The rain.
It had stopped.
No more squelching impacts. No more slime splattering against stone. Just… quiet.
I shifted slightly. Eldric was already on his feet, staring out toward the mouth of the cave.
"…Finally," he muttered, low.
I followed his gaze. The glyph still shimmered faintly across the threshold—a thin lattice of frostlight warding the entrance. Unbroken. Undisturbed.
Eldric stepped closer to it, just short of the line. He crouched slightly, studying it with a narrow-eyed look.
"She cast this?"
I nodded. "Lilith."
He gave a small, thoughtful hum. "I've seen a lot of wards. That one's… elegant. Overkill for slimes, but efficient."
"She doesn't like being surprised."
"Can't blame her."
He glanced back at the rest of the group. "But here's the thing: that barrier held all night. Perfectly. Not even a stress flicker. Not once."
"So?"
He turned back to me.
"No slime got close enough to test it."
I went still.
He continued, "They dropped. I heard them. Felt them. Dozens, maybe hundreds. But none came for the cave."
"They couldn't break through," I offered.
"They didn't try," he said. "That's what bothers me."
The fire popped quietly behind us.
I glanced at the ward. Then at the wet rock just beyond it. The stretch of slope that should have been crawling with sludge was… clean. Too clean.
"Lilith's barrier kept them out," I said again, but this time with less certainty.
"Yeah. Maybe," Eldric said. "Or maybe something else kept them away."
He straightened slowly.
"Slimes are chaos. Dumb. Hungry. They don't avoid prey unless something worse is already feeding."
I looked past him, toward the slope outside.
The stone was wet. Scorched. But empty.
Too empty.
Still… a part of me resisted the thought.
"This cave isn't exactly inviting," I said. "Maybe it's just old. Forgotten. Not everything has to be cursed."
Eldric glanced at me, skeptical. "You believe that?"
"I want to."
A beat passed.
And then—
[Incorrect.]
[Dormant entity detected beneath current structure. Status: restrained. Suppression unstable.]
My breath caught.
I didn't respond—didn't need to. Metatron never waited for permission.
[Structural integrity: compromised. Anomalous mana source awakening. Estimated proximity: 63 meters below. Designation: Incomplete.]
I blinked slowly. Swallowed hard.
"…It's not empty," I murmured.
Eldric turned to me, brows rising. "What?"
I stood.
"We should wake the others."
Eldric nodded, already turning toward his men.
I went to Lilith first. She stirred before I reached her, one hand already near her staff.
"The rain's stopped," I said. "And something's… off."
Her eyes opened, sharp as ever. "You felt it?"
"Yeah."
That was all it took.
She was on her feet in seconds, cloak falling back into place as she moved toward the cave mouth to recheck her glyphs. No argument. Just instinct.
I moved to Asmodeus next.
Didn't say a word.
Just kicked him lightly in the side.
He groaned like I'd shattered his dreams. "Do I even want to know what ungodly hour it is?"
"It's not an hour," I said. "It's a situation."
He blinked blearily. "You're not fun in the mornings."
"We might have company beneath us."
He sat up faster. "Oh. You mean that kind of situation."
"What other situation were you thinking dumbass? Gear up."
Across the cave, Eldric was already rousing his soldiers. They grumbled, but they moved—tired, acid-scorched, but disciplined. Whatever doubts they had, they weren't stupid enough to ignore the change in atmosphere.
Lilith reappeared beside me, brushing frost off her gloves. "The glyph net's refreshed, but…" She paused. "The air feels different."
I nodded once. "I felt it too."
She studied me, eyes narrowing slightly. "You felt it first, didn't you?"
I didn't answer.
Didn't lie either.
Her silence was telling—but she let it go.
"We moving?" Asmodeus asked, cracking his neck.
Eldric joined us, sword belted, voice calm but clipped. "Yeah. Cave's too quiet. No residue. No leftover mana scarring. It's unnatural."
"You think something's down there?" one of the soldiers asked.
Eldric didn't hesitate. "I know something's down there."
Lilith cast a glance at me again, more carefully this time. "And whatever it is... it waited for the storm to pass."
