CHAPTER 39: CHAPTER 39: INTO THE CRIMSON VERGE (8)

The inner ring didn’t open like a door. It tilted—a whole slice of city leaning to show us its throat.

[ Main Quest — Reach the Inner Ring ]

[ Objective Complete ]

[ New Objective Unlocked — Defeat the Crimson Verge High Entity ]

[ Target: Ash Warden Hierophant (S-Rank • Unknown Parameters) ]

[ Reward: Tier Advancement • Hidden Path Resonance (Major) ]

[ Sub-Objective — Disrupt Forge Grid Integrity ≥ 60 % ]

[ Optional: Identify Countermeasure Runes → Reward Unknown ]

[ Warning — Dungeon Stability at 14 % ]

[ Breach Window: 04 h 00 m ]

We came out of the service ramp onto a maintenance gantry bolted under a viewing terrace. Twenty meters above, the official platform jutted into heat and light: a black dais ringed with spine-rails and rune pylons, a ceremony spot pretending it was just scaffolding. Beyond it, the forge’s mouth breathed flame slow as sleep. Red veins burned in every wall. Drums kept the work-beat—three short, one long—until the long turned longer.

Varga raised a fist. Down.

We flattened behind a bank of slotted plates. Through the slots: four orcs in chain-cloaks held a quartered circle around a cage of humming light. Not warriors. Not workers. Mages. Their armor wasn’t metal so much as woven links of black wire and bone beading. Each stood on a different sigil: circle, triangle, spiral, bar. Their heads were shaved; copper pins had been hammered along their skulls. Their staves weren’t carved—they’d grown.

Behind them: a gate frame—half-built, half-breathing—lashed to the dais with iron cables. It wasn’t our gate. This one was theirs: ribs of obsidian, lattice of chainbone, a heart of condensed heat waiting for a spark.

"Four casters, one frame," Lucien whispered. "Conduit array."

"Kill the array, kill the gate," Elise breathed.

"Array goes first," Varga said. "Then frame bolts. No alarms if we can help it."

He looked at me. "Cross—legs."

"Legs reporting for bad ideas."

Plan was fast because the floor hummed impatient. Lucien dampened our signatures with a thin veil—cold that smelled like rain. Elise weighted the air with ash so sound died at chest height. Varga counted with his eyes: three—two—one—

We moved.

[Lightning Step — Step 1/3]

[Cooldown to next Step: 2.0 s]

[Agility Output: 214 % baseline]

The world slipped left. I arrived behind Spiral-Staff with my breath still where I’d started. Fangpiercer kissed the seam at his neck.

[Fangpiercer — Critical]

[Armor Penetration: 30 %]

[Result: Severed conduit]

Blood hissed like water on iron. The spiral under him sputtered.

Elise’s opening line bent the air—a thin sheet of blue-white that refused to be heat. It hit Triangle’s ward at an angle, split, came back through the same line a hair off. The ward popped like blistered glass. Triangle staggered, cloak smoking.

Varga arrived the way Varga does—shield first, loud later—shoulder-checking Bar-Staff off his sigil. The hum under my feet slipped a note. Lucien’s sigils laced Varga’s back and locked—traveling armor stitches rippling shut.

Triangle howled a word I didn’t know. The platform shuddered. A whip of red chain snapped out of the air and lashed for Elise’s ribs—

"Mine!" I said, and took it across the forearm.

[Damage: Moderate (Laceration / Heat)]

[Absolute Regeneration — Suppressed (Crimson Verge • Efficiency 27 %)]

[Recovery: Delayed (12 s)]

"Worth it," I hissed, and cut the chain at the elbow where it pretended to be metal.

[Lightning Step — Step 2/3]

[Cooldown to next Step: 2.0 s]

Two seconds is an eternity when a spell is learning your name.

I filled both with bad decisions. Dropped low, slid on obsidian dust, let Gloamthorn talk to Triangle’s hamstring.

[Gloamthorn — Critical]

[Dark Affinity Amplify: +15 %]

[Result: Mobility ↓]

Triangle pitched sideways. Elise curved a flame ribbon through his open guard and branded a geometric burn across his chest that didn’t feed the room. She grinned without humor. "Not heat. Shape."

Bar-Staff slammed his rod into the dais. Red bars of light rose—prison spell, four sides, clean corners.

