Mira's shriek, "A THROAT! VOID TEETH IN THE DARK!" hung in the frozen air, thicker than the Void Hound stench and colder than the Spire's weeping corruption. It wasn't just sound; it was a psychic ice pick driven into their resolve. The shattered conduit grate yawned before them, no longer an escape route but a predator's maw, exhaling a breath that reeked of wet earth, ancient decay, and the greasy, predatory musk of unseen hunters. The low, guttural growls from within vibrated up through the soles of their boots, syncing with the Thump… Thump… of the ward stone overhead. Claws scraped stone in the absolute blackness. Close. Hungry.
Forty Seven.
Chaos pressed from all sides. The Frostguard cordon surged with a guttural roar, glaives thrusting like winter's fangs towards Ryota's exposed flank. High above, bone bowstrings groaned as roof hawks drew anew, void ice arrowheads glinting like frozen tears in the crimson gloom. From the west, the deafening howl of the main Void Hound pack reached its peak, seconds from breaching the rear. They were caught between the mountain's snapping jaws and the void's ravenous throat.
Ryota didn't flinch. He pivoted, a mountain shifting its roots. Starbreaker swept in a blinding arc, CLANG SHRIEEEEK! meeting the thrusting glaives with a shower of white hot sparks and shearing frost. The impact jarred the attackers back half a step, buying a sliver of time. His Polaris eyes, burning like captive stars, swept the converging doom, the glaive wall, the poised bows, the howling darkness behind, and the hungry maw ahead. "Hold the fucking line!" he bellowed, the command vibrating with the force of continental plates grinding. "Haruto! What's our next move?!" The question wasn't panic; it was a demand for the Architect's cold calculus in the face of annihilation.
Haruto was already a whirlwind of lethal precision. His Polaris dagger flashed, Shink! Thud! intercepting two arrows aimed at Mira's trembling form, shattering one mid air, deflecting the other into the chest of a flanker closing from the Skiff's shadow. His obsidian gaze, colder than the deepest glacier ice, darted from the pressing cordon to the dark conduit, to Mira's lens still bleeding chaotic darkness, to the frantic energy signatures of Shiro and Kuro. Variables clicked. Probabilities recalibrated. Death narrowed its focus.
"The conduit is the only path forward," Haruto stated, voice flatter than the ice beneath them, devoid of inflection, heavy with grim certainty. "We must risk it. But we fracture their focus. We split the hunt." His dagger pointed, swift and decisive, like a surgeon marking incisions on a terminal patient. "Shiro, Kuro, Corvin, you take the left fork. Fifty paces in, marked by a fallen support beam." His gaze flicked to the shadowed figure near the conduit wall, Corvin, a deeper stain in the gloom, void stone ring pulsing faintly. "Juro, Mira, and I take the right. Collapsed section, ice choke point. Ryota," his obsidian eyes locked onto the Commander, "you lead the charge through the main passage. Straight shot, widest path. Draw their eyes. We converge," his finger stabbed towards the dripping Spire door, visible as a dark smudge beyond the Frostguard wall, "at the inner sanctum door. Ninety paces. Through the teeth or under them."
The plan landed like a thrown gauntlet. Split their already decimated force? In the throat of the void? With Akuma's trap potentially sprung? Shiro's scar flared hot against the biting cold, his gaze locked on the impenetrable blackness of the left fork. Kuro's corrupted arm pulsed, the grey translucence swirling past his collarbone, the static crackle a nervous counterpoint to the growls within. Juro spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the black ice, hefting his axes, his eyes already scanning the right hand darkness. Mira whimpered, clutching Obsidian, her lens pulsing frantic violet black shards towards the main passage.
Ryota didn't hesitate. He saw the brutal logic: divide the converging predators, use the conduit's confines to negate the Frostguard's numbers and the roof hawks' advantage, force Akuma to split his attention. A gamble forged in the crucible of absolute zero. His Polaris eyes met Haruto's diamond sharp gaze. A single, curt nod, carved from granite resolve. "Move," he commanded, the word a detonation. "Now."
