Rise of the Peerless God of War

Chapter 10

The deeper they went, the more wrong everything felt.

The passage the spirits had opened led to tunnels that were definitely not on any academy map. The walls here were different—smoother, older, carved with symbols that seemed to move when Draven wasn't looking directly at them.

"Are you sure about this?" Jin asked for the dozenth time, his voice echoing strangely in the narrow corridor.

"No," Draven said honestly. "But I'm sure we need to be here."

The pendant against his chest had settled into a steady, warm pulse. Not uncomfortable, but constant. Like a heartbeat that wasn't his own.

"The air's getting thicker," Lyra observed, creating a small wind current to test the atmosphere. "There's something... old down here. Really old."

"Old and angry," Sera added. She was using her shadow magic to scout ahead, her form flickering between solid and translucent. "I can feel hostility in the darkness. Not from the spirits we saw before—something else."

Something else.

That's when they hit the first trap.

Draven's foot came down on what looked like solid stone, but the pressure plate gave way with a soft click. The sound echoed through the tunnel like a gunshot.

"Move!" he shouted, diving forward as the walls erupted with poisoned darts.

Jin threw up an earth barrier just in time, stone rising from the floor to deflect the deadly projectiles. But the barrier was crude, hasty—some of the darts made it through.

"Sera!" Lyra called out.

The shadow mage was pressed against the wall, clutching her arm where a dart had grazed her. "I'm fine," she said through gritted teeth. "Just a scratch."

But Draven could see the wound already darkening around the edges. "That's not 'just a scratch.' That's poison."

"I know." Sera's voice was steady, but her face was pale. "I can feel it spreading. My shadow magic is fighting it, but..."

"But you need proper healing," Lyra finished. "We should go back."

"No." Sera straightened, her silver eyes determined. "I can handle this. And we've come too far to turn back now."

She's right. We have come too far.

The dart trap had been just the beginning. As they moved deeper, the catacombs seemed to come alive around them. Pressure plates triggered rockfalls that Jin had to deflect with increasingly creative earth magic. Illusion corridors made them walk in circles until Sera's shadow sight found the real exit. Gas vents released clouds of something that made their eyes water and their lungs burn until Lyra's wind magic cleared the air.

"This place doesn't want us here," Jin said after the fourth trap nearly took his head off.

"No," Draven said. "It doesn't want someone here. But not us."

He was right. The traps were old, ancient, designed to keep something in rather than keep intruders out. And the spirits...

The spirits were everywhere now.

They walked through walls and floors, translucent figures in academy uniforms from across the centuries. Some carried weapons. Others bore the tools of their trade—healing implements, magical focuses, books that glowed with residual power.

And all of them were looking at Draven.

"Turn back, young ones," one of them said, a woman in robes that marked her as a healer. "The deep chambers hunger."

I can hear them clearly now. But the others...

"Did you hear that?" Draven asked.

"Hear what?" Jin looked around nervously. "All I hear is this weird whispering sound."

"The spirits," Draven said. "They're trying to warn us."

"Warn us about what?" Lyra asked.

Before Draven could answer, they reached another chamber. This one was different from the tomb room above—circular, with a domed ceiling covered in star charts that seemed to move on their own. The floor was inlaid with a complex pattern of silver and gold, and in the center stood a pedestal holding what looked like a crystal orb.

"What is this place?" Sera whispered.

"An observatory," Lyra said, studying the moving star charts. "But not for normal astronomy. This is for tracking magical phenomena. Celestial alignments, dimensional rifts, things like that."

Dimensional rifts.

The pendant was burning against Draven's chest now, and the voices of the spirits were getting louder.

"Don't let it wake up..."

"The seal must hold..."

"So many died to contain it..."

"Contain what?" Draven asked aloud.

"Draven," Jin said slowly. "Who are you talking to?"

But before Draven could answer, the orb in the center of the room began to glow. Not with normal light—with something that hurt to look at directly. And the whispers...

The whispers became screams.

Hostile spirits erupted from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. These weren't like the academy ghosts they'd seen before. These were twisted, wrong, filled with rage and hunger that had been building for centuries.

"Academy students," Lyra gasped, recognizing the corrupted uniforms. "Students who died in training. But they're..."

"They're not at rest," Draven finished. "They're trapped. Driven mad by whatever's sealed in this place."

The first spirit reached them—a boy who couldn't have been older than sixteen, his face twisted with supernatural rage. He swung a spectral sword at Jin's head.

Jin ducked and threw up an earth barrier, but the ghostly blade passed right through it. "How do you fight something that isn't solid?"

