SFX: ――KRRRSHHH! THUD!
Shade slammed into the spiral's inner wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.
The seventh staircase—a bridge of pure white fire—had shattered mid-climb, hurling him into free fall.
Below, the void between worlds yawned open—
a mouth of starless dark, waiting to swallow.
He twisted midair.
SHHHHK!
The night-forged sword bit into the tower's bone-and-starlight wall, grinding a river of sparks.
Through the strobing light, visions flashed—
A city of white marble, towers like lances of sunlight.
The same city burning beneath black rain.
A child in a mirror-mask watching from a balcony—eyes far too old for that face.
CRACK—!
The sword snapped with a sound like a neck breaking.
Shade cursed as the broken half spun away into the abyss.
He hit the ground in a crouch, marble cracking beneath his boots.
Silence fell—thick, wrong, alive.
The stump of the blade felt weightless.
He lifted it, staring at the jagged edge where the constellations bled silver dust.
"Shit. Damn it. Stupid sword."
He raked a hand through sweat-damp hair. "Gonna survive with half a blade. How wonderful—FUCK."
Deep breath. Focus.
He straightened, eyes scanning the ruins.
Auralis, the Jewel of the Ninth Dream
White stone everywhere. Once divine—now corpses of architecture.
Collapsed arches. Statues of nameless heroes toppled into dust.
The sun hung like a dull coin behind a veil of gray ash.
No wind. No birds.
Only the weight of absence.
STEP… STEP… CRUNCH.
What destroyed a city this size?
War? Plague? The tower itself?
Or was it never alive at all?
A faint hiss slithered from an alley.
Shade spun—blade raised.
Nothing.
Another hiss, behind him.
He turned.
The air prickled against his skin; every instinct screamed.
A tail—thick as his torso, scales matte black—slid across the cracked street and vanished into a ruined shop.
The ground shivered.
Shade swallowed hard. "What the f—"
Then came the rumble.
Low at first, then deep enough to vibrate in his ribs.
Buildings groaned. Dust cascaded. The hissing multiplied—hundreds of voices overlapping.
The sun dimmed further, devoured by shadow.
Silence snapped back.
Too sudden.
"Okay," he muttered, breath shaky. "Just the system. Just my head—"
The building exploded.
SFX: BOOOOOM!!!
A serpent the size of a siege tower erupted through marble and smoke.
Its name blazed across the compass in burning script:
BLACK VENOM FANG
Obsidian plates overlapped its massive body; molten gold eyes flared; fangs dripped translucent venom that hissed where it struck stone.
It coiled, head swaying—tongue tasting fear.
Shade's jaw dropped.
The half-sword suddenly felt like a toothpick.
Vesper's Shattered Mask
As the serpent loomed, a memory—not his—pierced his skull.
A boy in the white city.
Mirror-mask too large for his face.
Auralis. The Jewel of the Ninth Dream.
Vesper—the Oracle's apprentice.
Chosen to read futures in pools of reflection.
One night, the pools spoke back.
They showed the Tower.
Not as a spire—as a mouth.
"One heart to close me," it said. "Yours will do."
The boy fled.
Climbed.
Died.
Returned—each time more hollow—until the mask itself became his cage.
A child locked behind shards of his own reflection.
The memory burned away.
And the serpent struck.
The Drowning Choir
Shade dove aside—SSSHHHK!—fangs slammed into stone where he'd stood.
Venom splashed, melting marble into liquid black smoke.
He ducked behind a fallen column—
CRACK!
The tail shattered it to dust, sending him flying.
Pain flared through his shoulder. He tasted iron.
Then—the hissing changed.
It harmonized.
Layered.
Became voices.
Thousands.
Rising from cracks, from empty windows, from the serpent's own throat—
singing.
The Drowning Choir.
Not snakes.
Souls.
Those who had tried to cross the black sea on the map—and failed.
Now fused into one body of scale and sorrow.
Every head a mouth that remembered a different song.
Their hymn:
Grief with teeth.
The Black Venom Fang was only the loudest voice.
More heads erupted—five, seven, twelve.
Each fang dripped a memory of drowning.
The city trembled.
Water welled from the streets—black, starless, rising fast.
Ankle-deep.
Knee-deep.
Hungry.
Shade slashed.
SHING!
A head lunged; he cut its tongue in two.
Another struck; fangs grazed his arm—venom burned, but the map-compass flared and turned it to silver scars.
"Join the hymn.
Give your name.
Feed the sea."
The song pressed against his skull like drowning in sound.
The water reached his waist.
The city was sinking.
His eyes locked on the tallest ruin—the shattered bell tower.
The serpent's main coil encircled it, and at the peak, glimmering like temptation—
a mirror.
Vesper's mask, whole again, floating.
A lifeline… or a trap.
He pushed toward it through rising black waves.
The Choir clung—hands of water, faces of the drowned.
One seized his ankle: a woman, eyes sewn shut with starlight thread.
He kicked free.
The water climbed to his chest.
Shade roared, half-sword blazing as he carved a path through despair.
He reached the tower, scaled the serpent's coils—scales slick, venom burning his palms.
At the summit, the mask spoke with a voice made of many:
"Wear me.
Become the hunter.
Survive."
Shade hesitated. The Choir's song peaked.
Water lapped his chin.
Then—he smashed it.
SHH-CRRRAAAASHHH!
The mask exploded into a hundred shards of light.
Each fragment shot outward—comets of memory piercing the serpent's heads.
The Choir screamed.
Glass shattered.
Sound became weapon.
BOOOOM—SHHHHHHHH!
The Black Venom Fang convulsed, its bodies bursting into torrents of black water that drained into the cracks of the city.
Then—silence.
The sun brightened, barely.
A fragile dawn.
Shade slid down the ruined tower, boots splashing in ankle-deep sludge.
The half-sword throbbed with warmth; faint constellations flickered alive along the broken edge.
It would not reforge—
but it would sing.
At the horizon, water rippled.
Beyond the ruins, the black sea stretched endlessly—the Drowning Choir's true domain.
And there, standing on its shore—
Lira.
Apple-tree tattoo burning blue.
Dagger raised.
Alive.
Shade's chest tightened.
He ran.
The water parted around him, pulled aside by shared gravity.
When they met, their hands clasped across the tide—light to light, wound to wound.
Behind them, Auralis—the city of the drowned—sank beneath the sea.
Bells tolled deep under water.
One spiral remained.
The summit waited.
And far above,
the Door was listening.