The Caelari pressed hard against Thess, bone-swords slashing and maces cracking stone. She twisted through them like a dancer, her strikes fluid, precise, leaving bodies piled at her feet. But there were too many, and more pressing in.

  Then Alistair hit the flank.

  [Velstrath’s Folding Dagger – Blink Cut]

  He vanished from the doorway and reappeared behind a Boneblade, the dagger sliding across the back of its neck.

  [Critical Hit!]

  [Enemy Defeated – Caelari Boneblade – Level 19]

  The corpse fell before Thess could even turn. She spun, eyes wide, thorny fists raised instinctively at his sudden arrival, then froze. Relief softened her face, the tension in her shoulders uncoiling in a rush.

  “Alistair.”

  He smirked. “Miss me?”

  The Caelari staggered back, guttural voices rising in chorus.

  “Another one!”

  “Too many! retreat!”

  Alistair’s brow furrowed mid-step. The words… made sense.

  His eyes narrowed. Wait. I understand them?

  A flash of memory, divine blood burning down his throat, a system ping he’d all but forgotten.

  [Pale Tongue Accord – Active]

  Grants comprehension of obscure, ancient, and divine dialects.

  “Oh,” he muttered, twisting his blade into guard. “Right. That thing.”

  One Caelari lunged. Alistair’s sword blazed.

  [Imbued Strike – Activated]

  The Redcrystal edge ripped through its chest, crimson fire exploding outward. The Caelari crumpled in a heap, smoke rising from the wound.

  Thess whirled, her eyes flashing. “That was mine.”

  Alistair grinned, fangs bared. “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re stealing my kills.”

  “Correction, sharing your kills.”

  The Caelari broke ranks, fear in their guttural cries as they stumbled back toward the far doors. Thess cut one down as it turned, Alistair another, until the survivors fled outright.

  The chamber fell silent but for their breathing.

  The system chimed.

  [Level Up – 33 → 34]

  +4 Constitution → 54

  +3 Agility → 121

  +2 Dexterity → 87

  Alistair whooped, punching the air with his bloody blade. “Yes!”

  Before Thess could blink, he caught her by the waist, leaned in, and kissed her hard on the lips.

  She froze, eyes wide, bark-skin flushing faintly with a green shimmer. When he pulled back, her voice was sharp, breath catching. “What! what was that for?”

  Alistair shrugged, grin wicked. “To celebrate. These people give insane EXP.”

  Thess’s golden-green eyes widened as Alistair pulled back from the kiss, bark-patterns along her neck glowing faintly. She shoved him lightly in the chest, thorns in her braids catching the light as her face flushed green.

  “Idiot,” she said, voice caught between exasperation and embarrassment. “That’s not how you celebrate in the middle of a battlefield.”

  Alistair smirked, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Worked for me.”

  She muttered something under her breath and looked away, but he caught the flicker of a smile at the corner of her lips.

  For a moment they just stood there, bloodied and breathing hard, the chamber littered with broken Caelari bodies. Her fists were still clenched, bark patterns along her arms glowing faintly from the lingering energy of her Thorncall.

  Thessaly of the Hollow

  Race: Dryad

  Age: 28

  Class: Thornbound Warden

  Level: 30

  Alistair raised a brow. “So, when exactly were you going to tell me you got tankier?”

  “When you stopped trying to steal my kills.”

  Before he could retort, the floor trembled beneath them. Dust shook loose from the cracked ceiling. Pebbles rained from above, pinging off stone. A jagged fracture split along the wall, spreading with a groan.

  Alistair flicked his wrist, pulling up the timer.

  [System Timer – Tier 3 Collapse: 0:49:32]

  His stomach tightened. Less than fifty minutes left.

  “Great,” he muttered. “Nothing like a deadline to keep things spicy.”

  He looked back at Thess. “What about the others? Brimma, Kael, Buddy?”

  Her braid swung as she shook her head, thorns glinting. “Haven’t seen them. You’re the first familiar face since the second tier ended.”

  “Lucky me.”