"Like this," Draven said, drawing his own sword and intercepting the spirit's next attack.

The blade of his sword rang against the ghost's weapon like metal on metal. The contact sent shock waves through both of them, but Draven held firm.

Sir Thomas Brightblade's defensive techniques. Guard high, feet planted, never give ground.

"How is he doing that?" Sera asked, using her shadow magic to confuse a spirit that was trying to flank them.

"I don't know," Lyra said, her wind magic creating barriers that at least slowed the spirits down. "But it's working."

Draven fought like a man possessed, using every technique he'd absorbed from the Memorial Garden. The spirits were strong, but they were also predictable—they fought with the same styles they'd used in life, and Draven had the combat memories of masters from across the centuries.

But there were so many of them.

"We can't keep this up forever," Jin shouted, his earth magic creating increasingly desperate barriers.

"We don't have to," Draven said, parrying a thrust from a spectral spear. "We just have to reach the next chamber."

"What next chamber?" Lyra asked.

Draven pointed with his sword toward a passage that had opened on the far side of the room. It was glowing with the same silver light as his pendant, and the hostile spirits seemed reluctant to approach it.

"There," he said. "The friendly spirits are showing us the way."

The academy heroes. They're still trying to help, even in death.

Fighting their way across the chamber was like wading through a nightmare. Hostile spirits attacked from all sides, their spectral weapons seeking flesh even as their forms shifted and flickered. Jin's earth magic provided mobile cover, Lyra's wind disrupted their attacks, and Sera used her shadows to confuse and misdirect.

But it was Draven who cut their path, his sword work precise and deadly as he applied every fighting technique he'd ever absorbed. The spirits fell back before him, not destroyed but driven away, and slowly—so slowly—they made progress toward the passage.

"Almost there," Draven called out, deflecting a ghostly arrow that would have taken Sera in the back.

That's when he realized the truth.

The hostile spirits weren't trying to kill them. They were trying to stop them from going deeper.

They're trying to protect us from whatever's down there.

"Wait," he said, lowering his sword. "Stop fighting."

"Are you insane?" Jin ducked under a spectral blade. "They're trying to kill us!"

"No, they're not." Draven stood still, letting the spirits surround him. "They're trying to warn us."

The hostile spirits pressed closer, their twisted faces filled with desperate urgency. And for the first time, Draven tried to really listen to what they were saying.

"Don't go deeper..."

"It's not safe..."

"So many died the last time..."

"The seal is weakening..."

"What seal?" Draven asked.

The spirits pointed as one toward the passage, and their combined voices created a sound like wind through a graveyard:

"The seal that holds the Hunger. The seal that keeps the Darkness contained. The seal that must not be broken."

"And if we go down there?" Draven asked.

"You will wake it. And it will devour everything."

The Hunger. The Darkness. Something sealed away by academy heroes who died to contain it.

"We should go back," Jin said, and for once, Draven agreed with him.

But as they turned toward the entrance, they heard something that made their blood run cold.

The sound of stone cracking.

The passage behind them was sealing itself, just as the one ahead had opened. And the orb in the center of the chamber was glowing brighter, its light pulsing in rhythm with something far below.

"Too late," the spirits whispered. "The seal weakens. The Hunger stirs. And now you are trapped with it."

"Trapped?" Sera's voice was steady, but Draven could see the fear in her eyes.

The friendly spirits—the academy heroes—materialized around them, their forms more solid than before. They looked sad, resigned, but determined.

"We will help you," they said. "As we helped those who came before. But you must be strong. You must be brave. And you must not let the Darkness escape."

"What happens if it escapes?" Lyra asked.

The spirits looked at each other, and their combined answer chilled Draven to the bone:

"The end of everything."

The passage ahead pulsed with silver light, and from the depths came a sound that wasn't quite a roar, wasn't quite a whisper, but something in between. Something that spoke of hunger that had been denied for centuries.

Something that was finally waking up.

"Well," Sera said, her voice artificially light. "This just got a lot more interesting."

Interesting. Right.

But as they approached the passage, Draven felt the pendant pulse one more time. And in that pulse, he felt something that gave him hope.

The academy heroes hadn't died in vain. They'd left something behind. Something that might be enough to face whatever was waiting in the depths.

Something that was now flowing through him.

"Stay close," he said to his friends. "And whatever happens, don't let go of each other."

Because somehow, he knew that the only way they were getting out of this alive was together.

All of them. Or none of them.

The passage yawned before them like a mouth, and from its depths came whispers that promised things worse than death.

But they had to go forward. Because if they didn't, the Hunger would eventually find another way out.

And Draven was pretty sure the world wasn't ready for that.