The entrance to the lower caves was a jagged maw in the mountainside, but they were fifty yards short when Valerius let out a strangled cry. He fell to his knees, his hands clawing at the snow. The sigil on his chest didn't just flare; it began to bleed a thick, oily smoke that smelled like scorched earth.
They're here," Valerius gasped, his eyes rolling back. "They're… pulling…"
"Lys, move!" Sora shouted, spinning her spear in a blur of blue light.
The air around them curdled. From the very shadows cast by the rocks, three figures rose. These weren't the mindless husks from before. They were tall, draped in jagged plates of obsidian armor that seemed to absorb the light of the oasis.
These were the Eclipsed.
One of them, a creature with a helm shaped like a screaming skull, stepped forward. "The Vessel of the Prime," it hissed, its voice a discordant melody. "Your light is wasted on this dying world. Give it to the Sun that waits below."
Lys felt the heat in his arms reach a boiling point. "I'm not giving you anything," he snapped. He didn't wait for them to strike. He lunged forward, the third seal—the Core of the Sun—vibrating with enough force to crack his skin.
He threw a punch, but he didn't need to connect physically. A fist of solid, golden light erupted from his knuckles, slamming into the lead Eclipsed. The creature raised a blade of solidified shadow, and the collision sent a shockwave that shattered the nearby boulders.
"Lys! Don't just push!" Sora yelled, parrying a dual-strike from an obsidian blade. "You're leaking energy again! Focus it into a point! Think of the Dragon's tooth, not its breath!"
The Focused Strike
Lys gritted his teeth, the pain in his forearms almost blinding. He stopped swinging wildly. He took a breath, drawing the golden heat back into his center, then forced it all into his index and middle fingers.
The air around his hand began to whistle.
"Shin Style: Piercing Fang!"
He thrust his hand forward. Instead of a massive explosion, a thin, needle-like beam of white-hot divinity shot out. it didn't just hit the Eclipsed; it bypassed their armor entirely, stitching through the shadow-core in their chests.
The lead Eclipsed shrieked, its obsidian armor turning to white ash. It didn't just die; it was unmade.
The remaining two Eclipsed recoiled, sensing the shift in Lys's control. "The spark is learning," one whispered, dissolving back into the shadows of the rocks. "But the Great Shadow is hungry. We will see you in the deep, Vessel."
The mountain fell silent again, save for the heavy breathing of the group. The third seal on Lys's arm was glowing a dull, angry purple, and thin trails of smoke rose from his skin.
"Not bad," Sora said, though she didn't lower her spear. "But you're burning through your own life force to do that. If we don't get to the Forge, your heart will stop before the next fight."
Lys looked at his hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. "I can... I can make it."