Chapter 14 Dying helplessly
One of the three barbed tails caught the hammer and flung it away with ease.
Blood fountained out, hot and red, splattering across Yemini’s face. She looked straight at Vandal, her eyes filled with love and compassion for the man she loved, yet fierce and already dimming with death. “Run, Alarik. Live for me.”
“Nooooooo! Bastard! You die here!” Vandal roared as he charged at the monster, his fists blazing with the raw destructive power of his Nephilim Fist technique. But before he could reach the beast that was still ripping into Yemini, her eyes glowed a deep blue as she muttered an incantation.
“Begone, my love.”
Vandal leaped into the air, descending with full force, only to vanish into swirling blue motes of light while Yemini’s innards were brutally pulled from her body.
“NOOOOO!!!!!”
Vandal watched in horror as his vision faded into blue particles. He saw Yemini being torn apart by the beast and felt the hatred, the rage, and the unbearable pain tearing through him.
“I will kill you! I swear I will kill you!”
Suddenly, he appeared inside a vast vault, his heart hammering so hard he could taste iron in his mouth.
“This… this is a treasure vault,” he whispered.
Valuable relics lined the walls. The treasures of twelve generations waited in their niches: the Resonance Crystal of the First Ancestor, the sealed echo scrolls, and the twin hammers that could split mountains.
At the center sat a small ironwood chest containing the clan’s greatest secret, a single vial of pure golden resonance, the condensed lifeblood of their bloodline, capable of pushing any heir straight to Stage 14.
“How is this possible? How did Yemini gain access to this place? She is supposed to be a regular inner disciple like me.”
He could not carry everything.
Demonic howls echoed down the stairwell. They were coming.
“I have to get out of here fast.”
Vandal snatched the ironwood chest, the Resonance Crystal, and the twin hammers. He sprinted through the escape tunnel that opened beneath the sacred pool, the same pool the clan had guarded for centuries, its waters said to hide an ancient ruin no one had ever reached.
The tunnel ended at the water’s edge. Moonlight silvered the surface. Behind him, the tunnel filled with the wet slap of clawed feet and the sickening sounds of bodies being dragged.
Creatures were slaughtering his kinsmen, Alarik’s kinsmen.
He waded in, chest-deep. The freezing water shocked his lungs.
“I have to survive. I have to survive. I have to…” Vandal repeated it like a desperate mantra in his mind.
The chest was heavy. The crystal burned against his ribs. He dove.
Eight meters down. Ten. Pressure clamped down on his skull. His lungs screamed, but he kept clawing deeper with his powerful limbs.
At the bottom, an ancient archway waited, half-buried in silt. The sensor stone glowed faintly, reacting to the bloodline in his veins. Gears older than the clan itself groaned awake. The ruin beyond flickered with earthen light.
Vandal dragged himself into the air pocket inside the flooded antechamber. He collapsed onto the cracked ledge, coughing up water and blood.
“I don’t have time. I need to close this place.”
He had only seconds.
With shaking hands, he placed the ironwood chest, the crystal, and the hammers at the feet of the towering granite statue that dominated the chamber.
“I am not Alarik. I need to keep reminding myself of that,” Vandal muttered as he pressed his palm against the sensor stone and spoke the sealing words he had learned as an inner disciple.
“By blood of the first, by echo of the last, I sleep till I perish. My soul shall stay until I am set free.”
The ruin answered. Stone crept over his skin. His consciousness began to fade in dull, heavy patches.
“Am I… am I dying?” Vandal fought against the rising panic. This is not my body. These are not my actions. This is not my life. This is not my death.
The archway began to close. Water pressure built, ready to flood the chamber and hide everything forever.
Vandal’s consciousness bubbled back to the surface like a man pushing his way out of deep black water.
“Where am I?” He floated in a vast empty void. Before him yawned an abyssal black hole, its center a dark unblinking eye with crimson pupils swirling with unending hunger.
His own soul, a glowing, trembling version of himself as an adult and not the child he had been when he first arrived in this world, was being dragged toward that eye. Half his body had already turned translucent. His legs and torso were fading into ghostly mist as they streamed forward in shining threads.
At the same time, Alarik’s soul, solid and triumphant, settled deeper into the glowing spiritual cord that still linked them. The cord stretched thin and taut. Its once-bright strands frayed like overused rope. Tiny pulses of light flickered along its length, each one weaker than the last, the connection straining and ready to snap at any second.
“I… I am being absorbed!” Cold terror slammed into Vandal. He was being eaten alive by the thing in front of him. This was no illusion anymore. This was the real end. His memories were finally clear, but it was too late. Still, he fought with everything he had.
“I can’t die like this!” He pushed against the pull, willing his fading limbs to stop drifting forward, but the suction only grew stronger. Half of him was already gone, dissolving into the void.
Alarik’s head snapped toward him. The giant’s soul grinned, cruel and mocking.
“Well, well,” Alarik laughed. A low, vicious sound echoed through the emptiness. “I never expected you to wake up from the absorption process. How stubborn you are. You were supposed to sleep until you ceased to exist.”
He had no idea that the same spiritual cord tethering him to Vandal also allowed Vandal to see his memories and witness his most tragic moments.
Vandal watched helplessly as his own sense of self, his body, and his essence flowed in shining rivulets straight into the black hole’s dark eye. He felt the last fragments of his will, the same fierce will that had let him endure a hundred years of Alarik’s life and awaken when no one was supposed to awaken, begin to crumble into useless dust.
No matter how hard he screamed inside, no matter how desperately he tried to hold on, the eye kept pulling.
His translucent hands reached uselessly toward the thinning cord as one glowing strand after another began to tear.
Not like this, he thought, heart hammering with raw urgency. I have to break free.
But the black hole’s eye only widened, hungry and unstoppable, and Vandal felt the last of his solid form begin to dissolve.