  They broke into a run, boots pounding against marble as they pushed deeper into the palace. The corridors angled upward now, stairs leading to higher levels where fractured windows bled pale light into the halls.

  They weren’t alone.

  A pair of Caelari stumbled through a side corridor ahead, bone-swords jutting awkwardly from their arms. Not warriors now, runners. Their expressions were panicked, their guttural voices sharp with fear.

  The system tagged them as hostiles.

  Alistair and Thess cut them down in seconds.

  [Enemies Defeated – Caelari x2]

  The corpses smoked in the half-light.

  Alistair paused, frowning down at them. Something twisted in his gut.

  The way they’d moved… it wasn’t like a battle charge. It had been frantic. Desperate. Running from something.

  He rubbed his jaw, unease prickling through him.

  “Something’s wrong,” he muttered.

  The silence of the palace pressed in around them, broken only by the echo of falling stone.

  And for the first time since leaving the cellar, Alistair wondered if he’d been hunting the wrong thing entirely.

  They tore through the upper levels of the palace, every door flung wide, every corridor checked. The bonds burned and faded in maddening rhythm, one moment Brimma felt close, the next Kael, then both gone as if yanked into another plane.

  Alistair’s jaw clenched tighter with every step.

  The higher they climbed, the more the palace opened, towers knifing into the air, balconies torn open to the dying world beyond.

  He made the mistake of looking.

  Through a cracked window, the Maw yawned beneath them, a churning abyss of hunger stretching wider than sight, swallowing half the palace already. It chewed marble and steel like bread crusts, whole wings collapsing into its black throat.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Alistair’s stomach turned. “Gods… I just really hope the portal’s not down there.”

  Another tremor tore through the palace.

  The floor bucked, stone screaming. Thess cried out, hitting the ground hard, while Alistair slammed into the wall and clung to a cracked column for balance.

  [System Timer – Tier 3 Collapse: 0:32:14]

  He hauled Thess to her feet, urgency cracking through his voice. “Thess! time’s running out! We’re running out of floor!”

  Her golden-green eyes met his, tight with strain, before she nodded sharply. They turned, ready to bolt again...

  And then the [Treasure Seeker] flared.

  Not a ping. Not a tug.

  A scream.

  The trait blazed in his veins, ringing so loud he staggered, clutching his head. It felt like iron hooks driving into his skull, dragging him toward something just ahead.

  The world tilted.

  Alistair gasped, voice rough. “Oh… oh.”

  The trait wasn’t just guiding. It was commanding.

  “Alistair what’s wrong?” Thess gasped, stumbling to keep pace with him.

  He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The ringing in his skull drowned out everything but the pull. He seized her hand, his grip iron.

  “Follow me.”

  They sprinted down the corridor, boots pounding against the trembling stone. Another quake tore through the palace, the floor behind them splitting, a section of balcony groaning and vanishing into the Maw below. Dust choked the air.

  “Where are we going?” Thess shouted over the roar.

  Alistair’s jaw clenched. How could he tell her? That the world was collapsing, the clock was bleeding dry, and he was chasing… loot. Not just loot. Treasure. The kind his trait screamed was worth dying for.

  She’d think him mad. Maybe he was.

  But the lure...

  Gods, the lure was overwhelming. It throbbed through his skull like a heartbeat too loud, too fast. Like the Dew of Possibilities all over again, pulling him to drink, to seize, to risk.

  Every step made it worse. The ping wasn’t a whisper anymore. It was a thunderclap inside his mind, pressure building until he thought his head would split open.

  And then it stopped.

  They skidded to a halt before a door.

  Metallic, like the laboratory below, but smaller, more ornate. The edges gleamed with etched runes, the surface embossed with curling sigils that made his vision swim.

  [System Notification]

  Access Denied – Door Warded

  Of course.

  Alistair’s lips twisted into a sharp grin. “Not this time.”

  He drew the Crownkey. The moment the relic touched the air before the door, the wards rippled and collapsed like ink in water.

  The doors swung open without a sound.

