chapter 6: the Descent

The ritual continued. Asthi stood in the center of the room, her face lit by the eerie glow of the arcane symbols swirling in the air around her. She watched Divit with a strange amusement, almost as if the suffering unfolding before her was a form of entertainment.

Divit, however, was far from entertained. His body shook violently with the relentless pain as the magic slowly drained him of life. His heart hammered in his chest, each beat like a drum of inevitability. The world around him felt distant, muffled, as if he were underwater. His breath came in shallow gasps, and every moment was a struggle to hold onto his fading consciousness.

"Fuck... I had a feeling this bitch was up to something like this. Think, think! I can't die like this. I have to survive. I will survive!"

But the words in his mind felt hollow, lost in the darkness creeping over his senses. His vision blurred, and his limbs began to feel like stone, unresponsive and heavy. His heart, once beating erratically, slowed to a faint, slow thump, each beat weaker than the last. He had no strength left, no energy to fight the overwhelming force of the ritual. His eyes fluttered closed, and his body slumped into unconsciousness.

Asthi tilted her head, watching his body with a curious, almost disappointed expression. "Oh… no, you didn't make it," she said with a mock sigh. "I had hoped you'd survive. I really did. But I suppose I was wrong."

She circled around the lifeless form of Divit, her fingers brushing over the artifact in her hand—a strange, crystalline object that hummed with the energy of the stolen mana core. The swirling, chaotic energy from Divit's core was now compressed within the artifact, a dangerous and powerful force.

With a flick of her wrist, she dismissed the guards. "Take his body," she ordered coldly. "Dispose of him. The ritual is complete."

The guards, unmoved by the tragedy of the scene, moved swiftly to obey. They lifted Divit's lifeless body and carried him from the chamber, their footsteps echoing through the empty halls. Outside, they threw him unceremoniously onto the pile of dead beasts. The stench of decay and blood was overwhelming, but the guards showed no sign of hesitation. They threw the bodies into the nearby river, the same river that had witnessed the death of countless others before.

The bodies of the beasts floated lifelessly on the water's surface, drifting with the current. Divit's body was among them, a mere object in the unforgiving flow. The river, wide and fast-moving, carried the weight of death downstream, heading toward a dark, hidden place deep in the earth.

As the current pulled Divit along, his chest barely rising and falling with the faintest signs of life, the water began to pull him toward something else—something darker. The river's flow was not random; it was part of a greater cycle, a path leading to something far deeper and more ancient.

The river funneled into a vast, yawning chasm, a hole in the ground so deep it seemed to consume all light, even during the day. The walls of the hole stretched down impossibly far, and the water flowed into it, vanishing into the darkness below. Divit, carried by the current, fell with the water, plunging into the depths of the hole.

As the darkness closed around him, Divit's breath became shallower, his body weightless in the water. He could no longer feel the pain or the panic that had once gripped him. The cold of the water dulled his senses, and soon, even the sound of his own heartbeat faded. The light of consciousness slowly began to slip away, leaving him drifting in an endless void.

Time passed—how much, he could not say.

Then, suddenly, his eyes snapped open.

He wasn't dead.

Divit gasped for breath, but there was no air to draw in. He was standing in the water, but it wasn't like any water he'd known. The surface was still, as if frozen in time. The world around him was utterly dark, an infinite expanse of emptiness stretching out in every direction. There was no ground beneath his feet, no horizon to mark the distance. It felt like standing in the middle of an endless void, as if reality itself had collapsed into this place.

Divit's heart raced, and panic surged through him. Where am I? What is this place?

His breath caught in his throat as a strange voice echoed through the empty space, its tone deep and resonant, as though it came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

"Ohhh, how rare it is to see someone come here." The voice was calm, yet it held an unsettling power that sent shivers down Divit's spine.

"Who is there?!" Divit shouted, "Show yourself!"

The voice, amused yet distant, responded, "We are here, mortal. Look up."

Divit's eyes snapped upward, and what he saw caused his blood to run cold. There, towering above him, were six massive shapes—monsters, no, titans, standing like colossal mountains in the dark. Their forms were twisted and unnatural, with limbs that seemed to stretch out of proportion, shadows so dark they seemed to absorb the light around them. Their eyes glowed with an ancient, terrifying hunger.

Each one of these creatures was as large as a mountain, their presence oppressive, suffocating. They were ancient beings, born from the very darkness that surrounded Divit. As he stared up at them, the vastness of their power became undeniable.

Divit's only response was " fuck now we're have i gotten myself into."

Chapter 6 end