The cave reeked of stone and Aaric's own blood.
Three days had passed since Ariea brought him here—three days of relentless, brutal training that made him very exhausted
Ariea stood across from him, her breathing controlled. His was ragged, desperate. Blood dripped from a gash on his temple where her training blade had clipped him seconds ago.
"Again," she commanded.
"I can't—" Aaric gasped, stumbling backward.
"You can and You will." Ariea advanced.
her movements economical and lethal.
"Your shadow broke formation three times in that sequence. If that Ironflame scout had attacked during those gaps, you'd be dead flesh already."
She swung.
Aaric threw his hand up, summoning shadow-mist as a shield. It formed—a thin barrier of black smoke between him and the blade. The impact sent him sprawling across the stone floor.
Ariea wasn't even breathing hard. It seems that she was even trying her hard
"You're still thinking too much" she said.
Aeria extending a hand to help him up.
"Shadows don't require thought. They require intention. Will. Hunger."
She pulled him to his feet.
"Kael didn't calculate every strike. He felt where the shadows needed to be."
Aaric wiped blood from his mouth.
"You keep saying I'm like Kael. But I'm not. I'm—"
"Weak?" Ariea finished.
"Yes. Right now, you are. But that's not forever." She walked back to her starting position.
"The weakness is temporary. The shadow-essence you carry is not. And unlike most awakeners who inherit power, you're not trying to replicate it—you're trying to become it."
She gestured for him to stand.
They trained through dawn.
By midday, Aaric had managed to hold a shadow-shield stable for seventeen consecutive strikes. By evening, he'd learned to weave tendrils of darkness around his limbs for enhanced speed. His body screamed. His veins felt like they were filled with ice and fire simultaneously.
But he was improving.
On the fourth day, Ariea brought news.
"Rydor wants you visible again," she said.
sharpening a blade by lamplight. "The Ironflame incident caused enough of a stir that the guild is starting to doubt your story. If you disappear too long, they'll assume you're hiding something. We need you to be there."
"So, what do we do now?" Aaric asked.
"We go to Floor 5," Ariea said simply. "There's been a surge of corrupted essence there—tainted crystals are being processed somewhere in the abandoned territories. I've been authorized to investigate. You'll come as backup." She looked at him directly.
"It will be dangerous. The corruption can warp beasts into something... unpredictable. But if you survive it, if you prove yourself in a real operation, then even Rydor's doubters will have to accept you."
Aaric felt something cold settle in his chest.
"When?"
"Tonight. We move at midnight."
The descent to Floor 5 took three hours.
The stairwell twisted downward through layers of the Tower, each floor revealing its own character. Floor 4 was industrial—abandoned mining settlements and crystalline formations jutting from walls. Floor 5 was something else entirely.
It was dead.
Or rotting, more accurately. The air was thick with corruption, a palpable wrongness that made Aaric's skin crawl. The vegetation was twisted—trees with blackened bark, vines pulsing with sickly purple light instead of the normal blue. Even the stone looked diseased, cracked and weeping some kind of foul substance.
"This way," Ariea said.
her voice tight. She moved with her hand on her sword hilt, ready for anything.
They reached a settlement—or what remained of one. Broken buildings. Overturned carts. No bodies that Aaric could see, but plenty of blood, dried dark and ancient-seeming on the stone.
"The processors were here," Ariea murmured.
"They were taking raw essence from higher floors and corrupting it deliberately."
"Why?" Aaric asked.
"Control, probably. Corruption weakens the mind. Makes people easier to manipulate."
Ariea straightened.
"This is high-level operation. Someone in the guild hierarchy is involved."
A sound echoed through the dead settlement.
A roar—but wrong. Twisted. Like an animal's cry mixed with something organic tearing apart.
Ariea and Aaric exchanged a look. Without a word, they moved toward the sound, weapons ready.
What they found made Aaric's breath catch.
The beast was enormous—easily fifteen feet tall, covered in fur that looked blackened and diseased. Its eyes were wrong, too many of them, arranged in rings around its head. Purple corruption leaked from its mouth and the gaps in its hide.
"Corrupted 4-star," Ariea whispered.
"That should not exist down here. 4-stars belong on higher floors."