  The Treasure Seeker’s scream cut off instantly, leaving only silence and the pounding of his heart.

  Alistair exhaled, throat tight. “Found it.”

  The chamber wasn’t treasure. It was people.

  Dozens of Caelari crowded together in a room that had once dripped with wealth. Velvet divans were overturned into barricades, gilt-framed mirrors shattered across the floor. Heavy marble tables had been dragged into rough walls, their carved legs jutting upward like broken teeth. The remnants of luxury were piled into crude defenses against the door Alistair had just opened.

  They weren’t charging. They weren’t posturing like warriors.

  They were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, wide-eyed, clutching one another. Men and women in simple tunics and frayed cloaks, their hair matted with dust, their faces hollow with hunger. Some bore jagged bone protrusions jutting from wrists or shoulders, twitching uncontrollably as if their bodies hadn’t finished whatever grotesque metamorphosis the Disk had forced on them. Others had only faint scars or none at all, still mostly human.

  Thess shifted beside him, her hands curling into fists, golden-green eyes narrowing as she hissed, “Alistair, they’re too many. Now’s not the time for EXP farming.”

  Alistair almost agreed. The sheer number should have been overwhelming, but the thought slid in sharp and cold: if he and Thess attacked, they’d still win. He could see it in their stances. No discipline. No training. They weren’t warriors.

  They were survivors.

  They were lost, afraid.

  The sound confirmed it. The room wasn’t filled with war cries, but with murmurs, dozens of broken voices.

  “They’re going to kill us...”

  “This is the end...”

  “Please… spare us...”

  The words struck harder than blades. Not garbled nonsense, not alien babble. Words. Clear as his own thoughts, every syllable translated by the Pale Tongue Accord.

  And then a smaller voice cut through the rest. Trembling, but steady.

  “Don’t worry, baby. Nothing’s going to happen to us.”

  It wasn’t a warrior’s promise. It was a mother’s lie.

  Alistair’s gaze locked on the back of the chamber. A woman stood there, gaunt and exhausted, her hair falling in tangled sheets around her face. She had no weapon in her hands, only her arms spread wide, as if her body was shield enough.

  Behind her, pressed against the overturned furniture, were shadows that moved wrong. Small. Fragile.

  Children.

  The word ripped from his throat before he could stop it, barely audible, a hoarse whisper. “Children.”

  Thess blinked, confusion flickering across her face as she glanced at him. “What?”

  Alistair couldn’t look away; his eyes still locked on the mother and her hidden clutch of little ones. The [Pale Tongue Accord] burned in his veins, translating every desperate word, every terrified breath. These weren’t monsters. They weren’t guardians.

  They were people.

  And the gods had thrown them here to die.

  Alistair swallowed hard, still staring past Thess at the huddled mass. “I can understand them.”

  Thess blinked, her golden-green eyes narrowing. “What?”

  “They’re not just screaming gibberish. They’re speaking. I hear every word.” His voice was raw, low, edged with something he didn’t want to name. “They think we’re here to kill them.”

  Thess froze, stunned into silence. For a heartbeat she simply stared at him, then her expression hardened and sharpened all at once. She shifted into that problem-solving stance he knew too well, her braid swaying as she turned toward the barricade.

  “What do we do?” she asked quickly, voice taut. “Tell me. Alistair, what do we do?”

  The palace answered before he could.

  Another tremor ripped through the floor, the walls groaning, cracks crawling higher into the ceiling. Dust rained down in thick clumps. The Caelari cried out all at once, a wave of voices full of fear and panic.

  Alistair’s throat tightened. He sheathed his blades. The sound of steel sliding into leather made half the room flinch. The Caelari closest to the barricade tensed, watching him warily, but they noticed.

  They noticed he wasn’t fighting.

  “If we leave them here, they’re dead,” he said, his voice cutting low, sharp. “Thirty minutes, and this place doesn’t exist.”

  Thess’s head snapped toward him, her bark-lined jaw tightening. “So? What do you suggest? We drag them along? Through the portal? Into the next challenge?”

