The Forgotten Temple

Arthur was running.

Each stride burned his lungs, his heavy legs seemed carved from the rock itself. The macabre weight of the bag containing his father's head on his shoulders was nothing compared to the one crushing his heart.

Behind him echoed the menacing sounds of the Abjured, their determined steps approaching with implacable constancy. Arthur no longer dared look back. His survival hung by a thin thread, a simple desperate head start.

Suddenly, as he wanted to accelerate further, he felt his muscles freeze, brutally refusing to obey his will. His body froze mid-movement, floating slightly above the ground in total immobility. His heart missed a beat, his breathing cut off sharply.

- "No..." he breathed desperately, primitive fear seizing him.

Around him, the air began to vibrate with a dull and familiar humming, the same he had heard just before his father's atrocious death. Arthur felt an icy shiver slowly descend along his spine.

- "That's quite enough, young awakened one..." resonated an icy voice, this time tinged with muted and contained anger.

Nemeor stood a few meters behind him, his arm extended, his black glove open toward Arthur. The Abjured, silent and implacable, surrounded their leader, but this time, none of them smiled, even internally. Their patience seemed exhausted.

Nemeor advanced slowly, his voice becoming hard, almost brutal:

- "You have already caused enough problems. Do you think you can flee your destiny? Do you think your primitive rage is enough to save you? Miserable naivety..."

Arthur couldn't move. He felt this invisible force pressing on him, gradually crushing his will. But his fear, his helplessness, slowly transformed into pure and burning hatred. He turned his reddened eyes toward Nemeor, meeting his gaze, silently spitting his rage at him.

Nemeor suddenly burst into cold and cruel laughter:

- "Yes... there's the look I wanted to see. That's how true Impulse begins. Anger. Hatred. Pain. That is your destiny, awakened one. Always remember that."

Arthur felt his teeth grind, but before he could utter a response, a powerful roar tore through the underground galleries. A primitive, deafening cry, resonating with titanic force against the stone walls.

Everyone froze, surprised, their gaze searching for the source of the cry.

- "What is...?" Nemeor began, lowering his hand slightly by reflex.

At that precise moment, a brutal explosion of rock resounded a few meters behind Arthur, projecting pieces of stone everywhere in the gallery. From this fissure violently emerged an immense and terrifying creature: a Sand Worm, gigantic underground predator, covered with thick and sharp bone plates, its gaping maw armed with rows of teeth sharp as razors, its whitish skin covered with ancient scars.

The monster let out a second frightful roar that made the walls vibrate. Nemeor and his Abjured, caught by surprise, abruptly released their mental control over Arthur, making him fall to the ground.

Arthur reacted instinctively. Without losing a second, he got up painfully, ignoring the pain, and plunged into the tunnel behind the worm, disappearing deeper into the dark bowels of Khar'Zul.

Behind him, Nemeor cried out in anger and frustration:

- "Slay this creature! He must not escape!"

The Abjured drew their Impulse blades in one synchronized gesture, illuminating the gallery with sinister red. The Sand Worm rose before them with terrifying power, ready to defend its territory.

A furious battle immediately ensued: blades crackled in the darkness, striking the worm's armored plates and sending forth sparkling sprays. The dark powers of the Abjured fell upon the creature, but it, incredibly resistant and powerful, struggled with savage ferocity, sending several warriors flying against the walls.

Nemeor himself, fighting in the front line, felt growing fury, exacerbated by Arthur's flight. His crimson blade lacerated the beast's flanks, but the monster didn't seem willing to yield.

Meanwhile, Arthur continued running without looking back, his heart pounding frantically. The worm's roars, mixed with the angry cries of the Abjured, slowly faded behind him, absorbed by the winding corridors.

Arthur ran breathlessly, each stride tearing a little more strength from him, each inhalation burning his throat. The tunnel's darkness seemed infinite, without exit, without salvation. The pale and flickering light of his flashlight danced on the irregular walls of the gallery, creating trembling, almost living shadows.

Each step was a struggle. His wheezing breath, interrupted by repressed sobs, painfully resonated in his ears. His legs, weighed down by exhaustion and fear, threatened at every moment to give way beneath him.

But he continued to advance. He couldn't stop. To stop was to accept reality: his father was dead, decapitated before his eyes. This image haunted every beat of his heart, every breath. It pulsed in his veins like poison.