"This is not the first time" Aaric whispered.
The beast's head snapped toward them.
All those wrong eyes fixed on their position.
And it moved.
Faster than anything so large should move, faster than Aaric had ever seen a beast move. Ariea shoved him sideways just as the creature's claws gouged the stone where they'd been standing.
"Run!" she shouted,
drawing her blade.
But Aaric didn't run.
He planted his feet and raised his hands. The shadows coiled from his body like living smoke, forming a shield between him and the beast.
The creature lunged.
Its weight hit the shadow-barrier like a falling building. The force drove Aaric back, his boots scraping across stone, but he held. Held. The shadow-mist rippled and reformed, absorbing the impact.
"Good!" Ariea called.
She vaulted over the beast's shoulder, bringing her blade down toward its neck. It twisted, faster than something with so many eyes should move, and caught her mid-strike.
Aaric saw his opening.
He surged forward, shadow-tendrils lashing out. They wrapped around the beast's legs, pulling, trying to anchor it.
The creature shrieked—a sound that echoed unnaturally in the dead settlement.
It shook violently, flinging Aaric through the air. He crashed into a building wall, and the impact knocked the wind from him. But he was already summoning shadows again, already moving.
Ariea fought with devastating precision, her blade cutting through the corruption-wreathed fur, drawing ichor that burned where it fell. But the beast was too strong, too large, too fast. And it was getting angrier.
It swung at Ariea. She ducked, but barely. The claws meant for her struck a building behind her, collapsing the entire structure.
Aaric felt something shift inside him.
A cold anger.
A clarity.
He crushed an essence crystal in his palm—one of the few he'd brought—and felt the shadow surge through him. He didn't control it.
He let it flow, following instinct the way Ariea had taught him.
The shadows erupted outward, not as a shield or a lash, but as solid weight.
They gathered around the beast like chains, wrapping its limbs, immobilizing it. The creature thrashed and roared, but for the first time, it couldn't move.
Ariea saw her moment.
She dove forward, her blade driving deep into the beast's heart. It convulsed once, twice, then collapsed. The purple corruption bled out of its wounds, dispersing into smoke.
Silence fell.
Aaric and Ariea stood over the corpse, both breathing hard.
"That," Ariea said finally, "w..was exceptional! "
The beast's body began to dissolve—whatever corruption had animated it was leaving. But as it faded, something else appeared. A core, pulsing with sickly light, fell from the creature's remains.
Ariea picked it up, studied it.
"A corrupted essence stone. High grade."
She looked back at Aaric.
"We need to find the source. Whoever's processing these—"
The ground shook.
Not gently. Violently. Cracks appeared in the settlement's stone, widening, spreading. A sound like grinding gears echoed from somewhere deep below.
"The facility is collapsing,"
Ariea breathed.
"Someone triggered a failsafe." She grabbed Aaric's arm.
"We need to leave. Now."
They ran.
Behind them, the dead settlement crumbled. The ground opened in fissures, swallowing buildings whole. They sprinted for the stairwell as Floor 5 literally came apart, pursuing them upward.
Aaric threw shadow-tendrils down to stabilize fractured stairs as they climbed. Ariea hauled him upward, faster, faster. The air filled with dust and the sound of destruction.
They burst onto Floor 4 just as the entrance to Floor 5 collapsed behind them, sealing it off.
They fell to their knees, gasping.
After a long moment, Ariea spoke.
"Whoever's running the corruption operation, they're willing to destroy everything to keep it hidden." She looked at Aaric.
eyes blazing with something between fury and determination.
"Which means it's bigger than the guild. Bigger than Dawnvale."
She helped him to his feet.
"We go back to Rydor. We report what we found. And we start asking very careful questions about who has the authority to authorize a Floor 5 operation that even the Vice Leader doesn't know about."
Ariea's expression hardened into something cold and dangerous.
"Because if there's someone in the guild hierarchy hiding this, then the conspiracy Syl warned us about runs deeper than we thought."
They climbed back toward Dawnvale, the weight of conspiracy settling heavy on their shoulders.
And somewhere far below, in the ruins of Floor 5, something dark and ancient stirred at the sound of Aaric's shadow-essence.