All Chapters of BENEATH THE MASK: REVENGE OF SAMUEL HAYES: Chapter 491
- Chapter 500
621 chapters
491
Gone were the roiling black clouds and the suffocating stillness. In their place stretched a limitless canvas of gold and blue, the kind of sky that felt like it had waited centuries just to return.Samuel stood at the edge of the ridge, the wind tugging at his coat, eyes locked on the horizon where light shimmered against the reborn ley lines. Behind him, the others were gathering. Exhausted. Quiet. Changed.They had won.But the world did not cheer.No banners were raised. No voices lifted in praise. Victory here was something smaller, quieter. The kind that whispered, you may rest now.Joey walked up beside him, holding two steaming cups. “One’s yours,” he said. “Assuming you still drink tea like a civilized person.”Samuel chuckled softly. “Barely remember what ‘civilized’ feels like.”They clinked cups and drank in silence.“You think it’s over?” Joey asked.Samuel didn’t answer right away. He watched a bird cut across the sunlight—its wings sharp, its path sure.“No,” he finally
492
Samuel dreamed.He stood in a corridor that didn’t exist in waking life—walls of onyx veined with gold, floor like rippling obsidian glass. A door at the far end pulsed with light, slow and rhythmic, like a heartbeat.He approached, one step at a time. Every footfall echoed, not with sound, but with memory.Each step, a face.Each echo, a name.Ilara. Joey. Dareth. Sarah. Elian.His hand reached the door, and it opened without a sound.Inside stood a woman.She wore white robes stitched with celestial symbols, and her eyes were pools of starlight. No iris, no pupil—just depth and motion, like galaxies swirling inside a single gaze."You've come farther than most," she said.Samuel hesitated. "Where is this?""A threshold," she replied. "Between the world that was... and the one that waits."He looked around. The chamber seemed endless, and yet it cradled him, familiar like a forgotten lullaby. “Are you the next danger?”She smiled faintly. “No. I am a choice.”He awoke with a gasp, sw
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By the time the sun crowned the hills, Samuel and his team were already riding east. Horses, skimmers, and two modified gliders carved a path through the morning haze. Ilara rode beside Samuel, her map unfurled, her eyes locked on the ley compass that never stopped spinning.“The closer we get,” she muttered, “the more chaotic the ley signatures become. This isn’t a sealed Gate anymore. It’s waking—and screaming.”Samuel’s grip tightened on the reins. “How deep under the sand is it?”“If the records are right?” she replied. “Too deep for anything natural to unearth it.”“So something unnatural is doing the digging,” Sarah said from behind, scanning the horizon through her scope.Joey whistled. “I miss the days when our biggest threat was a corrupted envoy with a knife.”Kael, silent until now, said without looking back, “Those days were lies. This is the truth bleeding through.”By nightfall, they reached the edge of Andareth’s dunes.Golden sand stretched endlessly before them, catch
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Samuel adjusted the clasp of his cloak, his eyes set on the jagged horizon where rust-colored peaks jutted from the sand like the bones of a buried beast. The Sea of Iron lay just beyond. It wasn’t water, but a vast stretch of magnetic terrain corrupted by centuries of failed rituals and metallic warfare. And buried deep within it—if Ilara's map was right—was the Fortress of Silence.Dareth walked beside him, silent as always, though every step he took seemed to scorch the earth beneath his boots. His fire was restrained, but it never left him.Joey broke the silence. “So... does the name ‘Fortress of Silence’ give anyone else the creeps, or is it just me?”“You’re not wrong,” Sarah replied from behind. “The last group that went looking for it disappeared. No signal. No bodies.”“Just rumors,” Ilara added. “That they were swallowed by the fortress itself.”Joey groaned. “Oh good. A fortress that eats people. That’s new.”Samuel didn’t respond. His focus was already stretched thin. Lin
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Samuel stared out across the cracked salt flats as dawn tried to pierce through the haze above. The land here was flat, endless, shimmering with mirage-like illusions. Even standing still felt like motion. And still, somewhere beneath their feet, the pulse of the next relic called to him like a buried heartbeat.Dareth stood at his side, sharpening a blade that didn’t need sharpening. His silence had grown heavier since the Fortress of Silence. He had been tested like the rest of them, but whatever he saw had left a mark.Ilara crouched over a map drawn in fading ley lines. “This place wasn’t on any of the original charts. The pulse is erratic—something is distorting it.”Joey flopped onto the dry earth, face scrunched in frustration. “What does that even mean? Is it moving? Alive? Shifting in time again?”“Maybe all of the above,” Ilara replied. “Or maybe something is guarding it.”Samuel rolled his shoulders, tension thick in his frame. “Then we move fast. We locate the source befor