I adjusted my pack, hand brushing instinctively over my left palm.
The crescent moon marking there pulsed faintly.
Cold radiated from it—sharp and sudden, like frost blooming beneath the skin. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to warn.
Yukihana was stirring.
Not awake. Not summoned.
But aware.
[Descent required.]
[Confirmation: suppression field weakening.]
I took a breath.
"I'll take point," I said.
That got their attention.
Asmodeus raised his head immediately. "Whoa, whoa, hold up—you?"
Lilith folded her arms. "Absolutely not. You just woke up from barely a few hours of rest after throwing yourself and me through gravity space."
"I'm fine," I said.
"No, you're not," Lilith replied, her voice firm. "You used a rewritten final-verse spell last night. You may not look tired, but I know what that costs."
Asmodeus gestured between them. "I'm literally built for the front. Fast, loud, and—let's be honest—ridiculously hard to kill."
I looked at both of them.
"I'm not volunteering," I said evenly. "I'm telling you. Whatever's down there, I felt it first. I need to see it first."
A brief silence.
Lilith didn't argue again, but her jaw tightened.
Asmodeus leaned back with a sigh. "Stars, you're dramatic in the morning."
"Let me do this," I said quietly. "You'll be right behind me. That's more than enough."
Lilith studied me for another second.
Then: "Two meters. No more."
Asmodeus threw up his hands. "You both get your way. Somehow. Every time."
"You're welcome," I muttered.
Eldric gave a nod. "Then we move. Quiet. Watch your steps. And don't touch anything that glows."
As the group gathered near the tunnel entrance, the tension finally cracked just enough to let the soldiers whisper.
"Did I hear that right last night?" one muttered. "She said her magic was gravity?"
"Gravity's not real," another scoffed. "That's just an old myth. Like phoenix feathers and honest politicians."
"No, I'm serious. She said it. Out loud. Twice."
"She also teleported through the air like a cursed arrow and took the Ice girl with her. I'm not ruling anything out."
Eldric, adjusting his coat nearby, sighed. "Stars above. Can you whisper any louder?"
One of the soldiers blinked. "Sorry, my lord. It's just… gravity? That's not even a registered element."
"I know it's not," Eldric said. But there was a furrow in his brow now.
He looked across the group to where Chiori and Asmodeus stood talking—Chiori calm and focused, Asmodeus spinning his sword in bored circles.
Then softly, almost to himself, Eldric said, "That time the courtyard stones bent during sparring… I thought it was her using the earth element."
The soldiers blinked.
Eldric kept going, half in disbelief. "Wait…and that training dummy incident. It didn't explode. It collapsed."
"You okay, sir?" one asked carefully.
He looked at them. "I'm beginning to realize my childhood was way more dangerous than I gave it credit for."
Behind them, Asmodeus stretched. "If you think gravity is wild, wait until she actually starts trying."
Chiori shot him a confused look. "I try?"
"That's the scary part."
One of the older soldiers leaned toward the others. "Is this just… normal for nobles?"
"They're all like this," another replied grimly. "And there's still one more out there."
"Fontaine?"
"Yeah. Celeste. The smart one."
The first soldier let out a groan. "We're doomed."
Eldric raised an eyebrow. "At least we're doomed in good company."
Chiori passed by him with a soft scoff. "Come on, Lord Nostalgia. We've got a ruin to wake."
"Stars save us all," someone muttered.
The laughter didn't last long.
The moment the group stepped past the threshold, the air changed.
The stone underfoot grew smoother, too perfect—clearly shaped by tools long gone. The natural curve of the cave gave way to clean-cut corridors, every line too intentional for erosion.
Glyphs lined the walls.
Faint. Faded. But not dead.
Lilith paused beside one, brushing dust away with gloved fingers. "These aren't Napaji. Too angular. Too structured."
"Older?" Eldric asked.
"Possibly. Or just foreign." Her voice dropped lower. "They're layered. Someone tried to overwrite them."
"That's never good," Asmodeus muttered.
The tunnel forked ahead. One passage sloped downward, narrow and ribbed with faint runes. The other leveled out into blackness.
"We go down," I said before anyone asked.
