The two left the previous chamber in a heavy, almost reverent silence. The corridor ahead seemed to pulse, lit by a red glow that emanated from the very stones. The heat increased with every step, as if they were walking into the belly of an ancient volcano, and the air became dense, thick with the promise of something about to burn—not flesh, but memories.
With each meter they advanced, Arien felt sweat drip beneath his skin, but it was not just physical heat that troubled him. The environment closed in around them, compressing even their thoughts. Nyra walked ahead, guided more by intuition than by sight. In silence, she touched the walls, feeling the vibrations of the ancient markings, trying to decipher the silent stories carved into the stone.
When they paused to catch their breath, both heard—almost simultaneously—the dull sound of something moving beneath their feet. A crackling noise, as if the ground lamented the weight of those who dared cross its domain. For an instant, Arien looked at Nyra and saw the reflection of ancient flames dancing in her eyes—memories of a fire that did not burn, of promises made in silence and never fulfilled.
The crystal in Arien's blade glowed again, weakly but stubbornly, announcing that something else awaited them ahead. The cold and insecurity of the previous labyrinth now turned into pure anxiety, as if the stone itself whispered to their bones: "Here, every past will be judged."
At the end of the corridor, stone doors began to open slowly, sliding with a muffled creak that sounded like the sigh of a creature long asleep. A gust of hot, humid air escaped the opening, carrying with it the smell of ash, soot, and something deeper—a scent of burned memories, an anticipation of pain.
Arien felt Nyra's hand lightly rest on his arm. She said nothing, but the gesture was enough to anchor him in the present. For a brief moment, they felt joined not only by fate but by shared burden: both knew that, after crossing that threshold, they would not emerge unscathed—or, perhaps, never be the same again.
With slow steps, they passed through the newly opened portal. On the other side, they found a vast, oval hall, lit by cracks in the walls from which thick, hot vapors escaped. The stone floor was marked by deep, black scars, as if something had clawed the world with fiery talons. In the center, a wide crater from which a strange flame arose: black at the edges, pale blue at the center. It curved upward and sideways as if dancing to a music only it could hear.
Nyra stopped abruptly, her body tense, eyes fixed on the crater.
Nyra: — "Arien... we are before a Static-born."
Arien: — "A what?"
Nyra: — "Creatures generated from the excess of memory and pain consumed by the Static Flame. They do not live... they remember."
Before they could react, the crater exploded in a thick cloud of smoke, interspersed with cold flames spiraling toward the ceiling. The fire did not warm: it rippled through the air like distant memories, casting wandering shadows throughout the hall. The room distorted, the floor vibrating beneath Arien and Nyra's feet, as if time itself had been torn open.
From that mist burst a grotesque silhouette, spit out like a nightmare from the hell of lost memories. It was a creature of humanoid contours, but made entirely of black charcoal, cracked in hundreds of glowing fissures. From its open wounds escaped bluish lights and small flames without heat, flickering and disappearing before touching the ground, as if feeding only on emptiness.
The creature's eyes were twin abysses, black holes encrusted with pain. Inside them, Arien could distinguish, horrified, deformed faces trapped in the gloom, screaming in silence—echoes of memories condemned never to be heard again.
The Static-born let out a roar that seemed to bend time around them. The stone groaned. The air shook. Nyra drew a curved blade made of rooted bone. Arien raised his crystalline weapon.
The battle began.
The monster lunged at Arien in a leap so fast it seemed a gash in reality itself, a shadowy blur advancing across the hall. Its feet barely grazed the ground: they hovered, as if the air around them bent not to touch it, leaving only a trail of suspended ashes and vibrating static.
The first blow came like a mountain crashing down on Arien, brutal and unavoidable, accompanied by a muffled boom that reverberated throughout the chamber. The impact nearly made his legs buckle, but, instinctively, he raised the blade diagonally to block.
At the moment of impact, the crystals embedded in Arien's weapon exploded in blue sparks that, for a brief second, lit up the faces trapped in the monster's fissures. The sound was dry, electric, and for a moment the world seemed reduced to the blue glare and the crushing weight of that clash.
Arien: — "He's too fast!"
Nyra: — "Don't think, feel! He moves with your pain!"
Nyra spun around the enemy, feet barely touching the ground as she leapt over scattered stones and cracked columns, using every element of the terrain as leverage for a deadly dance. Her hair flowed under the intermittent light of the black flame, creating a wild golden contrast against the creature of charcoal and pain.
