The crimson fractures of the Omen Eye stretched across the colossal form, veins of weakness glowing over every joint, plate, and glyph. Noctis narrowed his gaze. There were too many. The knees, the chest, the helm, the shoulders—all blazed red, but only one carried the true death within it. The rest were lies, sanctified decoys.
The Colossus stirred fully, tearing free of the wall with a roar of grinding stone. Its sword came down, splitting the floor in a shockwave of pulverized rock.
Noctis surged forward, shadows spilling around his legs.
[Skill: Wraith Step — Activated]
He vanished into a blur, reappearing at the titan's flank. His guan dao howled into his palm.
[Skill: Orbiting Arsenal III — Bloodfang Reaper Form — Activated]
He slashed into the Colossus's knee seam. Stone cracked, light bled—then reknit itself instantly, the false weak point mending as though mocking him.
The titan's other hand swung wide, aiming to crush. Noctis threw his arms forward.
[Skill: Blood Shield — Activated]
A dome of congealed crimson caught the blow, shattering into shards but slowing the strike long enough for him to leap back. The impact still hurled him into a pillar, stone splitting behind his back.
He rose, licking blood from his lips. The Omen Eye burned again, the false weak points taunting him across the titan's body.
Another swing. He stepped into mist.
[Skill: Ghost Vein II — Activated]
His body slid through stone and reformed behind the Colossus's helm. Both hands raised, summoning twin blades of the Arsenal, their edges dripping shadowlight.
[Skill: Orbiting Arsenal III — Dual Blade Form — Activated]
He carved across the glowing glyphs at the back of the helm. Sparks rained, stone shrieked, light bled—yet still the fractures healed.
"False," Noctis growled.
The Colossus stomped, the floor detonating in a ring of sanctity that ripped fissures through the chamber.
[Skill: Bulwark of Thorns — Activated]
Crimson spikes erupted from the ground around Noctis, intercepting the shockwave. The barrier cracked, splintered, but held long enough for him to dive through the collapse. He rolled, blades flashing.
[Skill: Crimson Dervish — Activated]
He spun low beneath the titan's swing, slashing its ankle seam again and again in a storm of cuts. Stone splintered, runes faltered—but the limb reknit instantly, the Omen Eye flickering with scorn. Another false weakness.
The Colossus roared, lifting its sword in both hands. Light cascaded from the runes, charging for a strike that could bisect the entire hall. Noctis's Omen Eye flared again—this time to the chest. A cluster of red fractures bled across the armor, but only one vein pulsed deeper, steady, like a heartbeat.
He hissed through his teeth. "There you are."
The sword fell. He planted his foot, raising both arms.
[Skill: Blood Shield — Activated][Skill: Bulwark of Thorns — Activated]
The collision split his defenses, blood spraying, the ground caving. But he endured, just long enough to move.
[Skill: Shadow Step — Activated]
He blurred forward, sliding between the Colossus's legs, guan dao snapping back into his grip. He leapt, shadows coiling around the blade.
[Skill: Night Reaver — Activated]
The black arc carved across the chest seam. This time the crack didn't heal instantly. The rune-light flickered violently, the glow unstable.
The Colossus bellowed, its sword slamming wildly. Noctis dodged, weaving in and out of mist.
[Skill: Umbral Rift Step — Activated]
He reappeared atop its shoulder, twin blades forming again, stabbing down into the pulsing fractures along its chest. Sparks rained, runes shattered, blood essence howled in his veins. The titan staggered, knees buckling.
Noctis dropped, landing at its core, guan dao spinning with his whole body. His claws dragged frostlight across its chest.
[Skill: Frostfang Rend — Activated]
Ice spiderwebbed through the cracks, freezing the sanctified stone, locking the fractures in place so they could not mend.
The Omen Eye burned crimson-gold. The true weakness pulsed bright as a star beneath the ice.
Noctis roared, every muscle tightening, guan dao raised high. Shadows, frost, blood, and steel converged into the edge.
[Skill: Silent Sever — Activated]
The blade sank into the core. No sound escaped. The Colossus froze, runes flaring once, then shattering in a storm of light. Its body convulsed, the chest collapsing inward, fragments exploding outward in a storm of sanctified dust.