Eldric hesitated, but nodded. "Right. Down it is. Watch the edges."
As we moved, our footsteps echoed oddly—muted and stretched, like the ruin didn't want to hear us but couldn't ignore us either.
My tails didn't manifest, but the mana coiled along my spine stayed alert.
Halfway down the slope, the temperature dropped.
Not sharply. Not unnaturally.
Just enough to make breath show.
Just enough to remind us that the deeper we went, the less the world made sense.
Lilith cast a minor ward behind us, a frost-threaded rune of return. "Just in case."
We kept moving.
After twenty meters, the corridor opened into a circular chamber.
Massive.
Vaulted.
The ceiling stretched higher than it should've—far above what the ruin's outer shape implied. Pillars stood at perfect intervals, reaching up into shadow. Broken bridges split the chamber into tiers, some intact, some shattered and floating slightly out of alignment, like gravity had taken the day off.
No one spoke.
Even Asmodeus went quiet.
Because this room felt like memory.
Like something had happened here a long, long time ago—and the walls never forgot.
Lilith stepped forward first, eyes scanning the massive chamber. Her fingers traced the edge of one broken pillar.
"…These glyphs," she murmured. "The syntax is wrong. No flow anchors. And the binding structure—they don't match anything used post-Concord."
She straightened slowly. "This might predate the Celestial Concord."
Eldric blinked. "You sure?"
"I'm not an expert," she said, still studying the carvings. "But I've read enough to know these aren't modern. Or stable."
Eldric muttered, "Then what the hell is it doing beneath a monster-infested forest?"
I walked forward slowly, something tugging at my core. I didn't recognize this place.
But something in me recoiled from it all the same.
The space was too still. The air too sharp. Like everything here had been waiting for breath—and just now remembered how.
Then one of the glyphs across the chamber wall lit up.
Faintly. A flicker of gold through dust.
A second followed.
Then a third.
In perfect sequence.
Lilith tensed beside me. "They're responding to something."
"Us," Eldric muttered, eyes scanning the room. "Or her." He didn't look at me, but I felt the weight of the implication.
"No one touch anything," Lilith warned. "This pattern is too exact. It's a sequence—some kind of ritual logic. One wrong move and we could trigger a seal."
"Or worse," said one of the soldiers, his voice low.
Asmodeus stepped forward, squinting. "I swear I've seen this kind of arrangement before. During that dig site tour in Cetza. The one that—"
"Collapsed the moment you touched the wrong wall?" I offered.
"That's the one," he said brightly.
I took a slow step forward, instinct tugging hard against sense.
My magic pulsed.
Not outward—inward.
Like gravity itself was trying to anchor me here. Like something below the stone recognized me before I'd even done anything.
I swallowed hard.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then the chamber groaned.
Not the way stone shifts or wood settles—but like something inside the walls exhaled.
The glyphs pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then they exploded with light.
A ring of mana shot out across the floor, forcing everyone back. The center of the room—empty a second ago—began to ripple.
Like water.
No—like slime.
"Oh, no," Lilith muttered. "That's not an activation sequence."
A massive, gelatinous bulge surged upward from the center of the chamber—sickly translucent, veined with flickers of mana. It sloshed and stretched, growing with every pulse of magic from the floor.
On top of it—sat a simple, bobbing crown.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" Asmodeus shouted. "THAT'S A SLIME! THAT'S A KING SLIME!"
The creature let out a bubbling roar that sounded like syrup gargling through a sewer.
Then it jumped.
The impact shook the entire chamber, fracturing one of the bridges above.
Chunks of stone fell like hail.
"Back!" Eldric barked. "Form a circle! Don't let it trap you against the walls!"
"It's huge!" one of the soldiers yelled.
My hand moved to my left, where the crescent-moon mark still pulsed faintly against my skin. Warm. Waiting.
And then I reached.
The mana in my body surged—tight, focused, pulled.
The mark glowed.
And the air in front of me tore.
Silent at first—no flash, no flare, just a clean rupture of space. A single line of violet light carved down reality's surface like a quill across parchment.
From that wound, the blade emerged.
Yukihana.
