A root shifted.
Everyone flinched—inside.
But they held. Every heartbeat was an earthquake in their chest. Even Ramsey, muscles built for movement, felt the strain claw at his nerves. His knuckles itched for release. But still—he did not move.
Then came the second test.
A whisper—not from the jungle, not from the branded, but from within.
It wasn't words.
It was music.
The Thundering Choir began to sing.
Not with voices, but with memory. A low hum threaded through their souls, vibrating memories loose from their anchor points. Pain. Loss. Regret. Every hidden wound cracked open under the sound. It reached deep, far past body or mind.
Markus heard Nate's final words. Again.
Lyle saw the moment his prediction failed—when he couldn't save his sister.
Ramsey saw the drink he didn't resist, the fight he lost, the shame he buried.
Connor—Connor heard his mother's lullaby, twisted into a warning.
Jacob saw Solus.
And still, they didn't move.
But Aria began to bleed.
From her nose. From her ears. From her soul.
The strain of holding the illusion, while resisting the Choir's Song, was too much. Her body trembled—barely—but her soulflame sputtered.
Jacob felt it. Through the link.
"She can't hold it," he mouthed, barely moving his lips.
But then—
A single vine uncoiled in front of Aria's face. It hovered there. Watching.
Testing.
The Choir had seen her soul crack.
It was going to strike.
Jacob's eyes narrowed.
He called on the last drop of the Crimson Coil.
Soul Skill: Ethereal flame soul link.
A blast of soulfire detonated silently across the link. Not outward—but inward. He shared a memory. One strong enough to drown the Choir's probing hum.
The day he found them all.
The day they became a team.
Joy. Laughter. Connection.
The bond of a chosen family, forged in fire and defiance.
The memory bled from him into Aria, then into everyone.
It didn't stop the pain.
But it steadied them.
The vine recoiled.
The Choir paused.
Varzan tilted his head, sensing something—but not understanding.
The branded moved on.
The moment passed.
And the Strifelion breathed again.
Slowly, painfully, the group began to inch forward, deeper into the Temple. The corridor narrowed. Roots began to whisper. Old voices—not hostile, not yet—but ancient.
Jacob looked at Aria, whose eyes were dull with soul-exhaustion. He reached out, barely brushing her hand.
"We're here," he whispered. "Now let's find out why this place sings."
Because the Thundering Choir had not stopped.
Its voice only grew louder.
And in its depths, something had begun to stir.
Something old.
And watching.
Veyzrik Umbrahal stood in the shadow of the broken monolith, where the Trial's air buzzed faintly with echoes of shattered will. The others had scattered, bickering over leadership, purpose, or whatever shallow thing they needed to hold on to. He wasn't listening.
He was watching.
His eyes weren't normal—never had been. Not since the ritual. A pale ring spun slowly inside each iris, reacting to soul pressure. And right now, it spun fast. Faster than it had in weeks. That meant someone nearby was close to awakening… or close to breaking.
"Jacob… Connor…" he murmured, pressing two gloved fingers to the side of his temple. "What are you hiding?"
They had done something—unintentionally or not—that let Lyle resist the rage soul branding. For even a moment, that was power. And where there was power… Veyzrik could take it.
He stepped over a dead zone in the trial's soul field, where even ghosts refused to linger. Ahead, flickering like static in his vision, the spectral shadow of Ruvane—his first and only stolen soul—hovered beside him.
"You see them?" Veyzrick whispered.
Ruvane's ghost didn't speak. It never did. But it moved, and that was enough. The phantom drifted ahead, passing through rock and mist, scanning. Spying.
Veyzrik pulled his hood lower, shadows veiling his eyes. The rumors he'd scattered were already sprouting—murmurs that Lyle was a rival Archon of Man, a system-chosen leader marked by fate; that Geveno was a schemer hiding behind false purpose; that Varzan wasn't even human anymore. Lies, each laced with a sliver of truth—just enough to taste real. Crafted with care. Bait wrapped in smoke.
No one believed him. Not yet. But that was fine.
Time and death would prove useful allies.
For now, his goal was simple: prolong the fight. He couldn't let Geveno end this too quickly—couldn't let him eliminate the Archon of Man. Or rather, her. The girl with the quest. The one fate had truly chosen.
She was the key.
