The first skeleton lunged.
Gray twisted, sidestepping the brittle swipe of a rust-pitted sword. His katana met the creature's ribcage in a flash of steel, cleaving through with effortless precision. Bone fragments clattered to the stone floor, scattering like glass. The skeleton crumpled, lifeless once more.
"Too easy," Adel muttered, flicking her dagger into another's skull. The brittle bones shattered like porcelain, collapsing in a heap. "Almost... disappointing."
'She's right...these monsters are dying far too easily, nothing like Glacierfang. Those bastards took months to die.' Gray swallowed hard.
But the relief lasted only a second. The fallen bones began to tremble, clicking softly against one another. Then, before Gray's eyes, they slithered back together—each fragment drawn by an invisible thread—until the skeleton stood whole again.
Aurelle's blade shimmered as he severed another in two. "They keep coming back," he hissed, stepping back beside Gray. "Even after complete destruction."
Gray exhaled through gritted teeth. "Then...we break them faster."
The next wave hit like a storm. Half the skeletons wielded scraps of weapons scavenged from the floor—cracked shields, spears that looked fused to their hands. The others charged bare-handed, claws scraping stone. They came in droves, their empty sockets burning with cold blue light.
Gray's sword flashed in arcs of pale light. Each strike was decisive, clean, and absolute. Bones scattered across the pews, splintering against the walls. Yet every time he dared to breathe, the sound of them reassembling filled the church again. Adel moved like smoke, leaving faint trails of silvery mist as her affinity flared. Daggers cut through skulls and spines, her movements fast and sharp. Still, the tide refused to thin.
"Something's wrong," Adel called, blocking a descending blade. "Their—their numbers are increasing!"
Gray's eyes darted across the floor—and froze. The remains of broken skeletons were no longer staying down. They were merging. Fractured spines fused to new rib cages. Skulls split and reformed into grotesque doubles. What once had been twenty enemies was now nearly forty.
"This isn't regeneration," Aurelle muttered, cutting another down. "It's multiplication."
Gray gritted his teeth. "Then what the hell are we supposed to do?"
Gray backed toward the center of the cathedral, glancing around for any advantage. The candles flickered violently, casting shadows that stretched and twisted across the pews. His breathing steadied. 'Think.'
That was when he felt the familiar thrum deep in his core. The Vyre within him stirred—wild, hungry, volatile. He clenched his jaw, raising his hand slightly.
"Cover me, just for a second." he ordered.
Aurelle shot him a questioning look but nodded. "Whatever your doing, do it fast."
Gray closed his eyes. His fingers curled, drawing the energy from his core and charging it. Lines of blue light crackled along his arms, his veins pulsing like molten metal. He whispered the name under his breath.
"Disruption Field."
The air warped around him. The candles shuddered, their flames stretching thin as if suffocating. The light from the skeletons' eye-flames dimmed, flickering erratically. Even the vibrations in the floor seemed to pause for a heartbeat. Then came the distortion—a heavy pressure that rippled through the church like a silent wave.
The skeletons froze mid-movement. For a few precious seconds, the entire world seemed to hold its breath.
Then, just as suddenly, they moved again. The sluggishness was gone, replaced by renewed fury. The blue flames reignited brighter than before.
"Gray what the hell was that!?" Adel demanded, throwing a dagger straight through a skull. "It didn't even scratch them!"
Gray clenched his teeth. "It's a skill I acquired, it—it was supposed to interfere with active Vyre sources. This means these things arent running on life like us through organs or even Vyre. They … must be using something else."
Just then, a harsh beep interrupted him. A sharp, pulsing tone echoed from his pocket—the orb. Gray's eyes widened as he pulled it out. The transparent sphere flickered red, its inner liquid growing dim. [ENERGY CRITICAL] flashed faintly across his vision.
"Shit," he breathed. "The orb's running out of Vyre."
He had completely forgotten in the heat of the battle about their tasks. If any tasks failed to be achieved. Their life would become even worse.
He instantly dropped to one knee, pressing his palm against it, slowly, Vyre reached his finger tips and was swallowed into the sphere. His veins burned as his Vyre endlessly flowed into the orb. Sweat beaded down his temples as the beeping slowed—but he was wide open.
"Gray, look out!" Aurelle shouted.
A rusted blade whistled through the air. Gray twisted instinctively, barely avoiding the strike, the edge grazing his shoulder. He lost his footing, slipping on shattered bone and landing hard against a pew. The orb tumbled from his hand, rolling under the nearest bench.
"No—!" He scrambled after it, fingertips brushing the smooth glass. He caught it—but too late. The nearest skeleton loomed over him, its jaw snapping open.
Then Aurelle was there. He moved like a phantom, his blade striking upward in a perfect arc. The skeleton's skull exploded into shards of bone dust. "Move!" he barked.
Gray rolled to his feet, clutching the orb. His breathing was ragged. The skeleton Aurelle had struck began to reassemble, but something was different this time. The candle beside its bones had gone out—and its light did not return. The remains lay still.
Gray's eyes flicked to the extinguished wick, then back to the corpse. "It's… dead?" he whispered.