Action erupted.
Ryota turned from the momentarily staggered glaive wall. He didn't retreat; he charged. Straight into the yawning blackness of the main conduit passage. Starbreaker, held high, erupted with captured starlight. The runes along its massive blade blazed like a constellation dragged to earth, flooding the first ten feet of the tunnel with pure, blinding white radiance. It wasn't just light; it was a challenge, a beacon, a star flung into the gullet of the beast. "AKUMA!" Ryota's roar echoed down the stone throat, shaking dust from the ceiling. "FACE ME!" The light revealed wet, slick walls, dripping with condensation, and the glint of countless eyes reflecting the stellar fury further back in the gloom. The growls intensified, rising to furious snarls.
As Ryota's light vanished into the main passage, drawing the focus of the eyes within and the Frostguard's furious shouts from outside, the subgroups moved.
Shiro, Kuro, Corvin, Left Fork: Shiro grabbed Kuro's good arm, hauling him towards the jagged opening of the left passage. "Move! Before they regroup!" Kuro stumbled, the grey translucence pulsing angrily, but forced his legs to obey. Corvin flowed beside them, silent as a shadow given purpose, his hooded face turned towards the darkness ahead. They plunged into the left fork, Shiro's Polaris scar flaring to life in his palm, casting a beam of intense white light that cut through the oppressive blackness like a knife. It revealed a narrower tunnel, walls weeping black water, the floor slick with algae and frost. Fifty paces ahead, just as Haruto said, a massive, moss covered support beam lay shattered across the path. And beyond it, shadows shifted. Low growls echoed, distinct from the frenzy in the main passage. Akuma's teeth in the dark.
Juro, Mira, Haruto, Right Fork: Juro didn't wait. He scooped Mira up with one massive arm, ignoring her gasp and Obsidian's muffled squawk. "Hold tight, Seer! Time for a fucking stroll!" He charged into the right hand passage, Haruto a step behind, dagger ready. The right fork was tighter, lower. Ice crusted the walls in thick, blue white sheets, narrowing the passage ahead into a treacherous choke point. Haruto's light, from a small luminescent vial he pulled from his belt, revealed jagged icicles hanging like fangs from the ceiling. The air was colder here, biting deep. And from the gloom beyond the ice choke point, a different sound emerged, not growls, but a low, rhythmic clicking, like chitinous legs on stone.
The Frostguard cordon, momentarily stunned by Ryota's blinding charge into the main passage, hesitated. Confusion rippled through their ranks. Which path to follow? The roof hawks, deprived of clear targets as the group vanished into the three conduits, held their shots, scanning the dark openings. The main Void Hound pack, momentarily distracted by the sudden disappearance of their prey and the blazing light in the main passage, milled uncertainly near the shattered grate, their howls dropping to frustrated snarls. Haruto's diversion was working.
Haruto, last to enter the right fork, paused at the threshold. He didn't look back at the chaos of the plaza, the hesitating Frostguard, the milling hounds. His obsidian gaze swept upwards, catching the subtle shift in the shadows high on the Spire's flank. Roof hawks, repositioning, aiming not at the conduits, but past them, towards the Spire door. Predictable. His Polaris dagger flicked upwards twice in blindingly fast silver arcs. Shink! Shink! Two void ice arrows, loosed from the gloom, shattered harmlessly against the conduit's stone lintel above his head. A final, precise deflection. A silent message: We see you.
He stepped fully into the right fork, the icy darkness swallowing him. The shattered iron grate stood like broken teeth against the Plaza of Screams. The Frostguard, recovering from their hesitation, began to advance towards the openings, shouting orders. The Void Hounds, catching renewed scent, surged towards the conduits with renewed howls. The ward stone pulsed its deep, bruised crimson. Thump…
Thirty Seven.
Inside the mountain's throat, the darkness deepened. The sounds of pursuit from the plaza mingled with the closer, more immediate threats: snarls from the left fork, clicking from the right, and the fading, defiant roar of Ryota's starlight echoing down the main passage. The spark had entered the frost. The hunt within the hunt had begun. The ninety seven heartbeats bled away, each step into the suffocating dark bringing them closer to Aki, and deeper into the jaws of Akuma's meticulously laid trap.
