Chapter 7: Anomaly

The air on level four smelled of charred flesh and pulverized bone.

Camille, the white-haired warrior with golden eyes, spun through the shadows like a whirlwind of steel. Her twin blades traced silver arcs in the darkness, each strike sparking against the obsidian plates of the Xhar-Voth.

"Miss Camille! This is an anomaly!" shouted one of the veterans, his armor dented by the swipe of a claw. "Nothing from level six should be here!"

Camille didn't respond.

She dodged an attack that split the air with a supernatural crack—like reality itself was tearing—and countered. One of her swords sank into the beast's exposed "spine," where something that looked like a rotting heart pulsed.

The Xhar-Voth screamed.

Not with sound, but with presence.

An invisible wave of force slammed into the humans, making them feel as though their bones wanted to flee their flesh. One of the soldiers vomited blood, his fingers beginning to crust over with a crystalline crust.

"Tactical retreat! NOW!" Camille ordered, throwing a purple smoke bomb—alchemy from the Upper City.

As they fled, the warrior looked back.

The Xhar-Voth wasn't chasing them.

It was too busy collecting.

With ritualistic movements, it stacked the corpses of hunters and creatures it had slain, its claws embedding shards of bone into its own plating. As if it was… building something.

The cave trembled.

Lumis coiled around Rheell's arm, pulsing with red light—danger, danger, danger.

Something big was moving in the depths.

Rheell stepped into the tunnel, his new claws scraping the stone. The air here was different: thick, laced with a black dust that smelled like the ashes of dead creatures.

Go down?

Before, the thought would have filled him with terror.

Now...

Now he felt something new.

Curiosity.

With Lumis clinging to his back, he began the descent.

Level four wasn't like the others.

The walls here were covered in markings—spirals carved with surgical precision, but these were different from the ones Rheell had seen before. Older. More painful.

And then he saw it.

The Xhar-Voth.

The beast was kneeling before a pile of corpses, its crystallized bone claws embedding rib fragments into its own back. As it did, its obsidian plates grew.

Lumis let out a high-pitched sound—don't look, don't look—but Rheell couldn't turn away.

Because the Xhar-Voth wasn't alone.

In the shadows, other shapes stirred. Misshapen, semi-crystallized creatures crawled toward the beast like moths to a flame.

And then...

The Xhar-Voth spoke.

Not with words.

With images that exploded in Rheell's mind:

— A hollow abyss.

— Humans hanging from hooks of flesh.

— And something deeper, something that slept...

Rheell recoiled, his body shaking.

For the first time since earning his name...

He felt fear.

Not for himself.

For Lumis.

Because now he understood:

The Xhar-Voth wasn't a beast.

It was a messenger.

And what it heralded was worse than death.

Fear was nothing new to Rheell. He had known terror in the jaws of the Nyx-Terath, in the hiss of human blades. But this… this was different.

The Xhar-Voth didn't merely exist; it corrupted.

The very air thickened around the creature, as if the abyss itself bowed to its presence. Rheell felt his muscles tighten, his new chitin plates vibrating with a strange frequency, as if trying to separate from his own body.

Lumis let out a sound he had never made before: a sharp shriek, almost human in its desperation.

Run.

It wasn't a decision. It was an instinct etched into every fiber of his being.

Rheell turned, his claws scraping the stone so hard they left deep gouges. Behind them, the Xhar-Voth didn't pursue. It didn't need to.

Because the true danger wasn't the beast.

It was what it brought with it.

The tunnel stretched out, its walls sweating a black, viscous substance that clung to their limbs. Rheell heard whispers—not in the air, but inside his skull—voices that weren't voices, remembering things he had never lived:

— A black sun rising from the depths.

— Humans screaming without sound.

— Something ancient, hungry, that had waited for eons.

Lumis coiled around his neck, his glow flickering in a frantic code:

Don't look back. Don't stop. Don't breathe.

When they finally reached their cave on the third level, Rheell collapsed against the wall, his body trembling. Lumis slid to the floor, his tendrils contracting as if scorched.

For days, they didn't leave.

The abyss was still out there, breathing, waiting. But now Rheell knew.

It wasn't enough to survive.

He had to grow stronger.

Or the abyss would devour them both.

