Chapter 196: Disengage
The mountain had gone quiet. Too quiet.
Lucen pushed off the boulder he’d been slouched against, joints stiff, lungs still aching. The air was colder now, stripped bare by the guardian’s collapse, snow falling in fragile flakes across the shattered ridge.
Ahead, the vault’s entrance glimmered faintly against the scarred slope, a tall, jagged seam of black metal half-buried in ice, pulsing once every few seconds like it had a heartbeat.
"Not a door," Lucen muttered, dragging his gloves tighter. "It’s an invitation to get eaten."
Varik stepped forward without hesitation, boots crunching through frost. His blade rested casually in one hand, but his shoulders were taut. Selindra followed at his side, silent, eyes narrowed at the strange seam.
Lucen hung back a pace, lips quirking. "Love the enthusiasm. Nothing says caution like running headfirst into abyssal architecture."
Selindra glanced over her shoulder. "If you’re afraid, stay out here."
"Afraid?" Lucen tilted his head, smirk curling sharper. "I’m not the one pretending it doesn’t look like a ribcage."
Up close, the seam was worse. The black metal wasn’t smooth; it was ridged, uneven, like plates overlapping bone. The pulse within wasn’t just light, it was heat, radiating outward in waves that made the snow hiss and vanish.
Varik stopped, sword point lowering toward the surface. "It reacts to mana."
He let the faintest ripple of his aura bleed out. The seam shuddered, then split.
The sound was like stone grinding against stone, deafening, snow sliding off the ridges as the vault peeled open. Darkness gaped beyond, swallowing the faint morning light whole.
Lucen whistled low. "Oh, that’s friendly."
Selindra’s jaw clenched. "The relic’s inside."
She stepped first this time, blade in hand. Varik followed, calm as if walking into a market square. Lucen sighed, rolling his shoulders before trailing after them.
The moment his boot crossed the threshold, he felt it. The air shifted, thick, heavy, humming against his skin like static. His system pinged faintly in the back of his skull, mana reserves stirring, but there was no [Notification]. Just unease.
’Feels like standing inside someone’s mouth.’
The door sealed behind them with a rumble, plunging them into darkness.
For a beat, there was nothing but the sound of their breaths. Then veins of red light crawled across the walls, dim but enough to outline their path: a long corridor slanting downward, ribbed like the inside of some massive throat.
Lucen muttered, "And people wonder why I don’t sleep well."
"Quiet," Varik said.
They descended. The corridor stretched on, walls narrowing the deeper they went. The light pulsed faintly, always in rhythm with that heartbeat-thrum they’d felt outside.
Selindra’s voice cut low, just above a whisper. "The vault isn’t dead."
Varik didn’t answer.
Lucen smirked faintly, though his stomach knotted. ’Not dead. Hungry.’
After what felt like half an hour of steady descent, the corridor widened abruptly into a vast chamber. The ceiling arched so high it vanished into darkness. Black stone stretched across the floor, cracked in jagged patterns, each fissure glowing with faint red light.
At the center stood a monolith. Tall. Faceted. Like a crystal left to rot in shadow. The pulse came from it, steady and slow, the light in the cracks syncing with its beat.
Lucen exhaled low. "Well. That’s not ominous at all."
Selindra stepped closer, studying it, her reflection fractured across the dark facets. "Relic should be inside. Sealed."
Lucen raised a brow. "Inside a rock the size of a tower? That’s efficient."
Varik approached the monolith, eyes narrowing. He pressed his palm flat against its surface. Nothing happened.
Lucen tilted his head. "What’s the plan? Hit it until it begs for mercy?"
Varik didn’t move, still studying the thing. Finally, he said, "It’s not a container. It’s a lock."
Selindra frowned. "Meaning?"
Lucen grinned. "Meaning if we open it, something uglier than the guardians probably crawls out to say hi."
Silence. Then Varik stepped back. His voice was calm, but it carried. "Test it."
Lucen blinked, mock offense on his face. "Me? What, because I’m the least important?"
"Because you’ll notice what we don’t," Varik said simply.
The words shouldn’t have meant anything. But Lucen felt his grin twitch, real this time.
He rolled his shoulders, then stepped forward. The heat grew sharper as he neared the monolith, like standing too close to a forge. His system pulsed faintly—[Level 31]—mana reserves fuller than he expected after the last fight.
He raised a hand. Mana sparked at his palm. [Ignition Burst.]
The flare hit the surface and fizzled instantly, like water tossed on hot stone. The monolith didn’t crack, didn’t even singe.
Lucen stepped back, eyes narrowing. "It ate it."
Selindra’s brow furrowed. "Absorption warding."
"Not just warding," Lucen muttered. His fingers tingled, mana aching as if the monolith had dragged it out of him. "It’s feeding."
Varik’s gaze stayed fixed on it, unreadable. "So. It won’t open unless we give it what it wants."
"And what it wants," Lucen said, lips curling, "is us."
