The Basalt Ridge stretched before us like the broken spine of some forgotten titan.

  Black stone rose in jagged rows, each shard catching the faint red glow leaking from the fractures beneath the ground. The air tasted burnt.

  The wind clawed at my form, slipping straight through me, cold and impatient. It felt as if the ridge itself was grieving, the stone humming with a low vibration like distant thunder waiting for the right moment to fall.

  Daeryon walked ahead, silent and focused. His footsteps cracked thin flakes of basalt into dust. I drifted beside him, watching shadows shift between the spires.

  “Feels worse than before,” I murmured.

  He nodded without looking back. “The corruption is thick here. The anchor must be close.”

  We moved deeper into the ridge, slipping between narrow stone columns that rose like ribs from some ancient beast.

  At the far side, the rock dipped into a maze of tunnels carved by heat and time. Their mouths yawned open, each one breathing a different kind of darkness.

  I peered into them and asked, “So how are we supposed to find this thing? There are, like, twenty holes here.”

  Daeryon ran his fingers along the basalt wall. A faint shimmer of chi followed his touch like sparks under ice. “Finding an anchor is never easy. They radiate plenty of chi, but the flow gets messy. It spreads everywhere. You cannot track it. You can only feel the pressure. The closer we get, the heavier the air becomes.”

  He took one more step, eyes sharpening. “Hold on, Daniel. This will be fast.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but only managed, “Wait, what do you mea—”

  He blurred.

  The world snapped into streaks of black and red as Daeryon shot forward. I barely managed to keep up, pulled through the tunnels like a scrap of light caught in a rushing tide.

  The walls whipped past like ink streaked across paper. My pulse tried to match his, but it stumbled, my chest screaming in panic.

  Shards of basalt exploded behind him with each strike, sparks dancing through the shadows. For a moment, I felt the weight of the ridge pressing in from every side, crushing and unforgiving.

  He tore through the tunnels one after another. When a path led nowhere, he shattered the dead end with a single strike, sending shards of basalt scattering through the dark.

  Then he turned sharply and sprinted into the next tunnel, deeper and deeper. The whole ridge trembled around us as he carved a violent, precise path toward its heart.

  By the time he stopped, the pressure around us felt like it was pressing straight through my soul.

  The anchor waited at the center of the cavern glowing with a sickly crimson light.

  It pulsed like a heart made of obsidian laced with veins of molten shadow. Every beat sent a ripple through the air that felt wrong.

  The air itself vibrated, a subtle tremor pressing against my chest. My skin prickled, the hair on my arms rising on instinct.

  It was not only corruption I felt. It was hunger. The anchor seemed to inhale the shadows, bending the cavern’s shape and making every stone shiver as if alive.

  The ground around it was cracked and stained with old blood, and the stone pillars leaning inward looked almost as if they were trying to escape its presence.

  I stared at it and felt nothing but dread. “First of all,” I said, pacing in a small circle, “please never do that again. I swear I almost died. If I still had a body, my bones would be dust.”

  Daeryon gave the anchor a measured look, then glanced at me.

  “secondly,” I continued, “this thing is surprisingly small. Terrifying, sure, but still small.”

  Daeryon touched the air near it, testing the pressure. “This small thing you are making fun of could destroy the entire ridge. If we leave it alone, it will summon demonic monsters for centuries. And anchors are not easy to destroy. Normally you need multiple cultivators to break one.”

  He stepped forward.

  “But that is not a problem.”

  I crossed my arms. “Yeah. Just one punch it or something.”

  Daeryon lifted his hand. The air tightened, gathering around his palm. The crimson glow dimmed as if the anchor sensed its end.

  He struck.

  Light burst from the impact, flooding the cavern in a surge of blinding white. The anchor cracked, shrieked like metal twisting underwater, then shattered into a storm of black dust that evaporated before the pieces touched the ground.

  The cavern groaned, fragments of basalt rattling underfoot as the shockwave faded. Tiny cracks spread across the walls like a spiderweb, a soft hiss rising as the lingering energy dissolved into nothing. Even the air seemed to sigh, relieved and trembling from the anchor’s final scream.