Massive. Elegant. Radiating pressure in waves too cold for fire and too ancient for metal. Its oversized ruby spine caught the light of the chamber glyphs and split it like glass, scattering crimson reflections across the chamber.
The moment it finished forming, the air went still.
Even the slime paused. Almost like it felt it, too.
Eldric stared.
So did the soldiers.
"…That's not standard issue," one of them muttered hoarsely.
Eldric's voice was quiet, almost breathless. "She didn't have that before."
"No one has that," another whispered.
King Slime gurgled and pulsed again, more aggressively now. Its form twitched and inflated, bouncing like a pulse made flesh. The crown atop its head glowed faintly, distorting with every tremor of its bulk.
Behind me, Lilith began drawing a freezing sigil mid-air.
Beside her, Asmodeus lit up with lightning from his palms to his shoulders.
The chamber stopped being ancient.
It became a battlefield.
The King Slime lunged—its entire body compressing, then launching like a siege weapon of meat and mana.
The ground trembled.
"Forget the circle, scatter!" Eldric shouted.
I rolled left, Yukihana's weight fluid in my grip despite its size. The blade carved a half-circle in the air beside me, slicing the edge of the slime's mass just enough to make it wince—if a thirty-foot-tall gelatinous monarch could wince.
It shuddered, pulsing where I struck it, and let out a revolting slorp.
"Chiori!" Eldric called from the far side of the chamber, ducking behind one of the leaning pillars. "That sword—what is it?!"
"Not now!" I shouted, pivoting around another slam as the slime slammed its bulk into the floor where I'd just been.
A shockwave cracked the stone under my boots.
"I'm literally trying to keep us alive!" he snapped, parrying a slime splitling that launched itself from the king's core.
"So am I!" I gritted, swinging Yukihana in a wide arc—gravity snapping outward like a ribbon of force. The attack caught one of the globs mid-air and flattened it with a sickening squish against the pillar behind Eldric.
He ducked instinctively, then looked at the smeared remains.
"…Okay, new question—did that sword just manipulate mass?!"
"Eldric!"
"I'm just saying—this is not standard noble heir magic!"
Yukihana pulsed in my hands again—acknowledging his words with a faint vibration only I could feel.
"I'll explain when we're not being eaten by Jell-O royalty!" I shouted back.
Asmodeus zipped past overhead, leaping from a broken bridge, crackling with lightning.
"Less talking! More stabbing!"
Lilith's voice rang sharp from behind: "Scatter again—it's prepping a jump!"
The King Slime's entire form compressed—pulling tight into itself before launching high.
I grabbed Eldric's arm on instinct.
He blinked. "Wha—"
"Don't fight it!"
Gravity pulsed from my feet—and I launched us backward with a compressed gravitational burst, Yukihana trailing streaks of crimson light as we tore across the chamber.
We hit the ground in a controlled slide—momentum spent just as the King Slime crashed back down where we'd stood.
The floor cracked in a circle of impact.
Eldric lay beside me, panting, stunned. "…I take it back."
"Told you," I said, helping him up. "Not the time."
The King Slime pulsed again—its mass swelling, twitching unnaturally.
Lilith's hand never stopped moving—ice forming at the edge of her staff, a sigil slowly coming to life midair. It spun with sharp, crystalline edges, the frost-laced runes clicking into place like a lock built of snow and death.
"Sigil's almost ready," she snapped. "Can you stall it?!"
"I can bury it," I said.
I surged forward, Yukihana gleaming with reflected glyph-light. One tail snapped out—then another. I wasn't going for damage.
I was going for weight.
I let the spell form in my lungs—short, focused:
"Lorentz Rings!"
Gravity imploded beneath the King Slime's core like an invisible meteor.
The chamber groaned. Dust rose. The slime's form slammed into the ground and stuck, limbs spreading outward like it had suddenly gained twenty tons.
Lilith didn't wait.
"O frost unbending, O silence sharp—
Bind the chaos in nature's arc.
Let bloom the shard, let chill take shape—
From stillness drawn, no breath escapes.
Ranged and razor'd, from sigil born—
Grant me power, for I am Lilith.
The Book of Cryo, Verse Six, Fracture Bloom!"