The oppressive blackness of the left fork swallowed them whole. Ryota's defiant starlight from the main passage vanished behind a jagged bend, leaving only Shiro's Polaris scar, a lone, struggling star adrift in a sea of frozen pitch. Its light pulsed erratically, casting long, leaping shadows that danced like tormented spirits on walls slick with weeping black water and crusted with millennia of grime. The air hung thick and heavy, tasting of wet earth, deep decay, and the metallic tang of ancient, frozen iron. Each breath scraped Shiro's throat raw, frosting instantly in the biting cold. The guttural growls that had drawn them in seemed to emanate from the stone itself, directionless, omnipresent. Claws scraped stone somewhere ahead, echoing down the narrow passage.
Shiro led, his scarred palm held aloft, the beam cutting a trembling path through the gloom. The fused bone in his wrists screamed with every jarring step on the uneven, slime coated floor. The void leather braces bit deeper, the numbing cold a fragile dam against the agony. Beside him, Kuro moved like a wraith carved from glacial shadow. His corrupted arm pulsed visibly beneath his layers, the grey translucence swirling like storm clouds under skin stretched unnaturally thin. The cold fire within cast a sickly, greenish luminescence, revealing the stark horror of dark veins and the faint outline of bone beneath. It painted the dripping walls in ghastly hues, making the frost patterns look like grasping skeletal hands. Static crackled softly around the limb, a constant, dissonant whisper against the mountain's deeper groans. Corvin flowed behind them, silent as the void he commanded, a deeper shade of darkness that drank Shiro's light. His hooded face remained impassive, but the void stone ring on his finger emitted a low, resonant thrum that vibrated in their marrow, a counterpoint to the unseen growls.
The passage narrowed further, forcing them into single file. The ceiling dripped constantly, icy droplets landing on armour and skin with soft, mocking plinks that echoed the Spire door's obscene rhythm. The sense of wrongness intensified, a physical pressure squeezing Shiro's chest. It wasn't just the threat; it was the direction. The path felt… inviting. Like they were being herded.
"This way feels wrong," Shiro rasped, his voice tight with strain and the effort of maintaining the light. He ducked under a low hanging outcrop of slime covered rock, the beam flickering as his concentration wavered. "Like we're walking straight into the fucking teeth Akuma bared for us. Like the mountain itself is guiding us into its gullet." The memory of Mira's shriek, "A THROAT!" echoed in his mind, amplifying the dread.
Kuro's storm grey eye flickered in the sickly light of his own corruption. He pressed his good hand against the weeping stone wall, feeling its deep, ancient chill resonate with the void cold within his arm. "It's the only way Haruto charted," he countered, the static layering his voice like grinding ice. "The only vector towards the Spire door. We don't have a choice, Shiro. Deviate now, and we're lost. Or worse, we lead the frost right to the others." He pushed forward, the dead drag of his corrupted limb leaving a faint trail of frost on the slimy floor. The growls ahead seemed to deepen in response to his movement.
From the profound darkness behind them, Corvin's distorted monotone flowed, colder than the dripping water and deeper than the mountain's roots. "Choice is an illusion in the predator's den." The void stone's thrum intensified momentarily. "The path is narrow. The shadows are deep. Volrag's eyes are everywhere. They taste the anomaly… the defiance… the rot." His hood tilted fractionally, seemingly gazing into the impenetrable blackness ahead. "They remember the fall… and anticipate the feast." The implication hung heavy: Kuro's corruption wasn't just a burden; it was a beacon for the ancient hunter.
The passage opened abruptly into a small, roughly circular chamber. Three dark archways yawned before them, identical in their oppressive blackness, exhaling breaths of stale, colder air. The junction. Haruto's fallen support beam wasn't here; perhaps it lay further down one path, or perhaps his intelligence was flawed in this buried labyrinth. The growls intensified, seeming to come from all three passages now, layered with a new sound, a faint, skittering click click click, like chitin on stone, emanating from the right hand arch. The air vibrated with predatory tension.