  Silence followed. A deep, relieved silence.

  We slowly made our way back through the tunnels. The corruption had already begun to fade from the stone. The deeper we went, the more the air softened.

  When we finally stepped out of the tunnels, the world was washed in muted gray light. The sky hung low, heavy with clouds that swallowed the sun whole. Jagged basalt pillars leaned over us like ancient sentinels, their edges softened by distance and a thin veil of dust.

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  For a moment we simply moved along the ridge. The wind brushed past, quieter now, carrying only the soft hiss of settling dust and the faint metallic scent of distant frost.

  A long line of stone stretched forward, dipping gently before rising again in a curve that led toward the horizon. Only then did the cold shift in the air. A deeper chill. A whisper of winter threading through the basalt.

  Daeryon slowed.

  I turned my gaze forward.

  Ahead stretched the Frozen Caves.

  Their entrance rose from the earth like the mouth of winter itself. Frost coated every surface with a thin, shimmering skin.

  When we finally reached it, we paused.

  The cavern walls glowed blue with reflected light, casting long, ghostly beams across the snow-packed floor. The wind shifted suddenly, carrying a crackling whisper of frost and a metallic tang of ice on stone. Each breath turned to mist before it even reached my lungs, and the faint sound of cracking ice echoed from deep within the mountain.

  Giant icicles hung like crystal blades from the ceiling, each one catching the dim sky outside and bending it into fractured reflections. The air was so cold it hummed, each breath turning the world paler.

  Daeryon stepped forward, and the frost beneath his feet cracked softly. I walked beside him, letting the cold seep through me.

  The frozen silence pressed against my ears, each step crunching faintly on the snow-packed stone. Daeryon’s presence was steady, unshaken, but the air around us grew heavier the deeper we went.

  Shadows stretched longer, bending unnaturally across the walls. The glow from the ice reflected in faint glimmers on jagged formations. But as we pressed forward, the chill turned oppressive, a weight pressing down on my chest.

  And then I saw the first body.

  It wasn't like the ridge, where the corpses were torn and bloodied. This one looked hollow. The skin was pale, the eyes wide and empty. The mouth hung open in a silent scream, the fingers curled as if clutching something already stolen.

  I stumbled back, my voice trembling. “What... what happened here?”

  Daeryon’s gaze swept over the scene, calm and almost clinical. “Keep moving. There are more ahead.”

  We went deeper. Then there were two. Then three. By the time the tunnels opened into a wider cavern, dozens lay sprawled across the frozen floor, their bodies unnaturally empty. The cold air carried a faint, rotten sweetness, like blood turned to sugar and left to fester.

  And then I froze.

  Among the hollowed forms were smaller ones. Tiny hands. Fragile limbs.

  Children.

  Something in me cracked open, slow at first, then all at once, like a fault line splitting under my ribs.

  The cave smeared around me.

  Cold air turned heavy, thick, wrong.

  And suddenly I wasn’t here anymore.

  I was back beneath the collapsing building.

  Small hands clawing through broken stone.

  Dust storming into my lungs until my chest burned.

  Her voice shredding itself as she screamed my name.

  Her fingers catching mine for a single, shaking second.

  Warm. Trembling. Alive.

  Then slipping. Sliding. Ripped away as the rubble swallowed her whole.

  The sound that followed still lived somewhere in me.

  That sick, hollow hush after the collapse. A silence so complete it felt like the world had turned its back. Like someone higher up had shut a door and walked away.

  My knees went weak. My breath stuttered and hitched. My chest squeezed until every inhale rasped.

  I slapped a hand over my mouth as bile surged up my throat. “No…” It came out thin, broken. ““No, this is worse than the ridge. Worse than anything. Why would anyone... why would they do this?”

  The words scraped out of me, barely formed. “These are kids. Kids. How could someone… who could…”

  Daeryon stopped, the pale blue light of the ice reflecting off his robe. He looked at me with that same quiet weight he always carried. “I am sorry, Daniel,” he said softly, his voice low, almost a whisper. “There are many monsters in this world. Not all of them wear horns or claws. Some wear the faces of men.”