- "Father..." he murmured again, his voice broken.

Behind him still faintly echoed the sounds of battle, cries and roars gradually fading away. He no longer paid attention to them, carried only by the desperate urgency to flee, to forget, to survive.

Suddenly, his lamp illuminated an intersection ahead of him. Two tunnels presented themselves: to the left, wider and open, but exposed; to the right, narrow, dark, almost hidden.

Arthur hesitated briefly, then instinctively plunged into the narrow passage on the right, hoping the tunnel's size would slow his pursuers.

He advanced, back curved under the low ceiling, breathing painfully. The tunnel narrowed further, forcing him to crawl almost on all fours. His bag, still heavy with its macabre burden, caught several times on the rock's roughness, forcing him to slow down further.

- "Move... move..." he repeated to himself, his trembling and painful fingers gripping the humid and dusty walls.

Suddenly, after several meters of painful progress, his hand slipped on a crumbling wall, and he brutally toppled into the void. He let out a cry of surprise, falling hard before rolling on a cold and flat surface. His torch rolled a few meters from him, faintly illuminating his new environment.

Breathless, he got up painfully, legs trembling, nervously scrutinizing around him. His heart beat so hard it seemed ready to explode.

- "Where did I fall...?" he murmured, his voice broken.

Arthur realized he had fallen into a sort of natural chamber, a round and closed cave, carved in the rock by centuries of erosion. He cautiously advanced toward the lamp, picked it up, then inspected the walls with growing anxiety.

As his eyes adjusted to the faint light, Arthur realized he also stood at the threshold of a strange building, or rather a space carefully sculpted in the rock. This ancient, strange and silent place seemed cut off from the outside world for centuries.

With no other choice, driven by instinct or a mysterious invisible force, Arthur cautiously advanced inside. The silence here was absolute, almost solemn, different from anything he had known. No external noise reached here, no vibration, no echo of distant chaos. It was as if reality itself was different in this forgotten place.

At the exact center of this circular room, Arthur discovered a perfectly smooth circle slightly hollowed in the stone. This circle, banal in appearance, yet seemed to attract him irresistibly. The more he stared at it, the more he felt a deep and powerful attraction. He advanced slowly, his gaze riveted on this circle as if hypnotized.

Without really understanding why, Arthur gently let himself fall at the center of the circle, sitting cross-legged, as if guided by innate instinct. He took a deep trembling breath, eyes slowly closed.

It was at that precise moment that the circle gently illuminated, with a soft, warm, almost soothing light. Around Arthur, the air seemed to freeze, suspending all notion of time.

Outside, in the distance, in the dark galleries of Khar'Zul, Nemeor still violently fought the gigantic Sand Worm, his Impulse blade crackling furiously against the beast's bone plates.

But suddenly, something changed. Something imperceptible, subtle. Nemeor hesitated briefly, troubled, his mask lifting slightly toward the tenebrous horizon of the tunnel where Arthur had disappeared.

- "What is...?" he murmured, destabilized for the first time.

The next moment, the Sand Worm roared louder, violently recalling the Abjured to his immediate struggle. Nemeor brutally rejected his doubt and resumed combat, temporarily ignoring the strange sensation that had just crept into his mind.

In the forgotten temple, Arthur remained seated, motionless, his eyes closed, his breath slow, regular, almost serene despite the tears that gently dried on his dusty cheeks.

He distinctly felt he was no longer alone.

A gentle, ancient, protective force slowly wound around him, definitively cutting him off from external chaos.

Without his awareness, his presence had just totally disappeared from the space perceptible by dark Impulse. No Dissonant, no Abjured, not even Nemeor, could now sense his presence. He had become invisible, imperceptible, protected.

In this millennial sanctuary, forgotten by all except the Impulse itself, Arthur gradually perceived a soft and soothing whisper, like an inner breeze, gently chasing away his fears, slowly attenuating the acute pain of his trauma.

Time seemed suspended, motionless. Here, at the heart of this sacred place, Arthur could finally breathe. His anger, his sadness, his fear, everything seemed gently absorbed by this luminous circle, giving way to strange appeasement.

He didn't yet know what this place meant, nor why the Impulse had guided him precisely here. But for now, that didn't matter. For the first time since his father's brutal death, Arthur no longer felt fear.