The central chamber pulsed.
It wasn't light. It wasn't sound. It was something deeper like the thrum of a forgotten heart, the kind you feel in your teeth. The stone walls were lined with veins that glowed faintly, shifting from crimson to blue to a color that had no name.
At the center stood the Core.
It hung in the air like a wound made visible. A sphere of glass and bone, wrapped in spires of blackened iron that moved like limbs breathing, thinking, waiting. Around it, the ground twisted in unnatural spirals, scorched with sigils no one had carved.
The team halted.
Seren's grip tightened on her greatsword. Lira's breath fogged as frost gathered unconsciously at her fingertips. Sorin muttered a ward under his breath. Vera's daggers hovered near her wrists, silent. Elen just stared jaw tense, stillness deeper than usual.
Then the Core spoke.
Not aloud. Not in sound.
It bled into them.
"You came for fire and found flame."
A tendril of light reached from the Core, splitting into five threads. Each thread curled toward one of them, stopping just before contact.
"I offer power. A pact. A price."
Each of them saw something different.
Lira blinked and she was standing alone before an army of frozen titans, bending to her will. Her frost was absolute. The ruin bowed before her. But behind her… no one.
Elen saw a field of ash where her blade had carved history itself. Enemies gone. The past rewritten. But her hands were stained with something darker than blood.
Sorin saw magic itself unraveling at his touch. Glyphs obeyed like loyal dogs. Knowledge beyond time whispered in his ears. But his eyes were empty no laughter left.
Vera… saw freedom. Not from enemies. From time. She stepped across past and present like a phantom. Unbound, eternal but unable to touch, to hold, to feel.
And Seren_
She stood alone.
Above a battlefield burning brighter than any star. Her flame was legend. Her name etched in the bones of the world. They sang of her.
But her team was gone.
Her sword glowed with too many memories and no one left to share them.
The voice whispered closer to her mind.
"Take it. Lead. Burn brighter than the sky."
Her hand trembled. The temptation was real. The cost was clear. She stepped forward.
Just half a pace.
Then stopped.
"I don't burn alone," she said.
And stepped back.
The threads snapped like nerves cut mid-scream.
The Core hissed.
"You refuse?"
Elen raised her blade. "We all do."
"Then perish as less than legends."
The Core screamed.
The chamber convulsed. Shadows lunged from the floor twisted things made of their regrets and almosts. Mirror-scars. Flame-failures. Frost-burned futures.
But this time they moved together.
Vera blinked across the field, striking blind spots with perfect timing. Elen covered her from above, slashing mirrored wraiths before they struck. Sorin and Lira overlapped magic flame and ice coiling in coordinated arcs. Controlled storms.
And at the center, Seren faced the Core.
Its tendrils lashed toward her, promises twisting into poison. She raised her sword.
"I choose my fire."
With a roar, she brought the blade down into the earth.
Sorin's glyphs activated the moment it struck.
Lira's frost sealed the rupture.
Vera cut the feedback threads trying to escape.
Elen's blade drove into the final link.
And the Core alive, intelligent, malignant screamed one last time.
Then silence.
The chamber dimmed. The pulse stopped.
What remained of the Core cracked slowly, falling inward like a collapsing star. No explosion. No grand spectacle.
Only silence.
Then Sorin coughed. "So... no power-ups?"
Vera grinned. "Only the boring kind. Trust. Unity. Growth."
"Gross," he muttered, half-smiling.
Seren looked at the blackened husk where temptation had once offered glory. Then at her team.
"Let's keep walking," she said. "We're not done."
And so they left the Core behind unbroken, unburnt, and stronger not by the power they could've stolen, but the ones they walked beside.
Into the ruin's deeper dark.
Together.