The titan fell backward, crashing to the floor, its body disintegrating into rubble. The chamber shook, pillars splitting, glyphs guttering out.
Noctis stood on its broken chest, guan dao dripping black-crimson. His Omen Eye dimmed, then flared again, confirming the death. He exhaled, aura still burning.
[Enemy Destroyed: Sanctified Colossus]+500 Blood Essence+35 Faith Essence+20 Iron Essence+5 Soul Essence
The ruin smoldered around him, sanctity bleeding away. He lowered his blade and whispered coldly, "False or true, every weakness breaks."
The Omen Eye turned, showing crimson lines stretching deeper into the labyrinth. He stepped forward, his shadow long and crimson in the dying light.
The crimson lines of the Omen Eye stretched down the hall, veins of weakness etched across the labyrinth. Noctis followed them, boots crunching over stone dust left by the Colossus's ruin. The air deepened as he descended. The scent of iron sharpened, metallic and old, as though a thousand battles had been bled into the walls.
The passage widened into a vast chamber. Its walls curved like ribs, each inscribed with glyphs half-faded but still breathing sanctity. Shadows pooled unnaturally in the corners, thick and heavy, whispering with faint voices. Across the floor, traps shimmered faintly—pressure wards, sigils of light waiting for a step.
The Omen Eye revealed their seams. Red cracks traced through every glyph and plate.
He smiled faintly.
[Skill: Hunter's Prowl — Activated]
His aura sank low, his steps silent. The chamber filled with mist as he moved, senses sharpened, the heartbeat of every hidden sentinel echoing in his ears. From alcoves above, faint constructs stirred, pale as bone, their forms shaped from sanctity and shadow both.
[Skill: Assassin's Veil — Activated]
His body dissolved into the dark, vision narrowing to crimson targets through the Omen Eye. He scaled a pillar without sound. One construct turned, its faceless helm scanning the floor. A whisper of claws and its head rolled from its shoulders, body collapsing before it realized it had been struck.
+40 Blood Essence+5 Faith Essence
Another sentinel raised a blade of light, turning toward the disturbance. Noctis's fingers curled into a bow of blood, string forming with a hiss.
[Skill: Archer's Fangshot — Activated]
A crimson arrow formed, sharp as a fang, and loosed without sound. It pierced the construct's chest, the Omen Eye guiding it through the exact seam in its runes. The body shattered, light bleeding into mist.
+30 Blood Essence+3 Faith Essence
He moved swiftly, weaving between traps. One pressure ward flared as his foot touched stone, but he twisted, claws sketching a red arc.
[Skill: Silent Sever — Activated]
The glowing sigil split cleanly along its fracture line, collapsing before it could trigger. He stepped past as its ashes drifted.
The deeper he went, the stronger the pulse became. It wasn't sanctity. It was blood. Heavy, intoxicating, ancient. The Omen Eye bled crimson veins across the floor, converging toward the chamber's heart.
Chains coiled there.
A massive urn, as tall as a man, rested at the center, bound in iron links etched with glyphs that burned faintly. Cracks split the surface of the urn, and from them leaked a mist of blood—a thick, crimson aura that rolled like smoke, saturating the chamber. The scent of it pressed against his senses, sharp and sweet, more intoxicating than any feast.
He stopped, golden-crimson eyes narrowing. The urn pulsed once, faint but steady, as though something alive beat within.
[System Alert: Unknown Relic Detected]
Designation: Urn of Crimson Echoes
Condition: Sealed — Glyph Restraints Active
Blood Aura: Catastrophic Tier — Exposure may alter Grid
The chains rattled faintly as though aware of him. The glyphs burned brighter, struggling to contain the aura spilling from within. Cracks deepened, leaking more mist, thickening the air until it tasted like raw essence.
Noctis stepped closer, claws flexing at his side. The aura pressed against his skin like a living thing, whispering of power, of hunger, of memory buried beyond centuries. The prisoners had been one revelation. The Colossus, another. But this urn carried the weight of something older—something that felt like it belonged to the progenitor line itself.
He laid a claw against one of the chains. The Omen Eye flared, revealing crimson seams through sanctified links and glyph seals. Each fracture beckoned. Each promised to break.
His lips curled faintly, the hunger in his gaze unhidden. "So this is what they buried down here."
