The air didn't smell like air anymore. It smelled of ozone and iron, the metallic tang of a world bleeding out from a thousand dungeon-rupture wounds.
Damian didn't waste breath on curses. He poured black, viscous shadow from his palms, not in grand blasts—his core was down to embers—but in razor-wire filaments. They sliced through the charging Aberrants, creatures of chitin and fury that had once been forest wolves. Each kill was efficient, cruel, granting no moment of struggle.
"Mina!" Karacus's voice was a hoarse shout, half-drowned by the roar of a glacial breath that froze a swath of the horde solid.
"Almost… there!" Mina's fingers flew over the arcanotech device, a bastardized fusion of stolen guild tech and Rooley's time-dilated calculations. Sparks, born of this world's last gasps of mana, danced over its surface.
They were six. Now they were five. Lyra was a red smear on the rubble ten minutes ago.
A figure in obsidian robes, untouched by the filth, walked calmly through the chaos. A priest of the Ruin's Dawn—the cult that had poisoned their last hope. Damian's darkness recoiled from the man's corrupted light.
"The Cage must be cleansed," the priest intoned, his voice carrying over the din. "Return to the cycle. Your escape is a sin against the Seal."
"Go screw your dogma," Rooley snarled, a pulse of grey energy slowing the priest's advance, making his steps drag like in tar. But blood trickled from Rooley's nose. They were all at their limit.
"Now!" Mina screamed.
A tear in reality, violent and unstable, shrieked into existence behind her.
"Go!" Kirian bellowed, planting himself between the portal and the tide, earth rising in a final, desperate wall. "Find us on the other side!"
There were no goodbyes. Damian's mind was ice. He grabbed Rooley's arm, Karacus hauled up Mina, and they leapt into the screaming light.
The sensation was not travel. It was unmaking. It was his soul being drawn out like a thread, fraying, snapping in places no mortal should feel. He saw glimpses—a vast, starless void, a lattice of golden light encircling a dim, dying orb their planet, and then… nothing.
[Interdimensional Transfer Detected...]
[Soul Integrity Compromised: 71%...]
[Error. No System Link Found...]
[Bypassing Akashic Records...]
...
[Welcome to the Cage of Aethel, Survivor.]