read too much into it.
The Spectral Drake shifted at the center of the mound.
Its head lifted as Rei stepped onto the treasure field. The outline shimmered with the chamber's pulse, crisp one moment and frayed the next. The drake's gaze settled on him.
Pressure rolled outward in a broad wave.
Coin quivered under Rei's boots and began to slide. Rei sank his weight, knees loose, shoulders set. The Veilweave Robe tightened along his arms as it took strain. The gloves anchored him when his footing tried to drift, and Ember Circulation held his core steady through the shove.
He drew a slow inhale and spoke with a voice that scraped.
"Round two."
The drake came down the mound low and fast, claws cutting shallow furrows through gold. Rei waited for the hitch—the brief moment before pressure spiked—and moved into the angle of it instead of away. Heat flared through his ribs as the wave hit. He turned with the force, letting it carry him into a controlled slide, and brought his right hand up.
Aetherclaw flared.
He cut along the joint seam he had already tested, the place where resistance dipped by a hair. The condensed edge bit and left a ragged score that shimmered as the drake's form tried to knit itself back together.
Rei shut the toggle off the instant the line was drawn.
The cost still punched through him, a bright hollow pull behind his eyes. He swallowed it down and shifted laterally, keeping his retreat line away from the basin.
A wing snapped outward. Gold sprayed. Impact hammered his shins and shoved his feet. Rei caught himself by driving both gloves into a seam in the worked stone rib beneath the treasure. Traction held. His ribs protested anyway, sharp and immediate.
He moved before the pain could claim the next decision.
The drake surged again, pressure thickening the air in a fast shove. Rei dropped his center, let the force carry him a step, and slid along the stone rib as an anchor line. Coin streamed downhill in steady rivulets, feeding weight toward the crack. Somewhere below the metal whisper, stone shifted with short, ugly snaps.
"This is insane," he rasped, half laugh, half disbelief.
He was eighteen, and the thought landed like something he couldn't set down. He was supposed to be worrying about normal problems—graduation, bills, whatever life looked like after Cordae High. Jasmine's steady stare. Becca's loud plans. Instead he was braced on a mountain of gold in a place that kept rewriting itself while a spectral dragon tried to break him.
His mouth went dry. His hands stayed steady.
He watched the drake's footing instead of its teeth.
Each pressure wave shifted the hoard. Each shift dragged more weight toward the basin seam. Rei stopped thinking about winning through damage alone and started thinking about placement. He angled along the stone rib, forcing the drake to follow him toward a stretch of treasure that moved faster under stress. The drake resisted for a heartbeat, guarding the center of the mound, then surged anyway.
Rei used Aetherclaw only when it mattered. A short burst to deepen the score. Off. A short burst to nick a claw as it raked toward his face. Off. Each time the hollow pull sharpened behind his eyes, and each time he cut it before it could chew deeper.
The drake's outline stuttered where he'd cut it. The damage held like a wound that refused to close cleanly.
Another wave built. Coin began to move before it landed. Rei locked his gloves into stone and rode the shift while gold streamed past his boots. The hoard's slope changed under him by a fraction, enough to alter balance.
His energy sense brushed the slope ahead and returned one clear impression—weight pulling wrong along a narrow band. He adjusted his line and let it go.
The drake surged into him at the edge of that band.
A claw snapped toward his face. Rei called Dreamweave and shaped it into a compact plane, a thin barrier at the right angle. It held long enough to slide the claw aside and steal a sliver of space. Rei slipped under the follow-through and drove his shoulder into the drake's chest.
Impact rang through his ribs. Breath cut hard. For a blink, his vision narrowed and brightened at the edges.
Dreamweave fractured under pressure and shear. It shattered into pale fragments that vanished as fast as they formed.
Rei stayed upright, teeth clenched. Ember Circulation steadied him before the wobble could become a fall.
The drake twisted, trying to regain angle. Its claws scraped for purchase and found shifting coin. The moving surface pulled at its footing harder than it expected.
Rei feinted uphill. The drake turned its weight to block the line back toward the center. Rei used that reaction to shift sideways, guiding it deeper onto the unstable band. Coins slid under its claws faster there. The drake's weight dipped, corrected, dipped again.
Rei felt the opening in his bones.
He snapped Aetherclaw on, longer than he wanted, and paid for it immediately. The hollow pull sharpened behind his eyes into a sting that made his skull feel too small.