The chamber groaned, dust falling from the ceiling as if the labyrinth itself warned him to turn away. But he did not move. His shadow stretched across the chains, reaching for the urn.
The relic pulsed again, harder this time, its blood aura spilling in waves that thickened the mist around him. The Grid inside his mind trembled, already sharpening, preparing to consume what was bound within.
Noctis closed his hand over the chain and whispered, "Everything breaks."
The urn's glow answered with a heartbeat.
The urn pulsed like a living heart, leaking blood aura in thick waves that rolled across the chamber. Chains groaned as if they too feared release, their glyphs burning brighter in defiance. Noctis stood before it, claws brushing the links, Omen Eye blazing. Crimson seams burned through every restraint, each fault-line begging to be cut.
He pressed a claw into the first chain.
[Skill: Silent Sever — Activated]
The iron link split along its fracture, collapsing into ash. The urn shuddered, blood mist venting outward in a spray that stung his skin.
+8 Faith Essence+5 Iron Essence
He moved to the next, the glyph etched across it flaring with sanctity. He drew his bow of blood, string tightening with a hiss.
[Skill: Archer's Fangshot — Activated]
The arrow pierced the glyph's seam. It burst like glass, shards of light raining down. The chain snapped and fell, echoing across the chamber.
+10 Faith Essence
The urn's aura thickened, pressing against him harder, whispering in his mind like voices of the dead. Hunger clawed at his veins, urging him to open it faster.
A third chain writhed, its seal radiating sanctity. Noctis stepped close, vanishing into mist.
[Skill: Ghost Vein II — Activated]
He reformed within the chain's very ward, claws sinking into its glowing fracture. With one twist, the entire link ruptured, the glyph unraveling into ash that swirled with the blood mist.
+12 Faith Essence+6 Iron Essence
The urn pulsed harder, cracks splitting wider. Blood aura poured through the fractures in violent waves. His Grid trembled, screaming for more.
The last chain burned with layered wards, runes crawling across its surface. Noctis's eyes narrowed. The Omen Eye revealed three seams, two false, one true. He tested once with his guan dao. The false seam healed instantly, the glyph lashing at his hand with sanctified light.
He hissed, pulling back, blood sizzling. Then he stepped forward again, guan dao raised.
[Skill: Night Reaver — Activated]
The black slash tore through the true seam. The rune exploded outward, collapsing in a violent shockwave. The chain shattered, fragments clattering uselessly across the stone.
+15 Faith Essence+10 Iron Essence
The urn screamed.
Blood mist burst upward, filling the chamber in a spiraling storm. The last of the glyphs across its surface flared, then split, crimson fractures racing across the ceramic shell.
The Omen Eye burned brighter, showing the entire urn as nothing but one colossal weak point.
Noctis raised his guan dao high.
[Skill: Sanguine Crescent — Activated]
The curved slash cut through the urn's heart.
It exploded.
Blood aura surged outward in a storm that swallowed the chamber. The chains disintegrated. The glyphs burst into sparks. The urn cracked apart, spilling a tidal wave of crimson essence into the air.
The mist roared like a living thing, slamming into him, drowning him in its weight. His body shook as the Grid screamed, every doctrine burning, every skill resonating.
[System Alert: Catastrophic Blood Aura Consumed]+2,500 Blood Essence+120 Faith Essence+60 Iron Essence+12 Soul Essence
The flood did not stop. It poured into him endlessly, not just essence but memory. Ancient voices screamed through his skull—elders, lords, the progenitor's own echoes. Chains, betrayals, wars fought in shadows of empires. Every drop burned into his blood.
Noctis threw his head back and roared, the sound shaking the chamber until dust rained from the ceiling. His claws tore into the air, shadows spiraling, chains lashing, frost crawling across the floor. Every doctrine he carried sang at once—hunter's precision, assassin's silence, archer's strike, warrior's brutality. They wove together in violent harmony, unified by the flood of progenitor blood.
[System Update: Progenitor Relic Consumed]
New Doctrine Branch — Crimson Echoes — Unlocked
The first power flared in his veins like fire through glass. His body blurred, splitting into false crimson silhouettes before snapping back into form. He felt how easily he could dissolve into shadow and reappear from nowhere.
