CHAPTER 72: RUINS IV

The core writhed like a living thing, its cracks bleeding rivers of black fire that sizzled against Aria’s skin. Each pulse was a hammer-blow against her soul, trying to tear her apart from within. She forced herself onward, boots grinding against shattered stone, every muscle trembling with the strain of keeping her grip.

The Warden shrieked without sound, its whole colossal frame convulsing as if its very bones were being ripped apart from their bindings. The chains anchoring it to the ruins went wild, stabbing through pillars, floors, even the air itself in a desperate attempt to anchor the collapsing form. The entire hall lurched, as though the Ruins of Vakrops themselves were trying to tear her away from the core.

But Aria did not relent. She drew upon the deathfire coursing through her veins, allowing it to burn hotter, darker. Her sword became a black sun, each inch driven deeper into the core blazing with annihilation.

"Fall," she hissed through clenched teeth.

The core screamed again, and this time the sound was more than noise—it was memory. Shadows flooded her mind, visions not her own. She saw Vakrops in its prime, the city alive with splendor. She saw legions bow before its kings, armies forged in endless war, and finally, the black rites that chained their guardian into existence. Centuries of despair, of blood, of sacrifice—all poured into her skull at once.

Aria staggered under the weight of those echoes. Her knees nearly buckled. Her grip trembled. The Warden seized upon her hesitation, ribs snapping closed like a cage, trying to crush her against the core.

But Aria’s eyes snapped open, burning with defiance. She bared her teeth, snarling as she flared her power. Black fire erupted outward in a tidal wave, exploding from her body in jagged wings of flame. The ribs shattered under the surge, bone fragments scattering like meteors across the hall.

"I am not your tomb!" she roared, voice tearing her throat raw.

With one final thrust, she drove the blade completely through the core.

The world broke.

A shockwave of black and silver erupted outward, consuming everything. Chains burst into shards, ghostfire imploded, walls and pillars crumbled into ash. The Warden’s colossal skull cracked down the middle, ghostlight pouring from its eyes before flickering out. The ruins themselves groaned like a dying beast as the last of the anchor unraveled.

When the dust finally settled, silence reclaimed the hall.

Aria knelt amid the wreckage, her sword buried in the fractured remains of the core. Her chest heaved, blood and soot caked across her skin, her cloak nothing but tatters. The ruins around her were unrecognizable, reduced to jagged rubble and burning embers.

And in front of her, the shattered core pulsed faintly still—its fragments glowing with a weak, unstable light. Amid them, a single shard floated upward, streaked black and silver, beating softly like a heart that refused to die.

Aria’s hand trembled as she reached for it.

Aria’s fingers closed around the shard with a reverence born of exhaustion and instinct. The fragment was warm, its faint pulse echoing against her palm as if it sought to merge with her heartbeat. She summoned a whisper of her black fire, weaving it into a warding seal, then slipped the shard into a small bone-carved reliquary at her belt. The moment it was secured, the oppressive weight pressing on her spirit lessened, though not entirely. The shard was still alive—and watching.

She rose unsteadily, every step crunching over ruins and charred debris, until she stood before the throne. The Grimoire of Vakrops was said to lie beneath it, but all she saw was a monolith of stone, blackened by centuries of ghostfire. Her hand brushed the armrest, feeling runes hidden beneath the ash.

Something resisted her touch. The throne breathed—not with life, but with memory, the same echoes that had plagued her when she pierced the core. A whisper slid along her mind: "Only the worthy may unveil the scripture of kings."

Aria bared her teeth, half in defiance, half in grim amusement. Worthy? After all this?

She pressed harder, tracing the grooves of the rune, and felt it shift under her hand. Somewhere deep within the throne, gears groaned. A dull click echoed, followed by a heavy grinding as if stone protested against centuries of stillness.

But nothing moved.

Her brows furrowed. She crouched, searching the wreckage around the dais. Her instincts clawed at her—there was another switch, a twin to the one she had already touched. Vakrops was not a city of trust; it was a city of traps.