The chamber seemed to pulse in answer, heartbeat rising, the cracks glowing brighter.
Selindra gripped her blade tighter. "We can’t feed it indefinitely. It’ll drain us dry before we reach whatever’s sealed."
Lucen leaned back on his heels, grinning despite the weight in his gut. "Then we cheat. Give it just enough, but not from the source it’s expecting."
Selindra’s eyes narrowed. "You’re suggesting what, exactly?"
Lucen twirled his fingers lazily, sparks of mana tracing lines. "Redirect. Instead of pouring our veins into it, I burn it with false mana—spells layered to overload its filter until it chokes."
Varik’s eyes flicked to him once. A brief pause. Then he nodded. "Try."
Lucen blinked. "Wow. Approval without a lecture. Mark the date."
He stepped forward again, pulse racing faster with each beat of the monolith. He layered mana, weaving spells over each other: [Shockweave Bolt], [Ignition Burst], [Soundlash], stacked until his skin burned. His reserves trembled, down to half in seconds.
Then he shoved it all forward, not into the monolith directly but into a sharp pivot, redirecting the flow through the fractured cracks in the floor.
The chamber screamed.
The monolith flared, light strobing violent red, pulse hammering too fast. Lucen’s ears rang, body trembling from the backlash, but he grinned through it.
"Choke on it, you bastard."
Cracks spidered up its surface. Heat flooded the chamber. Then with a sound like shattering glass, a piece of the monolith split away, falling with a crash.
Selindra stepped forward instantly, blade raised. "It’s opening."
Lucen staggered back, sweat dripping, chest heaving. "Told you. Easy."
Varik’s eyes flicked to him once more. This time, there was something faint at the edge of his expression, not approval, not quite. Recognition.
The monolith’s cracks widened, light spilling brighter, until a narrow doorway yawned open at its base. Darkness waited within.
The chamber fell silent again. The pulse slowed.
Selindra’s gaze never left the opening. "Whatever’s in there... it’s awake now."
Varik lifted his sword, resting it against his shoulder. "Then we move."
Lucen chuckled breathlessly, tugging his gloves tighter again. "Sure. Into the hungry ribcage we go. My favorite."
The three of them stepped toward the dark.
The vault swallowed them whole.
—
The corridor stretched downward in a gentle slope, the kind of incline that made you lean without realizing it. The walls were carved from a black stone that didn’t reflect light, no matter how close their glow crystals burned. Instead, faint patterns glimmered just beneath the surface, like veins of starlight caught under glass.
Lucen trailed one hand along the wall as they walked. The stone was colder than ice but smooth, almost waxy.
’Not natural. Too clean. Whatever built this place wasn’t worried about hammers and chisels.’
Selindra walked ahead, her coat brushing her legs in soft whispers. She held no light, didn’t need one. Her eyes caught what theirs couldn’t. Varik took the rear, sword sheathed but his presence filling the passage like armor in itself.
They didn’t talk much at first. The silence of the vault wasn’t empty; it was layered. A low vibration pressed against Lucen’s ears, like standing too close to a massive bell.
His system pinged softly.
[Environmental Status: Abyssal Residue Detected]
[Mana Efficiency Reduced: -6%]
[System Note: Long exposure may destabilize lesser casters.]
Lucen’s lips twisted. ’Well, that’s friendly. Guess I’m the lesser caster in this trio.’
Selindra’s voice carried back, calm but cutting the silence clean. "The wards here are active. Old design. Adaptive glyphs."
Varik’s reply was low. "How long will they hold?"
"Hard to say. Depends on how deep the relic sits."
Lucen piped in, his tone too casual. "Translation: nobody knows if the floor’s gonna eat us, right?"
Selindra didn’t even glance back. "Stay close to the wall if you’re worried."
Lucen grinned faintly, hiding the little coil of unease curling in his chest. He tapped his temple. "Don’t worry. System likes me. If I start melting, it’ll warn me first."
Varik’s boots scuffed lightly against the stone. "Just don’t test it."
The slope ended in a wide chamber. The air opened up so suddenly Lucen almost stumbled. The ceiling arched high above, laced with faint constellations of crystal. Not carved. Embedded. The stars pulsed faintly in rhythm, almost like breathing.
At the center of the chamber stood a monolith. Ten meters tall, jagged, its surface etched with spirals of script that shifted if you looked too long. The relic chamber wasn’t here yet, this was a threshold. Lucen knew it.
Selindra stepped forward first, her boots echoing faintly. She stopped three paces from the monolith, head tilted slightly.
"These aren’t abyssal marks," she said. "Older."
Lucen squinted at the lines. They blurred when his eyes tried to follow, slipping sideways, impossible to pin down. He rubbed them once, then hissed when his fingers tingled.
The system flared.
[Unrecognized Script Contacted]
[Foreign Mana Attempting Sync...]
[Error: Compatibility <12%]
[Recommendation: Disengage]