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Chapter 15: The Whispering Shadows
The first thing I felt when the light faded was the silence. An oppressive, bone-chilling silence that made every breath echo in my own ears. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim environment, but even before they did, I felt it—the suffocating darkness, alive, whispering at the edge of my mind.
"Kelvin…" Silvia's voice wavered beside me. She was gripping her staff tightly, her knuckles pale. "This doesn't feel like the other trials…"
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. She wasn't wrong. The place felt wrong—like we had stepped into the belly of some ancient beast. The air was damp, heavy, filled with a faint metallic tang, almost like blood. My instincts screamed that this floor wasn't just another puzzle. This was something worse… something hungrier.
Shapes began forming in the fog around us. Not monsters of flesh and stone, not like the Sandstone beasts or lava creatures we had fought before, but things that had no true form. Shadows, slithering across the ground, clinging to the walls, writhing like serpents waiting to strike.
"What are they?" Silvia whispered, her voice cracking. She tried to cast a light spell, but the moment her orb of snowlight bloomed, the shadows devoured it, snuffing it out as if mocking her.
"They're not physical…" I murmured, focusing my qi. My Aurora flickered weakly in this oppressive gloom, struggling to manifest fully. Even my soul energy resisted the pull of the place, as though something ancient and vile was suppressing me. "These… these are fragments. Fragments of souls. Malice, maybe. Hatred that lingers."
One of the shadows crept closer, stretching long, bony tendrils toward Silvia. She instinctively raised her staff to block, but the shadow simply flowed through it, brushing her shoulder. Immediately, her face went pale, and she gasped as frost began creeping across her skin.
"Silvia!" I shouted, slashing with my sword coated in blazing qi. The shadow hissed, recoiling, the blade managing to disperse it temporarily. She stumbled into my arms, trembling.
"T-they're not attacking our bodies…" she whispered, her lips trembling. "They're… attacking our souls. If they latch on too long, they'll consume us."
My chest tightened. A trial that devours the soul itself. This was on a completely different level than anything before.
I gritted my teeth and steadied her. "Then we can't let them touch us. Stay close to me. I'll cut a path."
But the shadows didn't give us time. They swirled faster now, dozens of them whispering in strange, distorted voices.
> "You will fail…"
"You cannot protect her…"
"Your soul is weak, boy…"
The voices clawed at my sanity. For a moment, I felt the edges of my mind begin to crumble, my confidence shaking. Was this… their true power? Not the tendrils, not the freezing touch—but the constant attack on our willpower?
No. I couldn't give in. Not here. Not with Silvia beside me.
I slammed my sword into the ground, releasing a burst of qi from my Aurora. The golden-blue light erupted like a flare, pushing the shadows back momentarily. Silvia gasped for air, her color slowly returning as the pressure lifted.
"Kelvin…" she whispered, awe and fear mixing in her tone.
But I didn't feel triumphant. My hands were shaking. My Aurora was strong, yes, but the suppression of this place drained it faster than ever. If I kept burning energy like this, I'd collapse long before we reached the end of the trial.
We pressed forward, step by cautious step. The shadows hissed and slithered around us, retreating whenever I flared my qi, only to regroup moments later. It was like walking through a sea of predators, each one waiting for the moment we faltered.
Hours—or maybe just minutes, I couldn't tell in this timeless void—passed. Every breath felt heavier, every whisper louder. Then the ground beneath us changed. From smooth stone to jagged black tiles, arranged in a perfect circle. In the center of the circle was a single pedestal, and upon it… a mask.
It was carved from obsidian, jagged and sharp, yet disturbingly human-like, with hollow eyes that seemed to gaze into me even from afar. The whispers intensified as we approached, hundreds of voices overlapping, all saying the same word:
> "Wear it…"
"Nope," I said immediately, shaking my head. "That thing is bad news."
But Silvia's eyes lingered on it, her face unreadable. I grabbed her wrist before she could move closer. "Don't. This is exactly what they want. That thing isn't a treasure—it's a curse."
Her lips trembled, but she nodded, gripping her staff tighter. "Then what do we do? The trial won't end until we interact with it. Maybe… maybe we have to resist it?"
I frowned, staring at the pedestal. She was right. These floors weren't about brute force. They were about testing something—strength, wit, courage. And this one… this one was testing our resolve.
The shadows circled closer, pressing us toward the pedestal. My sword hummed in my grip as I poured qi into it, but my reserves were dwindling fast. I could only buy us so much time.
"Okay," I said, forcing a grin. "If this is a trial of resolve, then we'll beat it together. Don't listen to the whispers. Don't give them anything to feed on."
The shadows surged all at once, slamming into us like a tidal wave. I roared, slashing left and right, my qi blazing brighter than ever, while Silvia slammed her staff into the ground, summoning a dome of frost around us. The whispers screamed, furious at our defiance.
My head pounded. My vision blurred. But I kept pushing, forcing my Aurora outward, clashing with their suffocating darkness.
Then, the mask on the pedestal began to crack. Tiny fissures spread across its surface as the shadows shrieked louder, their forms unraveling.
"Kelvin, look!" Silvia cried.
I gritted my teeth and poured every last ounce of qi into my blade, striking the pedestal with a blazing slash. The obsidian mask shattered into fragments, dissolving into ash.
The shadows let out one final, ear-splitting scream before collapsing into nothingness. The silence that followed was deafening, but it was a silence of peace, not malice.
I collapsed to one knee, gasping for air, sweat pouring down my face. Silvia knelt beside me, her hand resting on my shoulder.
"You did it," she whispered, her voice soft but steady. "We… we survived."
I gave her a weak grin. "Not just me. We did it together."
Before she could reply, the ground beneath us trembled. The circle of tiles glowed with a faint light, and once again, the familiar mechanical voice of the dungeon echoed:
> TRIAL COMPLETE.....NEXT TRIAL BEGINS<
And just like that, the world around us dissolved into white light once more.
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