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Salt beneath their feet cracked under the weight of their defenses. Shadows surged toward them like a tide made of nightmares—each creature a swirling amalgamation of black mist, razor teeth, and twisted limbs that defied nature’s rules.Samuel was the first to strike.His blade flared with white heat as he cut through the air, slicing into the first shadow beast with surgical precision. The creature screamed—a shrill, glass-shattering sound—before bursting into smoke. But where one fell, two rose in its place.“They multiply!” Sarah shouted, loosing a barrage of arrows infused with light. Her aim was precise, but even her strikes could only stagger them.“They’re feeding on ambient fear!” Ilara called from behind a hastily raised barrier. “Don’t panic!”Joey barked a laugh. “Too late for that!”Dareth moved like fire incarnate, carving flaming sigils into the ground with his bare hands. Each mark exploded upward in a pillar of flame, engulfing a dozen beasts at once. “We hold here. S
497
The wind howled like a beast mourning its wounded. Samuel stood at the cliff's edge, his eyes fixed on the horizon where blackened storm clouds churned unnaturally. The chill didn’t come from the weather—it came from within. Dareth stood silently beside him, flames gently flickering across his shoulders like a ceremonial cloak.“We’re close,” Dareth muttered, his voice low, as if trying not to disturb something ancient. “The first Sentinel is here.”Behind them, Ilara adjusted the straps of her satchel. “I can feel the distortion. Reality is thinner in this place. It’s already been warped.”Samuel nodded. “Then we move fast. We find the relic, neutralize the Sentinel, and get out.”They descended the cliffside path, every step taking them closer to the ruins nestled in the valley below—once a temple, now a fractured skeleton of broken stone and wild ivy. Birds circled above it in silent spirals, unwilling to land. The air shimmered strangely as they approached, time itself hesitant to
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The forest east of Mirror Valley was silent, far too silent. Not even the sound of insects buzzed through the air. Samuel noticed it instantly. He halted the group, hand raised. Behind him, Ilara and Dareth followed without a word, their senses sharpened.“There’s no life here,” Ilara whispered, her eyes scanning the dim canopy.“It’s like something drained the entire forest,” Dareth said grimly. “This reeks of Sentinel influence.”They moved cautiously, every step sinking slightly into the moss-covered ground. A faint, metallic tang floated in the air—something unnatural, something dead. Samuel’s hand gripped the hilt of his blade tighter as the trees began to twist unnaturally, their bark blackened and pulsing with faint red veins.“This place was alive once,” Ilara said quietly. “Whatever passed through here... fed on life essence.”“Keep your minds shielded,” Samuel warned. “This area might already be inside an illusion net.”They came upon the first sign of devastation: a circle
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The wind was colder now, sharper, as if the world itself had sensed the shift after Serintha's defeat. Samuel led the group east, guided by a map that Ilara had carved into his memory the night before with her own magic. The next shard was in a place called Thorne’s Reach, an abandoned city swallowed by desert storms and ghost stories.They had traveled for two days in silence. Dareth, once the most vocal of the three, had become quiet since Serintha's illusion had nearly torn Samuel apart. He walked ahead most of the time, always scanning the horizon, his fire pulsing softly like a heartbeat beneath his skin.Ilara finally broke the silence. “She got into all of our heads, Samuel. Don’t carry it alone.”“I’m not carrying it,” Samuel replied without turning. “I’m learning from it.”“She said something strange before she died,” Ilara continued. “That we’d see what ‘they’ did. Who was she talking about?”Samuel stopped walking. His hand hovered over the pouch containing the broken shard
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The path beyond Thorne’s Reach grew stranger with each step. Where the desert once stretched in endless dunes, now jagged cliffs rose out of the sand like broken teeth. The land itself resisted being mapped—as if it remembered what had happened to it and refused to be understood.Samuel led the way, the newly gained shard tucked beneath his coat. It pulsed faintly, as if unsure whether it belonged in this time or another. Ilara walked beside him, her expression guarded, scanning every ripple in the terrain with her mage’s sight. Behind them, Dareth remained silent, the heat of his body forming a shimmer around him.“This isn’t natural,” Ilara muttered after another hour. “The fractures in the ley-lines... they’re bleeding into the air.”Samuel nodded. “It’s worse than Thorne’s Reach.”The deeper they moved into the chasm, the more reality flickered around them. The sky above alternated between blue, gray, and starless void. Trees appeared for moments only to vanish into smoke. Once, a