[Skill: Blood Mirage — Acquired]
A second surge struck his chest. His fingers curled into a bow without command, crimson threads weaving into a string. Arrows formed unbidden, fangs of bloodlight that bent in his vision toward the seams revealed by the Omen Eye.
[Skill: Scarlet Volley — Acquired]
Then came the hunter's mark. A pulse rippled down his arm, etching runes of blood along his claw. He knew if he struck prey, those runes would brand it, tethering its life to him until it broke. His senses sharpened with the knowledge of pursuit, every beat of blood a trail.
[Skill: Predator's Bind — Acquired]
The fourth eruption was defensive. His skin prickled, aura condensing into a hardened wall of bloodlight that shimmered around him. Unlike the old shield, this was alive, thorned, pulsing. He felt the certainty that any blow it caught would bleed the attacker in return.
[Skill: Crimson Aegis — Acquired]
The last revelation came to his eyes. The Omen Eye flared, and the false fractures he had seen on the Colossus rose in memory. He felt them burn away, leaving only the true core. His sight shifted—weak points now glowed differently, shallow seams flickering pale, true vulnerabilities blazing crimson-gold.
[Skill: Progenitor's Omen — Acquired]
(Omen Eye Evolution — now distinguishes false fracture-points from true cores)
The Grid inside him roared, burning like a thousand voices harmonizing as one.
Doctrine Branch Acquired: Crimson Echoes
Blood Mirage
Scarlet Volley
Predator's Bind
Crimson Aegis
Progenitor's Omen (Eye Skill Evolution)
He stood over the shattered urn, his body dripping bloodlight, his eyes burning gold-crimson, the Omen Eye sharper than ever. The chamber smoldered, walls trembling as though afraid.
Noctis looked down at his claws, trembling with power, then clenched them into fists. The voices of the progenitor's echoes had bled into him, but none of them ruled. He had consumed them all.
The labyrinth was no longer a prison. It was his inheritance.
The chamber still steamed with the urn's breath. Shards lay in a ragged ring around Noctis, sweating crimson mist that clung to his boots and evaporated in threads. He stood without moving, letting the flood settle, letting the new doctrine coil and cool inside his veins. The Omen Eye dimmed to a steady ember. He drew in one breath and closed his eyes.
The world shifted.
[System: Crimson Echoes — Stabilizing]
Doctrine Integration: Secure
Residual Essence Drift: +30 Blood, +4 Faith
Darkness rose, but it was not empty. Shapes formed in it—halls, pillars, banners. A council chamber appeared as if carved from a single slab of night: a cathedral vault with a ceiling painted in ash and gold, a long table of onyx running like a blade down its heart. Elders sat along it, draped in garments that drank the light. Rings gleamed; eyes glowed; fangs hid behind polite mouths.
He knew the place, though he had never stood within it as a sovereign; the memory came from a hundred throats. The Chamber of the Veiled Star. The gathering space where clans swore oaths with one hand and sharpened knives with the other.
The faces sharpened:
Duskborne, cold and perfumed with civility;
Graveward, austere and iron-eyed;
Mirethorn, their lips stained as if they'd just fed;
Nightreach, smiling with too many teeth. Lesser families lined the shadows like chessmen arranged for a game whose ending they'd already accepted.
A voice dripped down the vault—measured, heavy with caution dressed as reason. Elder Varclion, younger by a century, spoke with his hands steepled. "The inquisitions have learned our wards. Their saints bless iron now; their priests burn even our elder-thralls. If we do not yield something, we lose everything."
A low murmur. Another elder—the Graveward matriarch, glyphs tattooed into the bone of her cheeks—tapped a finger against the table. "And what thing would satisfy men who worship their own fear?"
A third voice, thin and silken, from the Nightreach side. "Offer them a cage. An inheritance. Something that bleeds like a covenant."
The vision tightened until the table filled his sight. A parchment spread across it: a map of hidden places, lines drawn in blood to mark sanctums like the one he now stood in. An empty space was circled three times, not with ink, but with ash pressed into wet seal-wax.
"Vaeltharion Noctis," Varclion said, tasting the name. "The Crimson Inheritor."
A ripple went through the elders. A calculation moved behind their eyes, swift and precise. For a heartbeat, the room was silent as a tomb.