"What?" Adel slashed through another attacker, sending a ribcage flying. "They're all supposed to come back!"
But Gray had no time to test the theory. More skeletons closed in, their ranks seemingly endless. Aurelle's blade danced, thin ripples of pale energy trailing each swing. Adel's mist spread wider, blurring the monsters vision and slowing the advancing line. Still, they were being forced back toward the altar.
"Enough," Aurelle said through clenched teeth. "The tether...it must be in here somewhere."
Gray met his gaze. "The tether?"
"Yes." Aurelle's eyes glowed faintly, almost imperceptibly. "Something links them. I can see thin threads—like strands of light. They connect the skeletons… to something...I just can't tell what, they're too small."
Adel swore under her breath. "We can't waste time! Destroy the room!"
The three of them instantly moved, striking together. Gray's katana flared with violet light as he unleashed a powerful arc that cleaved through three skeletons in one swing. Adel's mist condensed onto her legs and blades, every movement of hers a blur. Bones scattering into the air like snow. Aurelle pivoted, slamming his blade into the statue's base. Cracks split the stone, racing upward in jagged lines. The faceless figure wavered, then toppled forward, smashing into the pews with an earth-shaking crash.
The impact threw up a cloud of dust and shattered bone. The skeletons faltered, their movements slowing as the structure groaned under its own weight.
"Now!" Aurelle shouted, sprinting toward the smaller door by the altar.
Gray grabbed the orb, its light flickering dangerously, and followed. Adel was right behind him. The skeletons were already beginning to reassemble, fragments dragging themselves forward through the debris.
Aurelle reached the door first. He slammed his shoulder into the wall beside it, striking one of the load-bearing stones. The structure cracked. He did it again. A third time. With a deep roar, the wall gave way, collapsing inward. The door and the stones crumbled together, sealing off the cathedral in a shower of rubble.
Dust filled the air. The echo of the collapse faded slowly, leaving behind only their ragged breathing and the distant, rhythmic hum that pulsed through the stone.
Aurelle leaned against the wall, exhaling heavily. "That… was close."
"Too close," Adel muttered, brushing ash and bone dust from her arm. Her daggers trembled faintly in her grip. "I was starting to think we'd die surrounded by those things."
Gray slid down to a sitting position, the orb still clutched in his hand. Its light had stabilized again, faint but steady. He stared at it for a moment before slipping it back into his pocket. "They just wouldn't stop. Not until…"
He trailed off, thinking of the extinguished candle. He didn't say anything. Not yet.
Aurelle straightened, his expression unreadable. "As I said before, I saw something before we broke through. Threads—thin ones, almost invisible—running from the skeletons heads and disappearing. There were too many to count. And they were so thin and small I couldn't tell what I was looking at exaxtly."
Gray frowned. "Threads?"
"Yes. Like the phrase from before." His gaze darkened. "'When the tether breaks, so shall the soul.' Whatever that means, those threads are part of it. I'm sure."
Adel sheathed her daggers with a frustrated sigh. "Great. More riddles."
Gray sighed. "Either way, that was too close. From now on we must be more careful. More cautious. That room was just the begining. And even then the situation got out of hand, really quickly."
Everyone agreed and quietly moved on. The tunnel ahead sloped downward before widening into a broad, open chamber. The oppressive feeling of the church faded, replaced by the quiet murmur of running water. Their footsteps echoed softly as they entered the space.
A subterranean river cut through the cavern, its surface shimmering with faint blue reflections from the glowing minerals embedded in the walls. Sparse clusters of pale, translucent plants clung to the rocks, their fronds swaying gently as if underwater. The air was cooler here, cleaner, but it carried the same faint hum of living stone.
Gray stopped to take it in. For a brief moment, the sight almost felt peaceful. Then he noticed the details—the wrongness woven into the beauty. Pillars jutted out from the cavern walls, half-buried in the rock. Stone tiles protruded at odd angles from the floor, like remnants of a structure long consumed by the earth. Even a few broken pews were visible, their wood petrified by time.
"It's like…" Adel whispered, her voice subdued, "the ground swallowed a temple."
Gray nodded slowly. The realization crawled beneath his skin. "Or the temple became part of the ground."
The idea left a chill in his chest. The air pulsed faintly again, that strange heartbeat-like vibration echoing through his feet. 'Is the stone alive?' It reminded him of Glacierfang's ice, that terrible consciousness that watched from below the frost. The thought alone made his stomach twist.
Adel stepped beside the river, her reflection warping in the shimmering current. "Renn must've been right about those rumors," she said softly. "That this territory was part of an underground dungeon. Or atleast it looks like it."
Gray didn't answer. He looked down at the river, the faint currents bending around submerged fragments of carved stone—statues, columns, fragments of written glyphs long eroded by water. This dungeon wasn't beneath the ground.
It was part of the ground.
And if that was true… then someone had made it that way.
Gray stared into the rippling water, the blue light reflecting off his ashen eyes. The hum of the living rock surrounded them, slow and rhythmic, like a heartbeat waiting to quicken.
Somewhere in the dark ahead, the territory breathed—and watched.