  I swallowed hard, my throat tight. “But... what is this? What did they...”

  Daeryon crouched slightly, running his fingers along the frozen wall. The air around him bent faintly, subtle ripples passing through the heavy atmosphere. “This is an absorption technique. A method some cultivators use to refine demonic energy. They drain the vitality of others, blood, chi, life essence. Over time it hollows them out. The more powerful the victim, the more complete the extraction. Nothing is left, not even the will to scream.”

  My stomach churned. “They... they did this to children?”

  Daeryon’s gaze didn't waver. “Power has no morality. A cultivator who embraces corruption does not care for age, innocence, or mercy. The stronger the desire for control, the more indiscriminate the victims. That is why they exist, and why anchors like this one are guarded with death.”

  I felt a weight in my chest, pressing down harder than the cold. “So... there is nothing to stop them? No... no one?”

  Daeryon’s eyes softened, though the hardness beneath remained. “There are those who try, Daniel. But they are few, and even fewer survive.”

  I clenched my fists, my heart hammering against the icy grip of the cave. “And we are going after one of these... these monsters?”

  My breath shook, frosting in the freezing air. I stared at the emptied shells scattered across the cavern floor, something hot and furious rising beneath the horror.

  “Daeryon...” My voice cracked. “Please. Do not give this bastard a chance. Kill him. Make him suffer.”

  Daeryon did not answer, not with words. But something in the air shifted.

  His presence hardened, the quiet gravity around him condensing into a sharper, colder pressure. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod and kept walking.

  I followed, my heartbeat pounding like a frantic drum against the cave walls. The tunnel dipped and widened, the ice folding into arches like a frozen cathedral overhead.

  The blue white glow deepened into something richer, darker, like moonlight drowned beneath deep water.

  And then we heard it.

  Not screaming. Not struggling.

  Just a soft, rhythmic pull, a wet, whispering inhale that made my skin crawl.

  We stepped deeper into the cave.

  The world narrowed to a single, terrible sight.

  A man stood at the center, the air around him swirling with faint motes of pale light, life essence drifting like stolen fireflies.

  His long white hair spilled over his shoulders in soft, silky strands that caught the cold glimmer of the ice.

  His face was impossibly handsome, sculpted, serene. Almost angelic, if not for the cruelty carved into the corners of his calm smile.

  He wore a robe of pure white trimmed with silver threads, its fabric untouched by the cold. It shimmered faintly with each pulse of energy he pulled into himself.

  His hand rested on the chest of a woman collapsed before him, her face slack, her eyes dimming, her breath barely a ghost. Tendrils of light slid out from her skin and streamed into his palm, disappearing into him with every quiet, patient pull.

  He didn’t even look up. His presence spread through the chamber like a spider’s web, delicate and lethal.

  Daeryon’s gaze sharpened, ice settling in his eyes. The quiet around him snapped tight, a wire drawn across bone. He stepped forward, the cold air curling like smoke around his feet.

  "You are even worse than the last one," he said, his voice low and deliberate, like a scalpel tracing skin.

  The man lifted his head, that serene and cruel smile still in place. His eyes glimmered with mocking amusement. "Oh, so you killed him," he said, voice soft and taunting. "His name was Rinji, if I recall correctly. Poor guy, was he not? Died without ever realizing we were the ones who killed his family."

  His grin widened as if savoring the memory. "It is almost poetic, really. He came to us hungry for power and revenge, yet he never even knew who he was standing before."

  Every word pressed against me like a physical weight. My chest tightened. My blood roared in my ears. My hands clenched so hard I thought the cold stone beneath them would splinter.

  I wanted to move. I wanted to strike. I wanted to tear him apart with my own hands. But I was nothing here. My rage coiled around me, invisible and thick, a shadow only Daeryon could sense.

  My voice tore through the frozen air, raw and shaking, a single unrelenting word that carried the weight of every hollowed corpse we had passed:

  “Daeryon, Kill. This. Fucking. Bastard.”