Shiro swept his light across the three choices. Left. Middle. Right. All identical. All suffocating. All promising death. Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to claw its way up his throat. Ninety seven heartbeats bled away, and Aki felt impossibly distant behind layers of stone and shadow. Which path?
His Polaris scar FLARED. Violently. Not a controlled beam, but a sudden, searing burst of white light that flooded the chamber, banishing the shadows for a blinding instant. It wasn't directed by his will; it was a reflex, a stellar instinct screaming a warning. The light burned brightest, hottest, focused directly on the middle archway. For that split second, the beam didn't just illuminate the dark passage; it revealed the faint, almost imperceptible shimmer of disturbed air near the threshold, like heat haze over a grave. A psychic tripwire? A pressure plate keyed to life? The flare died as quickly as it came, leaving afterimages dancing and Shiro gasping, the agony in his wrists spiking white hot.
Simultaneously, Kuro's corrupted arm JOLTED. The grey translucence surged towards his shoulder, the cold fire within blazing with painful intensity. A wave of profound, soul numbing cold radiated from him, frosting the slime on the chamber walls instantly. The static shrieked, then cut off into a terrifying silence. He stumbled, clutching the corrupted limb, his storm grey eye wide with shock and sudden, visceral recognition. "The stone…" he gasped, staring at the middle archway. "It… resonates… with the mark. The Star Breaker's touch… it's strongest there." The path wasn't just dangerous; it resonated with the very void that was consuming him.
Corvin didn't react to the flare or the jolt. He simply stood, a pillar of absorbed darkness. His void stone ring pulsed once, a deep, unsettling THOOOM that resonated in their bones. It wasn't a sound of direction, but of confirmation. A dark harmony with the peril Shiro's star had revealed and Kuro's corruption had felt.
No words were needed. The message was etched in stellar fire, void resonance, and chilling certainty. The middle path was the vector. The trap. And the only way forward.
"Middle," Shiro gritted out, forcing his trembling legs to move, his scar pulsing with a dull, persistent ache. He stepped towards the shimmering threshold, the light from his palm steadying, probing the gloom beyond. It revealed a passage even narrower than before, the walls pressing in like the ribs of some colossal beast. The floor sloped downwards slightly, covered in a thicker layer of viscous, black slime.
Kuro followed, his breath pluming white, the grey translucence in his arm pulsing with the rhythm of the stone beneath their feet. The resonance was a physical pull now, a cold hook in his marrow. "Feels like walking into the wound," he muttered, the static scratching his voice.
Corvin flowed behind them, silent once more, the void stone's thrum a constant, ominous heartbeat in the suffocating dark. They entered the middle archway.
The passage constricted immediately, forcing Shiro to turn sideways, his braced arm scraping against slime crusted stone. The ceiling dipped lower, jagged outcrops threatening to snag cloaks and skin. The air grew colder, damper, the scent of decay stronger, undercut now by a faint, acrid tang like ozone and spoiled meat. The only sounds were their ragged breathing, the relentless drip… drip… drip of black water from above, and the skittering click click click that seemed to follow them, just beyond the edge of Shiro's light.
The ward stone's pulse, muffled by stone before, now throbbed through the walls. Thump… Thump… No longer a distant countdown, but a deep, resonant drumbeat felt in their chests, syncing with the dripping water. It was stronger. Closer. Aki was near. But the growls had faded, replaced by an eerie, watchful silence. The skittering sound paused.
Twenty Seven.
They rounded a sharp bend. Shiro's light fell upon a sight that froze the blood in their veins. The passage ended not in a wall, but in a ragged tear in the mountain's flesh. Beyond the tear, bathed in the deep, bruise crimson glow emanating from a massive, pulsing rune stone set high on a vaulted ceiling, lay a vast, shadowed chamber. The source of the ward stone's power. And standing sentinel before the tear, silhouetted against the crimson light, were three hulking shapes.