The camp on the third level was silent when they arrived.

Two figures descended through the main conduit, their armor casting a golden glow even in the gloom. Naira and Ashur, the Dawn Warriors.

The people stared with a mix of awe and fear. Armor like that wasn't seen every day:

Naira wore a golden plate cuirass seemingly fused to her skin, etched with runes that shimmered with liquid light. Her red cape billowed without wind, and on her forehead, a ritual crown of metal burned with a pale glow. In her hands, the Tear of the Aurora—a double spear that left trails of white fire with every move.

Ashur, larger and more still, wore black and gold armor that exposed his back, tattooed with ritual scars. His Fang of the Fallen Star—a greatsword as wide as a human torso—rested on his shoulder, the blade humming with radiant energy.

"Well done reporting, little sister," Ashur said, his voice deep like the rumble of a distant avalanche. He patted Camille, who scowled.

"Ha, don't worry. That thing couldn't even touch me. If it weren't for the cowardly guards my father assigned me, I'd have already taken it down."

Ashur looked at her—not with anger. With something worse: pity.

"You don't even know a fraction of the abyss," he muttered. "When an anomaly appears, it's not just a monster. It's a message."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned toward the tunnel leading to level four.

Naira followed, her spear glowing like a falling star.

The Xhar-Voth was waiting.

But it wasn't alone.

Beside it, something moved.

A tall, slender figure, like a poorly drawn memory. It didn't run. It didn't breathe. It simply was there, its long, thin sword vibrating in sync with the heartbeat of the abyss.

"Tsk," Ashur tightened his grip on his greatsword. "This is wrong, Naira."

"What is a Noctis doing here?" she whispered, her knuckles whitening around her spear. "That's from level nine. Even we can't take one."

The Noctis—because that's what it was, though none dared say it aloud—extended a bony hand. It touched the Xhar-Voth's core.

And the beast changed.

Its obsidian plates reconfigured, spiraling into inverted patterns. From its jaws spilled black smoke that screamed in inaudible frequencies.

The Noctis turned to the warriors.

And then…

It struck.

No warning. One moment it stood ten steps away; the next, its silent blade sliced the air toward Naira's throat.

Ashur moved first. His greatsword clashed with the Noctis's blade, the impact unleashing a shockwave that shook the walls. Stones fell from the ceiling, shattering before they hit the ground.

Naira countered, her spear tracing circles of white fire. The Noctis dodged—not by moving, but by ceasing to be where her weapon struck—and retaliated. Its blade grazed Naira's arm.

There was no blood.

Only a void.

Naira screamed—not in pain, but in horror—as something tore within her mind. A memory. Her first training. Her mother's face. Gone.

The Noctis smiled. Or at least, it seemed to, for its face had no mouth.

Then, in one fluid motion, it leapt into the central abyssal pit, vanishing into the depths.

Ashur didn't follow.

Because the mutated Xhar-Voth roared behind them.

The battle was a symphony of light and darkness.

Despite her wound, Naira danced around the beast, her spear striking again and again at the joints between obsidian plates. Each hit released white flares that forced the monster back.

Ashur was the hammer. His greatsword struck with the force of a rising sun, breaking horns, shattering claws. When the Xhar-Voth tried to use its Soul Drag, Ashur shouted a word in an ancient tongue, and his armor blazed like a beacon, dispelling the darkness.

But the beast would not fall.

Until Naira saw the core.

There, where the Noctis had touched it, pulsed an inverted spiral.

"ASHUR! THERE!"

The warrior understood instantly.

With a final effort, Naira channeled all her energy into the Tear of the Aurora. The spear ignited, burning so bright that even the Xhar-Voth squinted its hundreds of eyes.

Ashur leapt, his greatsword raised like an executioner's.

The final strike split the monster in two, from skull to tail.

The Xhar-Voth exploded in a rain of black shards and ash.

The abyss fell silent.

Naira leaned on her spear, her injured arm trembling. Ashur took a deep breath, his ritual scars glowing faintly.

"We have to report this," he murmured.

Naira nodded.

Things on the surface were about to get loud.

As they ascended, the abyss seemed to hold its breath.

But Rheell, hidden in the shadows, had seen it all.

And for the first time, he knew the true name of the enemy.