The greatsword shrieked through the air.

Maria twisted sideways just in time, her left hand still gripping the disconnected swordstaff, but the wide arc of Phoenix’s blade was already descending. The titanic force behind it scattered debris and sundered the very floor beneath her boots. Sparks and flame burst forth as steel kissed stone—she deflected the blow with the flat of her blade, a parry more reflexive than intentional. The echoing clang rang like a cracked bell, loud enough to rattle ribs.

She landed low, skidding backward. Her veil fluttered like a dying flame. The scent of scorched cloth and singed hair clung to her robes.

“Tch…”

Across the ruined chamber, a deep shadow clung stubbornly to the corridor’s maw—Moll was gone.

Phoenix stepped up beside her, flame still coiling along the fuller of his greatsword like a living serpent. The fire around him burned low now, drawn inward. He wasn't angry. He was focused.

“We had him,” he said, voice low. “That quake—was it natural?”

Maria didn’t answer immediately. She watched the shadows, her crimson eyes narrowing. Her gaze lingered not just on the fleeing target's trail, but on the scorched cuts left in the mycelium-covered walls. There—slivers of slime residue, smeared against the heat-seared fungi. Moll’s ichor. He was wounded. Deeply.

But more than that…

Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Something deeper stirred. That wasn’t a coincidence.”

Phoenix followed her gaze, and the embers in his pupils flickered. “A third party?”

Maria nodded once, faintly. Her breath left a white fog in the air.

“No one is supposed to be below this sector of the undercity. Not unless they’re suicidal—or... connected to Root of Man growths.”

The name lingered between them like a curse. Root of Man. A disease. A god. A parasite. A punishment.

Phoenix spat to the side. “Then we go after him now, before he feeds.”

“No.” Maria sheathed her remaining swordstaff with a sharp motion. “We go carefully.”

The flare in Phoenix’s stance dimmed slightly, tempered by discipline. He nodded, though a part of him itched to burn everything in their path.

—

The descent into the lower sewers was no longer subtle. The collapse had widened several old maintenance tunnels. Maria moved first, silent, slipping through a rusted filtration grate that had been warped open. Phoenix followed, his armor shedding sparks each time his shoulder brushed brick or steel.

The further down they went, the more the temperature changed.

Warmth bled from the stones, replaced by a clammy chill that clung to skin like breath from a corpse. The walls pulsed. Not visibly—but something in the rhythm of the air made Maria certain of it. This place was no longer just infrastructure. It had become vascular.

“I hate this part,” Phoenix muttered.

Maria agreed, but did not speak it.

Then—

A cry.

Not of pain, but of rapture.

A sound like a soul splitting in two.

Both Maria and Phoenix froze.

Ahead, where the tunnel sloped into a cavernous chamber of slick stone and broken piping, the floor trembled with wet footsteps—fast, four-legged, erratic.

Moll?

No. Too fast. Too low.

Maria pressed herself into the shadows, blending with unnatural stillness. Phoenix lowered his center of gravity and drew in his aura. Flame dimmed.

The thing that emerged was not Moll.

It was smaller. Crawling. But not harmless.

It looked like a man—once. Torn from the waist down, flesh warped by the corruption of Root of Man, spinal tendrils trailing behind it like an exposed nerve bundle. It had no eyes. Only sockets, overgrown with fibrous moss.

And on its back—feeding—was a small, coiled growth pulsing with sickly violet light.

A young Root Serpent.

Maria inhaled sharply. Even a juvenile would be enough to infest a town block in an hour.

“Permission to incinerate?” Phoenix’s voice was already tightening.

Maria raised her palm. “Wait. Listen.”

The creature was mumbling.

Not to them. To itself. No, to something else. Its broken teeth moved in rhythm, matching something distant—something pulsing deeper underground. A chant. An echo of a sermon long since lost.

Then its head snapped toward them.

Without eyes.

It knew.

Maria’s hand dropped.

Phoenix didn’t wait for a signal—his sword flared with flame and carved a crescent of burning fury through the chamber. The firestorm rushed forward, engulfing the abomination in a sphere of hungry orange light.

But the moment the fire hit the serpent’s back—

It screamed.

Not the creature. The serpent.

And it exploded.

Not with flame, but with psychic backlash—an implosion of reality-warping nausea that sent both Maria and Phoenix staggering. Maria barely had time to cloak herself in mental shielding, but Phoenix grunted, his knees buckling as static filled his ears.

The light died.

And there, at the center of it—

Stood Moll.

Burnt. Bleeding. But standing.

No longer hiding.

He was muttering too. But not prayers. He was reciting coordinates.

“Lower section 9… deviation tunnel 34… contact made… process unstable… but I see it now…”

Maria’s heart stopped.

He wasn’t running away.

He was guiding it.

She stepped forward, blade drawn. “Moll.”

His insectoid limbs clicked into place, balancing him like a predator preparing to pounce. “It’s here, Sister Maria. It’s waking. The old bloodlines—the real ones—they still whisper beneath the stone. Don’t you hear it?”

Phoenix dragged himself upright, blade back in hand. “I hear lunacy.”

Moll grinned, and his segmented jaw split further than any human’s ever should. “You’ll hear more than that soon.”

With one convulsive movement, he slammed his fist into the stone at his feet.

It broke.

Not just cracked—shattered. Not from his strength—but from the design.

There had been glyphs etched into the stone, long hidden under sewage and moss. Blood had filled them. His.

They ignited.

Maria shouted—Phoenix moved—but it was too late.

The glyphs pulsed once.

And the ground fell away.

All three fell.

—

Maria hit the ground hard enough to bite blood.

She rolled, instincts saving her from a broken spine, and sprang up—

—into nothing.

She had fallen into silence.

Not darkness. There was dim light—glowmoss, arcane reflections, something phosphorescent in the walls. But no sound. No echoes. Even her own footsteps made no noise.

Phoenix landed next, armor grating softly, and then the silence swallowed him too.

Moll was already standing, waiting in the center of a massive, circular chamber. It was not natural. This was a ruin. Something ancient. Giant runes circled the perimeter, pulsing with the same rhythm as Moll’s own heart.

A forgotten altar?

No—something worse.

“Welcome,” Moll said, voice somehow inside their heads. “To what came before the Church.”

Maria lifted her blade. “You’re still delirious.”

“Am I?” Moll turned slowly. “You think this world began with Radiance? With cathedrals and rites and ranks? This place was already old when your saints were still crawling in the dark.”

Phoenix grit his teeth. “You want to awaken it, don’t you?”

Moll’s expression softened—almost reverent. “I want it to remember us.”

Maria stepped forward, fury laced into every motion. “You’re a fool.”

“No,” Moll said, and pointed.

Maria followed his finger.

Behind the altar, half-buried in calcified roots and ash, something moved.

A ribcage. A human one—no, larger. Twisted. Breathing, barely. Covered in a thousand years of fungal growth.

A body.

No—a vessel.

Moll smiled. “You wouldn’t let me die, Maria. So now I’ll become something greater. And you’ll witness it.”

Then the vessel opened its eyes.

—