2026-01-04 21:01:24The steps spiraled down into the earth, each one carved from stone that drank the faint crimson light bleeding from Elias’s veins. The air grew thick and warm, heavy with the scent of old iron and something deeper spilled blood long dried, battles long ended. Elias’s boots scraped against grit as he descended, Thorne’s translucent form gliding silently beside him.
“Smell that?” Thorne said, voice low. “That’s history. Thousands of years of it. Your ancestors didn’t build pretty temples, boy. They built slaughterhouses disguised as sanctuaries.”
Elias didn’t answer. His pulse thrummed in his ears, matching the low heartbeat rising from below. Every step fed the heat in his blood, stirring memories that weren’t his: the clash of armies, the wet crunch of bone under boot, the roar of a war god laughing in the face of divine thunder.
They reached the bottom.
The chamber was vast, circular, walls rising into shadow. In the center stood a raised dais of black stone veined with crimson, and upon it a single weapon. A greatsword, longer than Elias was tall, blade dull red like cooled lava, edge still gleaming sharp. No hilt guard, just a simple wrap of ancient leather gone dark with age and use.
Around the dais, the floor was etched with concentric rings of runes. Between the rings lay bones hundreds, maybe thousands. Human. Beast. Some neither. Armor fragments, shattered shields, broken blades. A graveyard of challengers.
“First trial of the Primordial line,” Thorne said, tone almost reverent despite the sarcasm. “The Crimson Heart. Weapon chooses wielder, not the other way round. Most who reach this far die screaming. The rest… well, they become something else.”
Elias stepped forward. The runes flared at his approach, casting the chamber in blood-red light.
A pressure slammed into him not physical, but inside his skull, his chest. Memories surged unbidden.
He was eight again, hiding in the servants’ quarters while guards dragged his parents’ bodies through the lower city. Beast tide, they’d said. But he remembered the wounds clean cuts, cauterized by flame mana. Not claws.
He was twelve, kneeling in the awakening hall as other children screamed in ecstasy or agony while their bloodlines ignited. His turn came. Nothing. The overseer’s sneer: “Bloodless trash.”
He was fifteen, taking a beating meant for Mira after she dropped a noble’s plate. Harlan watching, smiling, as fists and boots rained down.
The memories sharpened, twisted. Harlan’s face loomed larger, laughing. The guards’ blows landed harder. Mira’s small body crumpled under phantom claws that hadn’t been there.
Rage rose like a tide, black and hungry.
Elias staggered, fists clenched so tight nails drew blood from his palms. The greatsword on the dais began to hum, blade vibrating, runes along its length glowing brighter.
“Fight it,” Thorne snapped, voice cutting through the haze. “That’s the trial. It drags up every wound, every hate, and feeds it to the bloodline. Give in, and the weapon claims you as a berserker mindless, unstoppable, dead inside.”
Elias dropped to one knee, sweat stinging his eyes. The rage whispered: Take the sword. Go back. Burn House Voss to the ground. Make Harlan beg. Make them all beg.
He could see it so clearly Harlan on his knees, golden hair matted with blood, throat crushed under Elias’s boot. The satisfaction would be sweet, endless.
“No,” he growled through clenched teeth.
Another memory surfaced, softer but sharper for it.
Mira’s face the night he’d promised her he’d always come back. “You’re my family, Eli. The only one I got.”
He’d lied to her. Died in exile, left her alone.
The rage surged higher, hot enough to choke.
Thorne’s voice again, closer now. “You think vengeance will fix it? It won’t bring them back. Won’t make her safe. It’ll just make you the monster they already think you are.”
Elias forced his eyes open. The greatsword was floating now, edge pointed toward him like an accusation.
He stood.
“I’m not doing this for them,” he said, voice raw. “Not just for revenge.”
He stepped onto the dais.
The pressure intensified, trying to crush him down. Visions assaulted him future massacres, cities burning under crimson banners, allies falling to his own blade in blind fury.
But he kept walking.
“I’ll master this,” he told the sword, told the bloodline, told the ghosts watching. “Not to become a god. To protect what’s mine. To make sure no one ever throws away a kid like trash again.”
He reached out and wrapped his hand around the leather grip.