Not Void Hounds. These were larger, hunched, their hides not fur but plates of dark, glistening chitin that reflected the ward light like wet obsidian. Multiple sets of glowing, crimson eyes, devoid of pupils, fixed on the intruders. Claws, long and curved like scythes, scraped against the stone floor with that same, horrid click click click. Mandibles, thick as a man's wrist, slowly unhinged, revealing rows of needle sharp, dripping fangs. The air filled with a low, chittering hiss.
Akuma's guardians. Not waiting in the dark. Guarding the threshold. The mountain's heart beat faster, the path to Aki stretched before them, bathed in crimson light, but barred by chitinous horrors born from the deepest frost. The ninety seven heartbeats dwindled, each drip of black water a mocking echo of time running out.
Shiro, Kuro, and Corvin stand at the nexus where the Conduit split. The echoes of Akuma's chilling ultimatum, "Choose wisely, little sacrifices" still vibrate in the frigid air, a serpent coiling around their resolve. They've chosen the middle path, the one that felt like Aki, a pull deeper into the mountain's suffocating embrace.
The middle path swallowed them whole. The jagged rock walls, slick with primordial condensation, pressed closer than the others had dared. The air wasn't just cold; it was stealing, leaching warmth with a sentient malice that gnawed at exposed skin and seeped through layers of wool and leather. Kuro's breath plumed like smoke from a dying fire, Shiro's a fragile ghost beside it. Only Corvin seemed untouched, a shadow given form, his eyes reflecting the single, relentless point of light ahead: the ward stone clutched in Shiro's white knuckled grip. Its crimson pulse was a living thing now, hammering against their senses. Thud. Thud. Thud. Seven beats since the split. Each one echoed the frantic rhythm beneath their ribs, a morbid counterpoint to the slow, heavy drip… drip… drip of unseen water.
The passage, narrow and treacherous, suddenly yawned open.
They stumbled into a vastness that stole breath and reason. The chamber was a cathedral carved by forgotten giants, its vaulted ceiling lost in a profound, velvet blackness untouched by the faint, source less luminescence clinging to the floor. The walls, however, were alive. Ancient runes, carved deep into the obsidian rock, glowed with a sickly, internal light, not warm gold or pure silver, but the pallid green of drowned things and decaying bone. They pulsed faintly, arrhythmically, like the last gasps of dying stars scattered across the void. Dead constellations mapping forgotten dread.
And at the far end, dominating the cavernous space, stood the door.
It wasn't merely large; it was a blasphemy against the mountain itself. Framed in black iron that seemed to writhe with frozen, tortured forms, the door was pure, polished obsidian. Its surface wasn't smooth; it was etched with a web of wards so complex, so densely interwoven, they seemed to writhe under the shifting, corpse light of the runes. Symbols pulsed with a deep, bruised purple energy, throbbing in time with the ward stone's crimson beat, but slower, heavier, older. Malevolence seeped from it, a psychic pressure that made Shiro's teeth ache and Kuro's hackles rise. The air tasted of ozone and grave dirt.
"The Spire door," Shiro breathed, the words swallowed by the chamber's immensity. Hope warred with terror in his voice, his knuckles bone white around the stone. Its light painted stark shadows on him face, highlighting the exhaustion, the fear, but beneath it, the unyielding core. Ten beats pulsed against him palm.
Kuro scanned the oppressive gloom, his hand resting on the worn leather grip of his sword. His jaw was a hard line, eyes narrowed not just against the dimness, but against the crawling sensation on his skin. "We're close," he growled, the sound rough. "But something's wrong. Silence this deep… it's a predator holding its breath." He shifted, the scrape of boot leather unnaturally loud. The drip… drip… seemed to pause, listening.
Corvin stood slightly apart, a study in stillness. His gaze wasn't fixed on the door, but on the writhing wards and the decaying runes. His silver ring, usually a subtle presence, vibrated against his finger, emitting a low, subsonic thrum that resonated in the marrow. "The path splits," he murmured, his voice a dry rustle that somehow carried. "Not just stone, but fate. The shadows whisper. Akuma's trap isn't just closing…" He tilted his head, listening to the silent scream of the wards. "...it's alive. And it knows we're here."