And the longer this dragged out, the greater the chance he could draw him out.
The real target.
The one behind the Prophet's horns.
And Genevo? Still pretending to be the shepherd. Still herding sheep through his own storm.
Veyzrik nearly laughed.
He remembered the system message that had appeared when he killed the soul branded beast—text written in bloodlight, trembling with urgency:
Revenant Pluma Crypt — Level 7 — has been vanquished.
Rewards Acquired:
[Tear of Continuance]
A crystalline tear left behind as the spirit finally passed on.
• Can be crushed to negate death once, reviving the bearer with half soulfire.
• Alternatively, used to awaken latent emotions or memories in another, possibly altering their path.
Description:
Once just a minor creature from a tutorial zone—meant to teach, not to suffer—it became collateral in a far greater game. Caught in the crossfire of ambition and design, it was marked and manipulated. Not by accident, but by intention.
A certain figure—one who stood to gain politically—twisted its fate. What was once a simple trial became a pawn in a silent war of influence. Its suffering served a narrative. Its corruption became leverage.
It was no longer a creature.
It was a message.
Written in forgotten code and branded by a soul desperate to return to a place that no longer existed, his actions were driven by a singular purpose: to go home. But the home he sought was a memory, a phantom realm lost to time.
And so he continued—killing the Ragebrand creatures, one after another. Over time, their messages became eerily similar, repeating with the same chilling tone. It was Genevo who had placed the unspoken rule: no one was allowed to kill the Ragebrand creatures.
His sister, Geneva, wielded a soul ability known as Soul Mirroring, a power so precise it made defiance nearly impossible—every intention, every impulse reflected and countered before it could manifest. At her side stood Varzan, master of Soulbind, conjuring spectral beasts woven from the essence of soul itself. With such a formidable arsenal at their command, the truth became undeniable: they were the ones pulling the strings.
Genevo. The man who never revealed his own soul abilities, the one who restricted others from slaying the Ragebrand creatures—creatures marked by his very influence.
Normally, Veyzrik could rely on his stolen soul specters to spy. He had been using them to observe Jacob, Connor, and the rest of the camp as they fought against Genevo and Geneva. It worked only because Genevo and Geneva were distracted. Under different circumstances, Veyzrik could have used his specters to gather intelligence without anyone noticing. They were invisible to the naked eye, unless someone landed a blow on them or Veyzrik wanted them to be seen.
But now, it was clear. Genevo was the one branding them. Not with his hands, perhaps, but with his soul—his will, his essence. His influence was the plague, spreading across the land, unnoticed and insidious, infecting all who came into contact with it.
And the others, they refused to see it. They couldn't or wouldn't understand the truth.
And they still followed him.
Veyzrik didn't care. Let them follow. Let them fall.
All he needed now was access. Jacob and Connor might be the key—if they could fix the branding in others, then more soul skills would be unlocked. And then… he could feed. Take. Twist.
He checked the number of active theft slots:
[Soul Theft – Slot 1: Filled]
[Slot 2: Empty]
[Slot 3: Empty]
Only three chances left before he would have to consume one soul to make room. He wasn't ready to do that. Not yet. Not until he claimed the man with the horns—known now only by whispered fear and reverence as The Horned Prophet of Undoing.
The one whose soul pulsed like a warhorn beneath his skin.
"I'm coming for you," Veyzrik said under his breath, his voice calm, steady. "But first, I need to set the table."
He vanished into the mist, leaving only the whisper of black smoke behind. The chains that wrapped around his fingers were not forged of steel, but conjured from ethereal shadow—living wisps of black smoke that wound themselves tightly around each digit. They slithered and curled like sentient threads, coiling with eerie precision, their movements smooth yet unnervingly deliberate.
Each strand pulsed softly with an inner life, dim glows of violet and crimson flickering deep within like dying stars trapped in a void. Around his wrists and knuckles, the smoke thickened into ghostly cuffs—still for a moment, then gently fraying at the edges as if always in the act of becoming something else.
The chains defied gravity, drifting in elegant arcs through the air, forming symbols and spirals in their wake before unraveling like shadows escaping the light. Every step he took left behind black spectral footprints—faint impressions that lingered for a heartbeat, then dissolved into nothing. No trace remained. No one was the wiser.