The chamber exploded with light.
Pain beyond anything he’d felt lanced through him every vein on fire, every nerve screaming. The sword’s weight dragged him down, but he held on. Crimson runes raced up his arm, burrowing into skin, branding him from wrist to shoulder in glowing patterns that pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Visions flooded him again, but different now.
A man no, a titan stood on a battlefield littered with divine corpses. Hair black as Elias’s, eyes storm-gray turned crimson. He wielded the same greatsword, laughing as thunderbolts shattered against a veil of blood-red aura.
The Primordial War God. His ancestor.
The titan turned, looked straight at Elias across centuries.
“Blood of my blood,” the voice boomed, not unkind. “The gods feared us not for our strength, but because we fought for the weak. Remember that, or fall.”
The vision faded.
Elias gasped, on his knees again, but the sword was in his hand now weight perfect, balanced, alive. It shrank slightly, adjusting to his frame, edge singing faintly.
Thorne stared, something like awe cracking his usual scowl.
“Impossible,” he muttered. “Most claimants lose themselves in the first minute. You… you talked back to the old bastard and he listened.”
Elias rose slowly. The runes on his arm faded to faint scars, but he felt the power settled deep steady, waiting.
A translucent panel shimmered in his vision, visible only to him:
(Primordial War God Bloodline – Purity: 25%)
[Stage: Awakened (Peak)]
(Core Ability Unlocked: Crimson Aura (Basic) – Manifest battle veil for enhanced strength, speed, durability.)
(Weapon Bound: Crimson Reaper Growth-type artifact. Feeds on absorbed essence.)
(Skill Unlocked: War God’s Instinct – Heightened battlefield perception.)
The chamber rumbled. A section of wall slid open, revealing a stone pedestal holding a small crimson crystal and a tattered journal.
Thorne floated over. “Inheritance complete. That crystal will push you toward Battle Lord stage with enough kills. The journal… well, let’s just say it’s not bedtime reading.”
Elias picked up the journal. The leather cover was warm. On the first page, in faded but strong script:
To my descendant,
If you read this, the seal held long enough. The gods will come for you. Trust no divine bloodline. Protect the weak, or our power becomes tyranny. I am sorry for the burden. —Kael Voss, Primordial War GodElias’s throat tightened. Same surname. Not coincidence.
Thorne cleared his throat awkwardly. “Your great-great-something grandfather. Stubborn bastard. Died sealing the bloodline so the divine coalition couldn’t wipe it out completely.”
Elias closed the journal carefully. The rage was still there, banked but present. But now it had direction.
“I’m getting out of here,” he said. “Then I’m going back.”
Thorne grinned, sharp and feral. “Thought you’d say that. But first survive the exit. Trials always have a guardian.”
As if summoned, the chamber shook harder. From the shadows opposite the exit, something massive stirred bones reassembling, mana coalescing into a hulking figure of fused beast and ancient warrior, eyes burning with the same crimson as Elias’s new scars.
The guardian roared.
Elias lifted Crimson Reaper, aura flaring to life around him in a veil of red mist.
“Come on then,” he said quietly.
Thorne laughed, genuine this time. “Now that’s more like it.”
The guardian charged.