  Alistair’s eyes slid back to the mother shielding her children, her shoulders trembling as she tried to look strong. His chest hollowed out.

  “Their only chance is with us,” he said, voice barely a whisper.

  Thess hesitated, her gaze flicking from the barricade to the dozens of wide, terrified eyes staring back at them. “Forty people, Alistair. Forty. How are we supposed to convince them to follow us?”

  Alistair’s lips pulled into something too grim to be a smile. He muttered, “Let’s see.”

  Then he stepped forward into the room.

  The closest Caelari flinched back, bone-blades twitching to life, shoulders tensing as if ready to fight. The barrier of overturned luxury seemed to draw tighter around them.

  Alistair lifted his hands slowly, empty, and let the silence stretch.

  His tongue darted across his lips. He could feel it, those two passive gifts he’d carried all this time without ever knowing if they worked. [Bend the Knee], [Commanding Aura]. The Arena hadn’t exactly given him a tutorial on “how to accidentally win people over.” But now? Gods, he hoped they did something.

  He drew a breath and spoke.

  The words left his mouth in Common, but the moment they passed his lips they twisted, hardened, became clipped and guttural. The Pale Tongue Accord translated them into a forgotten cadence, an extinct tongue and every Caelari in the room heard it.

  “The palace will soon be destroyed,” he said, his voice carrying across velvet ruins and frightened whispers.

  Murmurs rippled instantly through the crowd. Heads jerked, eyes widened, voices overlapping in shock.

  “He speaks... he speaks our tongue!”

  “Impossible!”

  “What trick is this?”

  Alistair raised his hands slightly, trying to still them. “It’s a skill,” he explained, the Accord bending even that word into something they’d understand.

  That only seemed to agitate them more. Panic crept higher. Fear sharpened.

  He pushed through it. “If you stay here, you’ll die. Either when the palace collapses into the Maw, or by the blades of someone else like me.”

  The crowd hushed just enough to hear him.

  “Your only chance is to follow us.”

  A figure near the front, a broad-shouldered man with bone jutting from his forearm, shouted, voice tight. “Why should we believe you?”

  Alistair met his gaze and smiled sadly. “Because I am the only one who can understand you. Everyone else inside this palace thinks you’re monsters. Beasts. Illusions. They were ordered to kill you by the gods. Just like I was.”

  The word gods slipped from his lips in explanation and every Caelari in the room shuddered. As one, they raised their hands and made a peculiar gesture, a motion half-supplication, half-warding, as if even the mention could bring divine punishment.

  The floor groaned under another tremor, dust sifting down from the ceiling.

  [System Timer – Tier 3 Collapse: 0:25:17]

  Alistair let the silence stretch a beat, then spoke again, sharper now. “I offer you my help. But time is running short. Do it for your future.” His eyes flicked toward the wall, toward the children huddled in the corner. “Do it for them.”

  The first to move was the mother he’d seen earlier. She pushed forward through the crowd, clutching the tiny hands of two children in each of hers, eyes glistening but unbroken.

  Others followed. Hesitant at first, then quicker, until a tide of frightened people surged toward the doorway.

  “Thess!” Alistair barked over his shoulder. “Help them!”

  She was already in motion, her bark-lined arms guiding, her presence steady as stone.

  Another tremor struck, the floor pitching. A man in white robes stumbled, nearly going down under the press of bodies. Alistair caught him by the arm and hauled him upright.

  “Thank you,” the man gasped in his tongue.

  “You’re welcome,” Alistair answered in the same guttural cadence.

  The man’s eyes went wide.

  Alistair didn’t dwell on it. He swept the room with his gaze as the Caelari streamed out, Thess keeping them moving in order instead of chaos.

  At the back, where the children had been hidden, a small door stood half-open, shadows curling beyond it. He stopped one of the Caelari as he passed.

  “What was this place?” Alistair asked.

  The man hesitated, eyes flicking toward the floor, before answering softly. “The royal tower.”

  Alistair’s chest tightened. He nodded, pushing him onward. “Then move.”

  And together, they emptied the chamber.

  Patreon