There was no proper burial. No time. The best they could offer was stillness, a bowed head, and a whisper to the veil.
The three of them stood in a circle around what remained of Grent and Erilan—tattered bodies already half-sunken into the damp earth, like the forest was reclaiming them. Lumia's voice trembled as she spoke the rites, words of passage taught to all under the banner of the Holy Mother.
"May their spirits walk the light and face the trial without fear. May their truth be known, and their weight be lifted."
No one responded.
Renn knelt briefly, pressing two fingers to her lips, then to Grent's shield—mud-streaked and dented, but whole. She left it with him.
Koda said nothing. He just stood there, sword planted in the dirt beside him, rain or sweat threading down his cheek, eyes fixed on the canopy above. There was no justice in this place. No sense. Just survival.
They left before the flies could settle.
⸻
The jungle that had once been alien now pressed in like a breath too long held. The path they took was quieter, but somehow more dangerous for it. Every leaf glistened like wet glass, every drooping branch smelled faintly of decay, and the distant calls of creatures deeper in the trees sounded off—too broken, too human.
Koda moved point, his blade unlit now, its glow dulled to the void of metal. Renn covered the rear, one hand constantly on her quiver, though her movements were slower—pain still shadowing her side. Lumia kept to the center, whispering gentle wards every few hundred paces, just enough to keep tracking beasts at bay.
None of them spoke.
Not until the ridge.
They were halfway across a narrow path that overlooked a drop of at least fifty feet when the earth betrayed them.
It started with a breath—a hollow wind rising through the stone. Then came the crack. A deep, resonant shudder, followed by the buckling of the ledge beneath Koda's boots.
"Move!" he shouted—but the words were swallowed by the collapse.
They fell together, a blur of motion and thundering debris. Roots whipped past them like tendrils. Dirt clawed into their clothes. The world went end over end, and then—
Silence. Again.
Koda groaned as he pushed himself free from a curtain of ferns, mud streaking his arms, blood already drying on the bandage around his ribs. He was alive. Barely.
"Lumia?" he called, voice hoarse.
"I'm here." Her voice came soft, but close.
Renn pulled herself up from behind a fallen slab of stone, bruised but moving. "Still in one piece."
It wasn't luck. It was something else. Something colder.
Because when they looked up from where they'd landed, the trees had parted.
And there—half-swallowed by the basin, cradled in a bowl of twisted roots and moss-covered stone—stood a shrine.
Not built like anything in Oria. It was old. Wrong. A spire of darkened stone etched with symbols that twisted even when you tried to look straight at them. The air shimmered faintly around it, like heat haze—but the air was cold. Too cold.
Around the base, more of the reptilian creatures patrolled. Taller than the others. Marked with crude bronze bands. Their eyes flickered with something close to intelligence—strategy. Guarding. Watching.
And in the center of the shrine's inner platform, pulsing like a wound in the world—
The heart of the dungeon.
Koda didn't need to ask. They all felt it.
It pulsed, slow and deep, its crimson light bathing the shrine in an unnatural glow. It wasn't a flame. It wasn't a stone. It was a manifestation of something that did not belong. A tangle of mana and will and malice, kept alive by the creatures that worshiped it.
They ducked low behind a curtain of rock.
"They didn't see us," Renn whispered, wide-eyed.
"Not yet," Koda said. His voice was steel scraped against bone. "We'll make sure they don't."
Lumia crouched beside them, fingers trembling just slightly against the hilt of her staff. "This… this could be the core. If we destroy it—"
"We close the gate," Renn finished, nodding. "Or die trying."
There was no debate.
Koda looked down at his blood-crusted hands, at the tremble in Lumia's breath, at the fire still burning behind Renn's wounded eyes. Three left. But not broken.
Not yet.
The dungeon would end here.
Or they would.
____
The plan came together quickly before they could be noticed, exchanged with little more than a whisper.
Renn would run first—quiet, deadly. Lumia would trail close behind, isolating their presence with support magic, her voice poised on the cusp of whispered veils. Koda, releasing the summon of his blade, would wait. Would hold.
Then he'd move.
Renn drew a long, slow breath, lips parted just enough to let the humid jungle air touch her tongue. She moved like a shadow between the undergrowth—her bow already notched.
She didn't wait long.
The first shot struck a sentry through the eye, and before its body collapsed into the dirt, she was already running.
The mutated creatures turned sharply, wings flaring even though they could no longer fly, bones creaking wetly in their sockets. One screeched—a horrible gargle of stone and rot. The others followed, abandoning the shrine like starved hounds.
Lumia was ready. With each few steps she cast subtle dissonances—ripples in air, glints of false movement, sounds of motion where there were none. The creatures chased ghosts. The jungle turned traitor to them. One stumbled over tangled roots, one flinched at a sound that wasn't there, and then Renn's arrow found another's throat.
From the trees, it was chaos. Controlled. Choreographed.
From the ground, Koda moved.
He crouched low, darting from stone to stone as the shrine loomed ahead—an ancient, breathing mass of stone and darkness. Its central obelisk jutted from the earth like a broken fang, runes chiseled in uneven spirals down its face. They pulsed as if something lived beneath them, each light a breath, each flicker a whisper in a language that did not belong to man.
The steps leading to the heart were slick with moss and dark patches—some dried blood, some not. The air grew colder with each step upward, thick with iron and incense that hadn't burned in centuries. Statues flanked the stairs—half-formed lizard-men with tongues carved too long and eyes that seemed wet, watching. Their wings, like those of the creatures, were broken stone—cracked at the base, hollow at the edges.
Then, the altar.
The heart was not a crystal or a gem. It was a knot. A pulsing organ of sinew and energy, tethered to the world by chains of blackened mana. It floated above the altar as if freshly torn from something divine and left to fester. Veins of corrupted energy pulsed out of it, feeding the shrine, the jungle, perhaps the very madness in this place.
It beat. Once. And the pulse shook the marrow in Koda's bones.
He stepped closer. His blade pulsed with heat—reacting.
He raised his sword. There was no hesitation. Just resolve.
With both hands he drove it forward, through the very core of the heart.
The shrine screamed.
Not with sound—but with pressure. The air collapsed inward for a split second, and then exploded outward in a ring of raw power. Light lanced up from the altar into the sky, piercing the canopy, shaking leaves loose like rain. The sword sang—not in steel, but in soul—as something ancient moved through it.
Divinity. Recognition. Alignment.
The heart shuddered, its veins going slack, its light flickering in violent spasms as if dying in real time. Koda held firm as the blade drew in that energy—not just destroying, but absorbing. Converting.
The system responded.
[Divine Resonance Detected.]
Skill Slot Unlocked
Choose with intent. The Will defines the Blade.
Koda staggered back as the heart collapsed into itself, leaving behind only a deep gouge in the stone. His sword now burned faintly with an inner light—like a flame just under the surface, never consuming, always waiting.
Below the stairs, the remaining creatures still howled and scrambled in disarray, blind to the truth—that the dungeon was dead.
And something else had awakened in its place.