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The Price of Victory
The throne hall air hung heavy with the smell of copper and charred flesh, Seraphine’s body still warm on the marble, blood pooling beneath her in a slow, dark mirror that reflected the guttering torches and Harlan’s roaring flame aura in fractured, mocking shards. Her eyes were closed now my doing and the wound in her chest still leaked in weak, rhythmic pulses, the gurgle of her last breath echoing faintly in the high ceiling like a whisper that refused to die. My hands were slick with her blood, Reaper dripping red onto the stone in fat, wet drops that splattered and spread, the metallic tang thick on my tongue, mixing with the bile rising in my throat. Liora stood frozen beside me, lightning still crackling faintly along her blade, blue white arcs dying in the air like dying stars. Her face was pale, eyes wide, locked on Seraphine’s body, the scar on her cheek stark against skin gone gray. Kora’s wind had stilled, dust settling around her feet in a soft, choking cloud, her hands
The Hall of Broken Promises
The throne hall doors had barely groaned shut behind us when the air turned thick with the smell of old fire and fresh blood, the gold plated walls reflecting the last guttering flames in warped, distorted patterns that made every shadow look like it was bleeding. The floor was cold marble streaked with old scorch marks and newer, darker stains dried blood from older fights, fresh from the loyalists we’d just cut down in the antechamber. The echo of their dying screams still lingered in the high ceiling, bouncing back faint and hollow, like ghosts too tired to scream anymore. Harlan stood at the far end, flame aura roaring around him in a crown of white-hot fire, eyes locked on me with that same smirk he’d worn when he pushed me out of the airship years ago, the one that said he’d already won. Lord Voss sat the throne behind him old, broken, flame dim and flickering like a candle in a draft, but his eyes were still sharp, watching, calculating, the way a dying man watches the vultur
The Slaughter at the Threshold
The throne hall doors loomed ahead like the jaws of a dying beast, gold plating cracked and blackened from failing wards, the faint hum of dying mana vibrating through the stone floor and into my boots, each step sending small tremors up my legs that made the stitches in my side tug with fresh, dull pain. The air in the antechamber was thick, hot, heavy with the stink of scorched metal, old blood, and the sour rot of mana cores that had finally given up the ghost, the smell clinging to my tongue and making every breath feel like swallowing ash and regret. The last loyalists had pulled back deeper inside only a handful remained here, crimson plate gleaming dully under flickering torchlight, flame auras low but steady, eyes hard with the kind of fanaticism that doesn’t flinch at death because it’s already decided the cause is worth it. We burst through the side corridor in a tight wedge me at point, Reaper drawn and low, crimson mist already coiling around the blade like living smoke;
The Whisper’s Origin
The whisper had been growing louder for days, no longer just a faint vibration in the stone but a voice that seemed to speak directly into the marrow, soft and persistent, repeating my name in tones that felt both ancient and intimately familiar, like someone who had known me long before I knew myself was trying to remember how to speak. It came most clearly in the hours when the cavern was still, when the fire had burned down to embers and the only sounds were Rag’s deep, rhythmic breathing and Mira’s small, occasional murmurs in her sleep; it rose then, threading through the quiet like smoke, curling around my thoughts until I could no longer tell where my own mind ended and the voice began. I lay awake that night, Liora curled against my side, her head on my chest, silver hair spilling across my shoulder in loose strands that caught the last red glow from the dying fire. Her breathing was slow and even, one arm draped across my waist, fingers loosely curled against the bandage on
The Last Threshold
The manor had finally stopped pretending it could hold on. It drifted downward in exhausted, uneven lurches now, each drop accompanied by a deep, metallic groan that rolled through the mountain like thunder trapped in stone, the lowest spires no longer scraping but gouging long, jagged scars across the upper platforms, sparks flying in brief, angry bursts that lit the gray dawn like dying fireflies. The air carried the heavy, acrid scent of molten gold cooling too fast, mixed with the faint, wet rot of mana conduits that had given up entirely, leaving only the throne hall’s solitary glow high above a pale, flickering gold that looked less like defiance and more like a lantern someone had forgotten to extinguish before abandoning the house.I stood at the forward ledge in the thin, cold light of pre dawn, cloak pulled tight against the wind that bit harder now, carrying flecks of ash and the sharp tang of exposed wiring that stung my nose and made my eyes water. The ache in my side ha
Still Here, Somehow
The cavern smelled like old smoke and damp stone and the faint copper tang of blood that never quite washed out of the air no matter how many times we tried to scrub the floors. The embers in the fire pit were down to almost nothing, just a dull red line that barely reached the walls, throwing shadows that moved slow and tired, like they were as exhausted as the rest of us. I sat against the crate, back to the rough wood, legs stretched out in front of me, the ache in my side a steady pulse now, not screaming anymore, just reminding me with every breath that I was still leaking a little inside, still not quite whole. Liora was curled beside me, head on my shoulder, silver hair loose and tangled from the wind and the sweat of the last push. One arm draped across my chest, fingers loosely curled in my tunic right over my heart, like she was checking it was still beating even while she slept. Her breathing was slow, even, but every now and then she’d hitch, a small catch in her throat,
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