The cold, black stone floor was hard against Frank’s back. Slowly, the deep, dark emptiness inside his mind began to fade away. It did not leave quickly. It pulled back like a slow, heavy tide. The first thing Frank felt was the cold. The air inside the ancient, cyclopean temple was freezing. It sank directly into his skin and chilled his bones. He shivered. The second thing he felt was the pain. His human right shoulder throbbed with a dull, heavy ache. His ribs burned every time his chest moved up and down. His left arm—the severed, burnt stump—felt hot and tight. Frank opened his eyes. At first, his vision was blurry. He blinked a few times. The pale, clean blue light of his System HUD weakly returned to his eyes. He was not in the pouring golden acid rain. He was not falling into the pitch-black abyss. He was lying on his back in a dark, quiet room. He heard soft, frightened whispers. He smelled ancient dust and burning dry moss. Frank slowly turned his head. He saw the fli

The refugees listened to Frank’s words. They looked up at the screaming face of the man in the painting. The anger they had felt toward Frank was completely gone. The fear they had felt of his magical arm was erased. Now, they only felt a deep, overwhelming, crushing sorrow for him. They realized the terrible burden this sixteen-year-old boy carried. If the Root caught him, he would not just die. He would be tortured for thousands of years. He would be forced to feel the burning agony of his own planet being eaten alive, over and over again, for eternity. It was a fate infinitely worse than death. "The voice," Frank gasped suddenly. He grabbed his own head with his right hand. He stumbled backward, his breath coming in short, panicked pants. "Frank, what is it?" Elara asked, stepping toward him. "The voice in the pit," Frank said, his eyes darting wildly around the dark temple. "When I fell into the Graveyard of Failures... a voice spoke in my mind. It attacked me. It showed me

The howling wind of the golden acid storm blew violently through the ripped iron doors. The hot, sour smell of boiling green acid filled the cold, dark air of the ancient temple. Standing in the broken doorway was a nightmare that simply refused to die. The Apex Predator was a horrifying sight. Frank Williams had torn the giant spider-monster to pieces in the hangar bay. He had ripped off its massive bone legs. He had split its giant, ugly head perfectly in half. But the Root was a master of dark, twisted biology. It did not let its best hunters die easily. The monster had mutated. The two broken halves of its skull were stitched back together by thick, pulsing, glowing golden vines. The vines acted like raw, magical muscle, holding the shattered bone together in a messy, terrifying web. Thick, black fluid mixed with bright golden blood dripped continuously from its ruined eye. Where Frank had ripped off its legs, the monster had grown new ones. But they were not normal legs. The

"They are not statues," Kael breathed, stepping in front of little Lily. He raised his broken, pathetic metal pipe. "They are guards."All around the massive, cyclopean hall, the terrifying sounds of breaking stone echoed aggressively. One by one, the twenty-foot-tall statues broke open. The stone skins fell away, revealing the horrific, automated nightmares hidden beneath. A giant creature that looked like a half-woman, half-beetle stepped down from her pedestal. She had six arms. In each of her six hands, she held a massive, jagged sword made of dark, rusted metal. Her eyes glowed with cold, unfeeling golden light. A warrior with four arms and a skull covered in sharp horns stepped forward, wielding a giant axe made of compressed white bone. There were twelve statues in total. Twelve massive, twenty-foot-tall, heavily armed Root-golems now stood in the room. They formed a massive, terrifying circle around Frank, Elara, and the forty refugees of Lyrendale. The golems did not roa

Frank rolled back to his feet. He raised his glowing Phantom Limb. He curled his energy fingers into a tight fist. He jumped forward and punched the tentacle-golem directly in the center of its thick stone chest. The sound was terrible. It did not sound like breaking rock. It sounded like hitting a solid wall of iron. The magical force of Frank's punch pushed the twenty-foot monster backward a single step, but it did not break the armor. The stone covering the golem was incredibly thick. The golden magical muscles underneath the stone absorbed the kinetic shock. Frank’s magical hand bounced off the chest. The feedback rattled up his magical arm and burned his shoulder stump. "My punches are not breaking them!" Frank yelled to Elara over the noise of the grinding stones. "Their armor is too thick!""Look at their joints!" Elara shouted back. She pointed her dagger at the beetle-woman golem. Frank looked. The stone armor was thick on the chest, the head, and the legs. But to allow