Thud. Eight heartbeats. The ward stone flared, its crimson light momentarily overpowering the sickly green runes, casting monstrous, leaping shadows that seemed to claw at the distant ceiling. The drip… drip… resumed, faster now. Drip drip.
They moved forward as one, drawn to the door like moths to a flame that promised annihilation. Each step echoed, a tiny defiance swallowed by the chamber's hungry silence. The temperature plummeted further, frosting Shiro's lashes. The pressure intensified, a physical weight pushing down, making the air thick and hard to draw. The obsidian door seemed to absorb the weak light, becoming a deeper, more absolute void framed by the writhing iron and the pulsing wards.
Thud. Nine heartbeats. Shiro gasped, the stone's pulse now a physical blow against his sternum. The crimson light was almost blinding, painting the entire chamber in stark, bloody relief. The drip drip accelerated to a near staccato drip drip drip. The sound wasn't water. It was too thick, too resonant. Like blood hitting stone from a great height.
They were ten paces from the door. Its sheer scale dwarfed them. The wards blazed with sudden, violent intensity, the bruised purple light flaring into an actinic violet, etching the complex symbols onto their retinas. Corvin's ring screamed, a silent vibration that shook his entire arm, the thrum deepening into a physical ache in their teeth.
Then, the mountain moved.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was a convulsion. The chamber walls shuddered, ancient rock groaning like a beast roused from slumber. The glowing runes flared from sickly green to a blinding, bilious yellow, their light strobing erratically, casting the scene in a nightmarish, flickering tableau. Dust and fragments of rock rained down. The drip drip drip became a frantic drumbeat, a frenzied tattoo against the stone floor.
The obsidian door began to grind shut.
Not slowly, ponderously. It slammed inward with terrifying speed, tons of enchanted stone and iron shrieking against unseen mechanisms. The wards exploded outwards, not light, but pure, malevolent force, a wave of deep violet energy that hit them like a physical wall, throwing Shiro and Kuro stumbling backwards. Shiro cried out, the ward stone almost torn from his grasp, its light stuttering wildly. Kuro roared, bracing against the invisible onslaught, his sword half drawn.
The door crashed shut with a sound that was less noise and more the ending of sound. A final, deafening CRUNCH that reverberated through bone and soul, silencing the drumming drip, the groaning rock, even the frantic pulse of the runes for one terrible, suspended moment.
Silence. Thick, suffocating, absolute.
Shiro caught himself against Kuro's arm, his breath ragged gasps, eyes wide with shock, fixed on the seamless obsidian wall where the door had been. The ward stone pulsed erratically in his trembling hand, its crimson light weak, frantic. Thud... thud... The tenth heartbeat hammered against his palm, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone.
Kuro met his gaze. His face, etched in the residual, fading glow of the runes, was a mask of fury and grim determination, the scar pulling tight across his cheek. No words were needed. Trapped. Sealed in with the source of the nightmare.
Corvin stood rigid, staring not at the sealed door, but into the oppressive darkness around them. His ring wasn't humming anymore. It was vibrating, a high pitched, almost inaudible whine that set teeth on edge. The dying rune light painted his face corpse pale, his eyes wide, not with fear, but with a dawning, chilling comprehension.
Drip.
The sound, solitary and heavy, echoed in the new silence.
Drip.
Closer now. Much closer. From above? From the walls? The source unseen in the consuming dark.
The chamber walls shuddered again, less violently, but with a horrible, organic rippling motion. The fading runes flared one last time, a final, gasping emerald scream, revealing for a fractured second the sheer, impossible scale of the space around them, and the slick, obsidian surfaces that seemed to be… breathing.
Thud. The eleventh heartbeat pulsed from the stone, weak but insistent. The drip drip drip resumed, a hungry counterpoint, echoing from multiple points now, closing in from the encircling, living dark. The mountain's heart wasn't just beating faster.
It was waking up. And they were locked inside its ribs.