"Sacrilege," someone whispered.
"Pragmatism," someone else replied.
The vote did not look like a vote. No hands raised. Noctis watched from the vision's edge as heads barely tipped in the sort of nod one gives to a doomed strategy one will never admit to having chosen. Duskborne dipped first. Nightreach followed as if music had begun. Graveward closed her eyes and did not move until silence demanded a sound; then she breathed out, which in that chamber counted as assent. The rest trickled in: not yes, not no—simply the stillness of predators deciding which of their number will be sacrificed so the pack can hunt tomorrow.
The vision shuddered. The table dissolved into a long corridor of iron bars and sanctified plates. He smelled old prayers on the metal, tasted incense in the damp. He saw himself there, younger—no. Not younger. Eternally the same. Hands bound in silver and scripture, eyes bright with a defiance that had not yet learned how long a century could last.
Priests moved around him in a circle, their lips breaking on syllables that cut the air. Brands hissed. Knives gleamed. He watched them work with a surgeon's interest. Their tools were not simply blades; they were questions with edges. How hot could the flesh of a Progenitor's descendant burn before his scream changed pitch? Where did immortal nerves refuse to die? What prayer made blood remember being human?
He should have looked away. He did not. The memory forced him to watch twice: once as victim, once as witness standing outside his own body. Pain climbed the spine of the vision and made it ring like a harp string pulled too tight.
The scene buckled, cracked to show what stood behind it: emissaries in soft boots waiting outside that chamber with hands politely folded. Rings on their fingers bore the crests of the very families he had seen at the table. They did not look through the bars. They listened instead—clinical and still—as though a ledger were being balanced somewhere.
The vision dropped like a trapdoor.
War replaced it: battlements painted in moonlight, tides of armored men with banners of sun and spear. Vampires moved across the walls as if they were part of the mortar itself, archers drawing strings that hummed like veins plucked by a god, assassins falling from shadow to open throats before their targets knew a shadow had weight. He watched clans move as one doctrine, not because they were vowed, but because danger made a hive of even the proud. And he saw, in the thinnest sliver of time, how well they fought when they forgot to fear.
The night burned. Light engines rolled forward, hurling prayers that struck like meteors. Sanctified golems—the crude ancestors of the ones he had shattered—waded through blood with scripture scrolled where hearts should be. When such a machine reached the gate, the archers' strings snapped not because they could not pull them, but because the air between fingers and bow became prayer hot enough to break sinew.
He watched an elder—Mirethorn by the curl of blood at her mouth—choose three thousand thralls to die in a tide so the rest might pivot and escape. He watched Graveward tear down their own ancestral tower so its falling bones would crush a detachment of knights before those knights learned what the tower housed. He watched Duskborne share a kiss with a human prelate before the kiss turned into a whisper and the whisper turned into a key.
The vision did not make defenses. It gave him what the urn had: the truth that history had teeth and chose when to bite.
He stood in a sanctum again—older than the one he had broken to reach this place. Twelve urns lined the floor, each bound and humming. In the center, a figure stood robed in red that was not cloth but dried blood lacquered into thin plates, cracking when he breathed. His face was a map of scars; his eyes were the color of night before the moon is born.
Noctis felt the vision focus and knew—without question—whose memory he had entered.
The Progenitor did not speak. He laid a hand on one urn as if laying it on a child's head. The chains around it shook and sang. The robed figure bowed his head and held the weight of a decision which even eternity wouldn't forgive.
Around him, elders lingered like ghosts. Not Duskborne or Mirethorn or Graveward. Older. Names that had long since fallen out of mouths because those mouths had been burned for saying them. Their eyes were empty bowls. They had already poured out everything they were willing to spend.
He touched another urn and another until he had walked the circle and closed it. When he raised his head, the vision turned and turned the way a sky turns, and Noctis saw what the world had looked like then: maps cut with lines of red that were not borders but arteries. Cities were hearts to be opened when they fed too loudly. Oceans were veins to be crossed when thirst became law. The Progenitor's gaze split it all with indifference and possession.
When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like a shrine swallowed by an earthquake and deciding to continue praying anyway. "When your children forget your price, they sell you cheaply."
The elders did not answer. They had already sold.
