Therion's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Not from fear—though he'd never admit that played a part—but because every time he tried to phase them even a few feet, his magic stuttered. Like the air itself had turned to sludge, resisting his natural pull through space. He'd managed short bursts—enough to yank Ardyn out of immediate danger—but each jump left him dizzier than the last, his vision swimming with afterimages of that thing's too-wide smile.
Across the crumbling temple chamber, Lyria was arguing with a wall.
"—don't care if you're 'ancient and sacred,' you're being a bastard!" She drove her knife into the pulsating vein of black liquid threading through the stone. The blade passed straight through, meeting no resistance, and the darkness laughed—a wet, echoing sound that came from everywhere at once.
Ardyn pressed his back against what remained of a pillar, his breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. Frost flowered across his skin where the temple's unnatural chill met his aether sickness, the patterns glowing faintly blue against his wrists. "It's not just darkness," he managed, voice strained. "It's—it's eating something. The air. Light."
Therion spat blood from where he'd bitten his tongue during their last jump. "Great. So we're trapped in a temple with a hungry shadow. Fantastic."
Lyria yanked her knife back, scowling at the unmarred blade. "Can't stab it. Can't outrun it. Can't even swear at it properly." She shot Therion a glare. "Your turn. Do the weird space thing."
"I can't," he snapped, flexing his fingers. A spark of spatial energy flickered, then died. "It's like trying to swim through tar. Whatever this 'Buried Light' crap is, it's fucking with my magic."
Ardyn made a small, pained noise. "Because it's not natural. It's... inverted aether. Like when you hold a mirror up to a flame—the light's still there, but it's wrong." He pressed his palms to his temples, his glasses askew. "And it's singing."
Lyria and Therion exchanged a look.
"...Right," Lyria said slowly. "So the evil temple is singing to you."
"Not singing. Counting." Ardyn's fingers twitched like he was trying to grasp something invisible. "Every time the darkflame pulses, it's measuring—" He cut himself off with a sharp inhale. "Oh. Oh no."
Therion didn't like that tone. Ardyn only sounded like that right before things went catastrophically wrong. "What?"
"It's not just eating light." Ardyn's voice dropped to a whisper. "It's eating space. That's why your magic isn't working—it's taking the distance between points. Making gaps where there shouldn't be gaps."
A beat of silence.
Lyria blinked. "So what you're saying is, the temple's cheating."
Therion barked a laugh despite himself. "Yeah, Lancaster. The evil cursed temple is playing dirty. Shocking."
The floor trembled beneath them. The black veins pulsed hungrily, spreading faster.
Lyria cracked her knuckles. "Alright. New plan." She pointed at Ardyn. "You, figure out how to make it stop counting." At Therion: "You, stop whining and force your magic to work." At herself: "I'll find something to hit."
Therion opened his mouth to argue—then froze. A realization struck him, ugly and cold. Ardyn was right. The darkflame wasn't just disrupting his spatial jumps—it was learning from them. Every time he phased, the temple's pulse quickened, like it was... copying him.
But where his magic was wild, unstable, the temple's was precise. Calculated.
Like looking into a dark mirror.
Lyria's boot connected with a crumbling wall. "Hey! Ugly! Over here!"
The darkness rippled toward her.
Therion met Ardyn's eyes. Saw the same dawning horror there.
They were running out of time.
Ardyn's head was splitting.
It wasn't just the whispers anymore—it was the numbers. They slithered through his mind like serpents, coiling around his thoughts, counting each pulse of the darkflame that spread through the temple walls. Three seconds between expansions. Five degrees of spatial distortion. Two-point-seven heartbeats of stolen air. His aether sickness flared with every breath, frost crackling along his collarbones where the unnatural cold met his skin.
Lyria was still trying to antagonize the darkness, kicking at the black veins that crawled across the floor. "Come on, you coward! Fight me properly!"
Therion gripped Ardyn's shoulder, his fingers trembling from failed spatial jumps. "Hey. Hey. Look at me." His voice was rough, uncharacteristically serious. "You're muttering equations. That's never good."
Ardyn blinked, realizing only then that he'd been speaking aloud. "...It's counting," he repeated, swallowing against the metallic taste in his mouth. "Not just randomly. There's a pattern."
The temple pulsed, as if in response.
Lyria paused mid-taunt, glancing back. "Okay, scholar boy. Explain. Fast."
Ardyn pressed his palms to his temples, forcing his thoughts into order. "The Covenant's teachings—the Thirty-Two Sacred Paths. This isn't just some haunted ruin. It's... it's built on one of them." He sucked in a sharp breath as the pieces clicked. "The Path of Buried Light."
Therion's grip tightened. "That means what, exactly?"
"It means," Ardyn said, voice hollow, "that this temple isn't cursed. It's alive. And it's hungry."