The staircase spiraled downward, deeper than seemed possible. No wind. No warmth. Only the sound of their breath and the occasional echo—like something huge shifting far below them.
Torchlights embedded in the walls ignited as they passed, revealing murals painted in blood-red ink.
Monsters feasting on gods.
Humans wearing skin that wasn't their own.
Eyes. Always eyes. Endless and watching.
Aicha whispered, "This place wasn't made by sane hands."
"It's not madness," Asari replied calmly. "It's devotion. Obsession. That's always more dangerous."
At last, the stairs opened into a grand subterranean cavern. The ceiling was lost in darkness, but what they could see stole their breath.
A stone temple carved into the rock. Twisted statues bowed around it. Hundreds of pale, shriveled bodies knelt in frozen prayer, their mouths sewn shut, heads tilted toward the sky.
"They're… offerings?" Aicha asked, voice cracking.
"Fuel," Asari said. "For something that's not dead."
As they stepped forward, a rumble shook the chamber.
Then—a crack.
One of the bodies twitched.
Another began to bleed from its eyes.
The stone door of the temple groaned open, releasing a sound like thunder underwater.
And from the darkness inside, it emerged.
A thing that should not move. A creature stitched from limbs that didn't belong together. Its head was a cluster of hands, fingers forming teeth, its breath a fog of gnashing whispers.
Aicha instinctively wheeled back. "What is that?!"
Asari didn't answer.
He stepped forward.
The creature roared—its mouth-hands splitting apart and revealing a face buried inside: a blindfolded woman, weeping.
It charged.
Asari dodged left, grabbing a fragment of stone and hurling it with pinpoint force. The stone exploded against the creature's side, staggering it—but it recovered too fast.
It slammed its clawed limb down. Asari blocked with his forearm. Bones cracked—but didn't break.
"Stay back!" he shouted toward Aicha, then drove his knee into the monster's core.
It split in half, then reformed.
"You're not real," he muttered, eyes narrowing. "You're something Velmara left behind. A mistake that gained hunger."
The creature screamed again—and dozens of the kneeling corpses twitched to life, screaming silently as they rushed forward.
Aicha panicked, reaching for her dagger.
But Asari moved faster than breath.
He vanished from her sight—and reappeared mid-air, slamming both fists into the ground.
Boom.
The floor erupted. A shockwave turned the first wave of corpses to dust.
Asari landed, spinning low, kicking another abomination in half, then grabbing the original creature's head cluster and tearing it off.
It didn't die.
It morphed.
A new shape—now thinner, snake-like, made of screaming faces. It slithered into the air and began whispering.
Asari froze.
His body locked up, breath caught in his throat.
The whispers reached deep inside him, dragging up visions from the depths.
His mother—dead by poisoning.
His master—dying in his arms, smiling even as his organs dissolved.
Aicha—crying alone, whispering his name like a prayer.
The whispers pressed deeper, searching for guilt, fear, doubt.
But something shattered inside him.
And Asari—smiled.
"You want fear?" he said softly. "Then taste mine."
He inhaled—
—and his eyes turned black.
Dark tendrils burst from his back, not of magic—but pure will.
They grabbed the serpent, wrapped around it like chains of thought, and ripped it apart mid-air.
The entire chamber went silent.
The corpses collapsed. The creature's parts melted into black tar and vanished.
Aicha stared in shock.
"…You… you didn't use a technique."
"No," Asari said, stepping through smoke. "Just truth."
The temple doors opened fully.
Inside was a massive throne of stone and bone, empty. Behind it—inscribed into the wall—was a message written in a forgotten language.
Asari's eyes narrowed. He read it aloud.
"To pass into Velmara, you must become what the world fears most: a soul untouched."
Aicha looked around. "Was that the final trial?"
Asari shook his head. "No. That was a warning."
The stone altar beside the throne began to glow.
A key floated above it—metallic, ancient, humming with pressure.
Asari reached forward and grabbed it.
At once, the chamber began to collapse. The floor cracked, statues toppled.
"We're not done yet!" Asari shouted, grabbing Aicha's chair and running toward a hidden passage revealed by the shifting ground.
Behind them, the world screamed and caved.