The Progenitor's hand hovered over the last urn as if it were hot enough to soften bone. "Break this only when you remember the taste of obedience."
He sealed the circle with a word. The memory pressed itself into iron and glyph, into the shape of containers that would outlive empires. He did not look back when he left. Greatness never does; it expects the world to run to catch up.
The vision slid sideways like a blade slipped into a sheath and returned to the Chamber of the Veiled Star—this time empty except for one figure: Varclion. Older now, eyes darker, a parchment cracked in his hands. He re-read it as if the words might change. The seal was sun-gold. The prelate's name tasted like ash even in a memory. Varclion folded the parchment precisely along the same creases it had always carried, then placed it beside a glass of dark wine he would not drink. He looked toward a door that did not open, at a chair that would not hold him much longer, at walls that had remembered too much speech and not enough silence.
Noctis's vision hovered, patient as a hunter with time to spare. Varclion touched his ring—Duskborne sigil at its crown—and pulled it once half-free. He stared at the groove it had left on his finger, the pale skin that told the truth about how long he'd worn it. Then he pushed it back and straightened his robe, settled a polite smile like a mask across the lower half of his face, and walked out to his execution arranged in slow steps.
The vision dissolved. Voices followed—snatches, edges. A child reciting the oath of a minor house. A thrall shivering under a balcony and whispering a prayer she'd stolen because it had worked once when her sister was dying. The iron breath of an inquisitor collapsing his hands after a victory and finding the tremor he would never lose. A vampire laughing in a garden at dawn because he knew the clouds were coming and the sun would not find him today. The thousand small sounds that made the greater betrayals possible.
The urn's last echo came like a heartbeat in reverse. The darkness lifted.
Noctis opened his eyes.
The chamber had not changed. The shards still sweated. The smell of iron still smoked. The crimson aura had thinned to a gauze that wrapped the floor and kept it from remembering how to be cold. He tasted old names on his tongue and let them dissolve.
[System: Crimson Echoes — Settled]Progenitor Memory Assimilation: 94%Residual Drift: Ongoing (passive)
He did not tremble. The rage that rose in him was too focused to need shaking. It lined his thoughts like a blade slid into a scabbard meant exactly for it.
He raised his gaze to the nearest wall. The Omen Eye warmed. Lines crawled through the stone—not just fractures of matter, but fault-lines of decision. He saw the place where a warder's hand had hesitated when carving a glyph, the broom-stroke that made a saint's symbol thinner than it should have been, the moment a mason's tendon cramped and set a block a fraction off true. Every act of human and vampire error soldered into the sanctum became a red seam in his sight.
He took a step. The sound was quiet and absolute.
"Varclion," he said to the empty room, and did not bother to shape the rest of the sentence. The past had already answered it.
Crimson Aegis stirred in him like a sleep that ends smiling. Blood Mirage flexed at the edge of his outline, ready to fall apart and be many where he was one. Predator's Bind itched along the bones of his fingers, impatient for a mark. Scarlet Volley tasted the room, weighing angles as if space were a mouth to bite with. Progenitor's Omen settled in his eyes with a patience that promised cruelty.
He turned toward the deeper corridor. The air there smelled like old books bound in skin and the echo of footsteps that had learned they were not leaving soon. The Omen Eye put a red seam across the floor like a vein requesting a blade.
He did not rush. He moved the way tides move when they know the moon cannot say no.
One last whisper rose from the shards—so soft he might have imagined it, so honest he did not. It was not the Progenitor. It was something younger, a voice that had learned obedience so thoroughly it could not distinguish itself from duty.
"Do not break us," it said, not pleading, merely naming a future in which its own words would be irrelevant.
"Everything breaks," Noctis said, because some truths need repetition to become law.
He reached the threshold. The labyrinth's next breath drew itself and held. He let his hand fall to the guan dao, fingers resting lightly on the haft as if greeting an old friend he had bled with enough to have no need of words. He lifted his chin, listened for nothing, and heard exactly that.
[System: Doctrine Synchrony — Optimal]
All Combat Doctrines — Amplified
Crimson Echoes — Harmonized
He walked into the deeper dark, already knowing where the stone would fail, which prayers would falter, and whose names the next room would teach him to forget.