He ignored it and drove the condensed edge into the damaged joint line.
The cut tore deeper.
A chunk of spectral mass peeled away, and the drake's scream broke into signal loss. Its outline stuttered hard. Glitch artifacts tore along its wing edges and throat, the form struggling to stay clean against the chamber's pulse.
Rei shut the toggle off. His arm trembled. His knees wanted to buckle.
The drake reared and gathered pressure for another wave—desperate now, rough at the edges. Coin slid in anticipation.
Rei braced on the stone rib and let the wave land.
Gold moved as a broad sheet toward the basin seam. The narrow band failed first. Stone cracked and dropped by an inch, then another, opening a jagged break that fed into the widening seam. Treasure poured into it with a harsh metallic rush.
The drake tried to compensate. Wings beat against thickened air. Claws reached for purchase that kept moving away. The rebound of its own pressure shoved it downhill into the slide.
Rei stepped in close, planted his left glove against the drake's chest, and shoved its weight into the failing band. Aetherclaw flared for a heartbeat to make the push bite into spectral resistance, then cut off again.
The drake's footing went.
Its claws scraped gold and found only motion. Its tail flickered in and out of phase. Its outline frayed at the edges as the chamber's pulse spiked beneath it.
Then the slide carried it into the break.
The drake dropped with a strangled scream that dissolved into static. Its form fractured mid-fall. Flickering fragments sprayed upward in a brief storm, then collapsed inward and vanished.
Rei held his brace on the stone rib, chest heaving. His ribs burned with every breath. Ember Circulation kept him from folding, smoothing tremor down until he could hold himself upright.
For a heartbeat, the space where the drake had been felt too open.
Then the chamber answered.
The carved lines in the floor flared irregularly. The pulse that had been steady turned jagged—two quick beats, then a pause, then a flare that washed the stone in thin white. The hoard continued sliding toward the seam in steady streams, coin scraping coin with a sound like teeth.
A passive jitter crossed Rei's HUD and cleared again, faster than a blink.
At the basin rim, Jinx and Vesper flickered violently. Their shapes stretched thin and snapped back with each pulse. Edges broke into static.
Rei's throat tightened. He kept his eyes on them while he listened to the chamber's strain and the slide behind him.
The pulses shifted again.
The foxes steadied for a breath. Their flicker eased, still unstable, less frantic. Their outlines held longer between spikes. They stayed low at the rim, eyes locked on Rei.
Rei forced his hands to move.
He released the seam and chose a new line—an angled strip of worked stone newly exposed by the slide. It led away from the basin seam toward a higher shelf. He climbed along it in short, controlled motions, using the gloves to keep weight off his ribs. Coin continued to pour past his boots and down into the widening break.
Behind him, another section of treasure gave way and spilled into the seam with a harsh metallic rush. The sound hit his back like a shove. Rei kept moving until his boots scraped solid stone instead of shifting coin.
He hauled himself onto the shelf and straightened with care. Ember Circulation widened through his core in a controlled loop. Tremor eased enough that he could stand without shaking apart.
Rei drew a careful breath and let it out slow, ribs flaring with the motion.
The drake was gone.
Treasure kept sliding into the widening seam with a harsh metallic rush. The carved lines in the floor pulsed out of rhythm—two quick beats, then a pause, then a flare bright enough to wash the stone in thin white.
Rei shifted his stance until the worst of the ache eased off his side, then forced Ember Circulation into a tighter loop. The tremor dulled, but the air still felt tight against his skin, pressure catching at the back of his throat when he swallowed.
Jinx and Vesper held on the shelf a few paces away.
Their outlines stuttered harder now. One moment they looked whole; the next, their edges broke into scattered fragments that hung for a blink before snapping back. Their paws half-phased through the stone, then found it again. Their tails flickered in short, chopped segments that didn't line up with the rest of their bodies. A soft sound left one of them—more breath than voice—and it hit Rei with the same cold pinch he'd felt when the drake's scream turned to static.
Rei's hand lifted without him thinking about it, then stopped short when the chamber pulsed again and both fox-shapes jolted, their forms thinning as if pulled through a narrow gap.
They steadied for half a second.
Then both of them moved at once, quick and uneven—two steps, a smear, a snap back—closing the distance until they were near his boots, heads low and bodies trembling at the edges as the glitch tore at their outlines.