Minutes bled into an hour as she combed through the hall. Dust filled her lungs, her wounds throbbed, and more than once she nearly collapsed. But at last, beneath a cracked slab near a shattered pillar, she found it—a second rune, half-buried, faint but intact.

Her fingers pressed into its grooves.

A rumble surged through the ruins. The throne shuddered. Slowly, ponderously, it shifted aside, scraping stone against stone until it revealed a black stair spiraling downward into darkness. From below drifted a breath of air colder than the grave, heavy with the scent of ink and bone.

The spiral descent spat Aria into a cavernous vault, its walls carved with necrotic glyphs that pulsed like veins of black lightning. At first glance, it might have been a dragon’s hoard—mountains of gold coins gleamed in the light of her fire, jeweled chalices glittered like captive stars, and crystalline obelisks hummed with sacred resonance. Weapons older than empires rested against the walls, their blades still sharp enough to whisper.

Her breath hitched. For an instant, her battered body screamed to collapse among the treasures, to claim them all and stagger out rich enough to buy kingdoms.

But then Fenric’s voice rang sharp in her memory, cutting through temptation:

"Don’t touch others. This chamber is cursed. Take more than one, and you will never leave. The vault is a snare. The only treasure of worth is the grimoire—seek it and nothing else."

Her jaw clenched. The coins seemed to shimmer more brightly, as if mocking her restraint. The crystalline blessings called to her bloodline with siren clarity, promising strength, healing, and transcendence. A blade that dripped shadowfire from its edge thrummed so near her aura that her hand twitched forward instinctively.

She forced herself to exhale, slow and harsh. "No. I won’t be another skeleton for this grave."

Pushing past the glittering mountain of deceit, she followed the pull in her veins. Her flame responded, black and quiet, guiding her toward a pedestal of cracked obsidian at the chamber’s heart. Upon it rested a tome bound in necrotic hide, its surface shifting with the faint impressions of screaming faces. The Grimoire of the Necro Archmagus Rahcmi.

The book exuded an authority far greater than any jewel. Shadows bent toward it, as if bowing in worship. The air itself chilled around it, and the wards of the chamber thrummed in acknowledgment of its primacy. This was the true prize.

Aria stepped closer, every instinct warning her that even touching it might cost her soul. Yet the reliquary at her belt pulsed—the shard she had sealed within whispered in resonance with the grimoire, as though urging her to claim it.

She reached out, fingers trembling not from weakness but from knowing this was the point of no return. The moment her fingertips brushed the surface, black flame erupted from the tome, surging up her arm in serpentine coils.

The vault shook. The mountains of gold shrieked as if alive, the crystal obelisks cracked, and the cursed weapons rang in unison. Chains of spectral iron manifested around the pedestal, binding her in a circle of trial.

And then, from the pages of the grimoire, a voice older than the ruins growled:

"You dare claim Rahcmi’s scripture, child of embers? Then prove you are no thief but a sovereign of death itself."

Aria closed her eyes, steadying her breath. The weight of the grimoire throbbed in her palm before she slipped it back into the Storage Ring. The moment she did, the vault dissolved—the skeletal kings, the jeweled archmages, the tide of golden warriors—gone, as if none had ever existed.

Her shoulders eased, a shaky exhale slipping past her lips. "Phew... I almost thought they were real," she muttered under her breath. If Fenric hadn’t warned her about these kinds of death-ward illusions, she might have drawn her blade and wasted precious strength fighting shadows.

The silence of the true vault pressed in around her once more, cold and heavy, yet infinitely less suffocating than the false battlefield.

Aria brushed a hand through her hair, forcing the last echoes of the illusion from her mind. The chamber’s oppressive chill clung to her skin, the stagnant air carrying the faint stench of centuries-old dust. With a final glance at the cracked stone pillars and treasure mounds that had birthed phantoms, she turned away.

Her boots struck the ground with a steady rhythm as she crossed the vault and ascended the stairwell carved into the ruin’s spine. Each step seemed to groan under her, as though the city itself resented her intrusion.