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Chapter 022 – The Crucible of Stillness
The bite.The memory of the Lava Ant’ searing venom was a beacon of reality. That pain had been real. This… this was a phantom. Aeltharion’s voice echoed, not as a command, but as a revelation. "You must learn to separate your mind from your body’s agony."This was agony. This was terror. But it was not real.With a Herculean effort of will, Zarek stopped fighting. He stopped clawing at the dead arm. He stopped trying to buck the weight off his chest. He forced his body to go limp, accepting the cold earth beneath him and the crushing weight on top of him.He let the phantom choke him.He stared up at the corpse’s hollow shroud, at the maggot now crawling towards his eye, and he did not flinch. He embraced the horror. He let the icy fingers feel as if they were crushing his vertebrae, let the lack of air burn in his lungs.And as he accepted it, as he stopped resisting the nightmare, something shifted.The pressure on his neck lessened. The cold began to recede, replaced by the famili
Chapter 021 – The Hanging Grove
The first Lava Ant had bitten him.A scream, raw and primal, built in his throat, a pressure valve demanding release. He clenched his jaw so hard he felt a tooth might crack. Tears of pure, undiluted agony welled in his eyes, blurring the faintly glowing dome above.Silence. Aeltharion’s command echoed in his mind, now a lifeline. You will not scream. You will not move.The burning spread, a wildfire contained within the single limb. It was a pain designed to break minds, to make the strongest warrior beg for mercy.Zarek, his body trembling violently, his knuckles white where he gripped his knees, threw his head back and stared blindly at the stone eye above. He did not scream. He did not move.He let the fire consume him, and in its heart, he began the terrible, agonizing work of finding his silence. The pain from the ant bite was a forge, and Zarek’s will was the metal being hammered upon its anvil. For an hour, maybe an eternity, the world was nothing but that single, burning leg.
Chapter 020 – The Eye in the Stone
He lifted his eyes, half in search of distraction, half in rebellion against the encroaching dread, and stared upward into the dome above him.And what he saw made his breath catch.The patterns etched into the ceiling were far more elaborate than he had realized. Now, with his vision accustomed to the strange phosphorescent glow, he could see how they danced and twisted—not randomly, but with terrifying precision. Spirals of sigils, concentric rings of symbols older than language, drew the eye inward. They converged, all of them, toward a single point at the dome’s highest curve—directly above where he now sat.The feeling was unmistakable. It was like sitting at the bottom of a great, stone eye.Zarek swallowed hard, the dryness in his throat almost painful. He didn’t know whether to feel watched or judged or both. Something about the design pulled at the mind, bent thought into unnatural spirals. Were these the glyphs of an ancient priesthood? A forgotten sect? Aeltharion’s own cre
Chapter 019 – The Pit
The trapdoor slammed shut above him with a final, resonant thud that echoed like the tolling of a crypt-seal, reverberating down the narrow shaft and into the hollow space below. In an instant, Zarek was plunged into a darkness so complete it became a weight on his chest, pressing down with a suffocating force.It wasn't merely the absence of light—it was a living, suffocating blackness, thick and absolute, like being swallowed whole by the mountain itself. His breath caught in his throat as his eyes flailed for orientation. Nothing. Not even the hint of motion or form. The silence was cavernous, oppressive, alive with the suggestion of unseen things watching, waiting.He did not move at first.m, His body had gone taut, held in place by primal instinct, every nerve ending aflame with the memory of what he had just escaped above—the seething mass of ants, their obsidian shells clicking, biting, swarming. But here, down below, there was no sound. No skittering.Only his own breath, raw
Chapter 018 – A Candle in the Storm
Consciousness returned to Zarek not as a gentle dawn, but as a rude shove into a world of dull, persistent ache. The memory of fire was a brand on his soul, but the reality was the coarse, scratchy wool of a blanket against his raw skin. He lay on a low, hard pallet, the thin mattress stuffed with what felt like straw and dried herbs that released a faint, bitter scent with his every movement.He was in a single room, a hut so small and sparse it felt more like a prison cell carved from wood and stubbornness. The walls were woven from dark, aged wattle and daub, cracked in places, allowing thin blades of searing morning light to cut through the dimness. The air was thick with the smell of dust, dried sage, and the faint, ever-present tang of ozone and ash that seemed to follow Aeltharion. The floor was packed earth, worn smooth and hard by generations of feet. A single, small, shuttered window was the only other feature, aside from a rough-hewn wooden door. There was no decoration, no
Chapter 017 – The Firelord’s Warning
The beast snarled and lunged forward, driven by either fear or defiance. Its claws carved gashes into the ground as it hurled itself toward Zarek — but the moment it crossed the threshold of that infernal maelstrom, the explosion came.A wave of searing light and heat roared outward in all directions — a sunborn blast that swallowed man and beast alike. The ground split. The heavens trembled. The mountain itself groaned, as if unsure whether to collapse or burn with them.Then — silence.Ash rained down gently, like snow falling in a dead world.When the light finally faded, Zarek stood alone in the center of a scorched wasteland. All around him, the land had melted into glowing stone, still pulsing with afterheat. Cracks spidered across the ground, glowing like veins of fire beneath glass. His body trembled, his chest rising and falling in jagged, shallow gasps. His clothes hung in tatters, half-burned and still smoldering. His skin bore the markings of flame — his arms streaked with
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