With an agile movement, she launched herself from atop a rock, her blade describing a perfect arc in the air. The strike was clean, precise, opening a glowing fissure in the monster's shoulder. The instant the blade struck, no blood gushed, but a dense, icy smoke, carrying images and sensations that filled the room.
They were visions of shattered childhoods, fragments of smiles fading like embers in the wind, broken promises dissolving before they could find a voice. The torrent of memories hit Nyra like an invisible punch—she staggered, eyes glazed for a second, before falling to her knees, suffocated by the weight of memories that were not hers, but burned as if they were.
Nyra: — "He... he feeds on what we forget..."
Arien shouted, covering the distance between them in a desperate leap. He dove with his blade aimed at the creature's chest, targeting a bright fissure in the charcoal. But the monster did not evaporate—its form fragmented into plates of coal that rearranged themselves with a sharp snap, sliding across the floor like a swarm of living embers. In a blink, the Static-born reformed behind Arien, as if each piece of its body remembered the place it belonged.
With no time to react, Arien felt a heavy, dry blow hit his back—like a stone sledgehammer, but hot, impregnated with soot. The impact threw him against one of the hall's columns, cracking the stone and sending fragments into the air.
And the world spun.
He spat blood. The blade fell far away.
The monster marched toward him, dragging its feet to the beat of a funeral drum.
Nyra: — "NO!"
With a quick, protective gesture, Nyra placed herself between Arien and the creature, her body vibrating with tension. She pressed her palm to her forearm and murmured words in an ancient language. A root seal glowed on her skin, branching into living patterns that immediately extended to the ground.
From the cracked, hot earth, thick, pulsing vines erupted, winding like tentacles around the Static-born's legs and torso. The vines bound it tightly, creaking against the coal, trying to contain its fury and hold the monster's fragments together—at least for a few precious seconds.
The being struggled, fissures gleaming even more, but the vegetal bonds tightened and pulled downward, tearing out sparks and black dust. The vines vibrated with the effort, groaning against the coal as if they could break pain itself into pieces. For a moment, time seemed to hesitate: Nyra held the creature in place by force of her will alone, while Arien, sweating and gasping, felt that thread of hope hanging on her sacrifice and courage.
Taking advantage of the opening, he drew a deep breath, muted the throbbing pain in his body, and darted toward the fallen blade. The cold grip rekindled something inside him—a sharp, almost ancestral snap, as if all of Khron's words, the whispers of the flame, and the pain of loss converged on that instant. The world around him seemed to tune, every sound and memory compressing into a single line of decision.
With a cry of pure surrender, Arien felt the crystal in his weapon shine intensely, bathing the hall in an incandescent blue light. Each step was a challenge to gravity, but he ran, slid beneath one of the creature's claws, and at the height of his motion, leapt and drove the blade into the base of the Static-born's skull.
The explosion was silent.
The monster screamed without sound, dissolving into plates of charcoal and shadow, which shattered as they hit the floor. When the dust settled, all that remained was a single blue ember, pulsing alone in the center of the crater like the last remnant of a memory that refused to die.
Arien fell to his knees, his chest heaving with exhaustion and disbelief. The heat of battle still vibrated in his bones, but now seemed small compared to the weight that filled him inside. Nyra approached slowly, kneeling beside him. For a moment, only the sound of their breathing united them in that scarred hall.
Nyra leaned in, her voice soft but grave: — "Did you see, Arien? Not just the pain... but what was left behind?"
Arien squeezed his eyes shut, trying to chase away the images that still danced under his eyelids.— "I saw... I saw my guilt, Nyra. And I saw that it has deeper roots than I thought."
She nodded, her eyes reflecting the blue ember flickering between them.— "Now you begin to understand what it is to carry the flame. What it means to survive it."
The silence that followed was not empty, but full of unspoken meanings—the air saturated with the scent of burned memories, of choices that do not fade, even when monsters fall. Both knew that every victory here was only another step down into themselves.
And then, at the far end of the hall, the stones began to grind, revealing a new door that opened slowly to the still deeper recesses of the labyrinth. A spiral corridor descended, swallowed by shadow and by a cold wind that seemed to blow from the past itself.
Arien stood with effort, feeling the invisible scar the battle had left on him. Nyra rose at his side, more serious than ever. Without words, they advanced together, for both now understood—the labyrinth's true challenge was still to come.
With each step toward the next echoing abyss, Arien felt that it was not just the path ahead that was growing darker, but also everything he carried in his own chest.
And so, ready or not, they moved on—to face the visions that awaited them at the silent core of pain.