Lucien’s voice was calm and irritated. "Lovely. They’re architects."

He swept a palm. The edges of the prison went soft—lines becoming fog, math dissolving. Varga walked through the nearest bar like it had decided to be rope.

The Circle-Staff hadn’t moved. His hood stayed down, both hands over his lattice cage, whispering. The cage brightened. The gate frame thrummed back.

"Circle’s the battery," I said. "He stays breathing, this place keeps getting beliefs."

"Fix it," Varga said.

[Lightning Step — Step 3/3 Active]

[Cooldown to next Step: 2.0 s]

[Chain Exhaustion: New chain after 5 s idle]

I blinked—and had him. He was murmuring a rhythm too old to be taught and too practical to be holy. The cage’s bars pulsed in time with his pulse. I brought Fangpiercer down to cut timing in half—

Silver sparks spat off a glyph I hadn’t seen.

[Counter-Sigil — Listening Lock]

[Evasion Check: Passed (0.18 s)]

[Result: Disruption only]

Fangpiercer hit and slid, dragging a note out of the lattice that made my molars ache. The cage faltered—not broken, but drunk. Circle-Staff lurched.

Bar-Staff yelled a command. Triangle and Spiral answered in a language with too many corners. The platform sang back—metal answering metal, grid answering drum.

Four sketched a square I didn’t like.

"Varga!" I barked. "They’re going to net us, not kill us."

"Netting’s worse," he said, and smashed Bar-Staff in the chest with his shield so hard the man met a pylon and reconsidered his relationship with ribs.

The square didn’t finish. Good.

My chain died. I let it. Patience for once in my life.

[Lightning Step — Chain Reset: 5 s idle]

Elise used the breath. She dragged ash up from the floor until it forgot it was ash and remembered being stone, then she folded the air along it. Spiral’s staff-stroke met a wall that shouldn’t be there. It spat sparks and threw him off his feet.

Lucien didn’t look at anyone when he spoke. "Cross, you have two seconds."

"Copy."

The world’s longest two seconds arrived. I learned to count again. One Mississippi—

—Triangle tried to stand—Elise branded the floor under him; the brand climbed into his boots and he screamed like desire minus relief—

Two Mississippi—

[Lightning Step — Step 1/3]

I was inside the lattice cage. It wasn’t space. It was a suggestion that I ignored. Circle saw me, mouth already moving, an older word crawling up his throat. I rammed Fangpiercer through his grip and into the pulse-node he loved more than breath—

The hum dropped. The cage’s bars flickered and forgot they had jobs.

Circle’s eyes met mine. We both knew what I’d done. He reached for my face anyway, slower now, god-love dwindling. I let him touch my cheek because some things felt like debts, then slid out of the failing cage and left him with his prayer.

He toppled without grace.

[Hostile Neutralized — Ashspawn Channeler (A-Rank)]

[EXP +220 → Double Rate 440]

[Level 21 Progress: 1400 / 2100 → 1840 / 2100]

[Drop: Conduit Pin (A-Grade) • Lattice Knot (B-Grade)]

Bar-Staff roared and dragged power from the frame like a greedy man siphoning gas. His bar ward re-drew, thicker. Lucien flared both hands—runic light flooding into the bars, not breaking them so much as making them doubt. Varga used doubt like a door and walked through to ended Bar with three sharp shield-edges—wrist, jaw, temple—then a pommel to sternum that silenced the man mid-curse.

[Hostile Neutralized — Ashspawn Geometer (A-Rank)][

EXP +190 → 380][Level 21 Progress: 1840 → 2220 / 2100]

[Level Up — 22]

[HP +10 | STR +2 | AGI +3 | END +2 | INT +1 | WIS +1]

[Unassigned Stat Points: +10 (total +20)]

"Two left!" Elise snapped.

Spiral flung a palm and a hurricane of sharp came at us—slivers of cooled glass riding a pressure wave. I made myself small and very boring. Varga simply absorbed. Lucien bent the tunnel the shards wanted and let them pass through a story where we weren’t.

Triangle—crippled but devout—pressed his staff to the floor. A red net tried to grow from our footprints outward—heat remembering us.

"Move or you’re owned!" I yelled, and we all moved.

[Lightning Step — Step 2/3 Active]

[Cooldown: 2.0 s]

I cut Spiral’s calf to the bone, then his tricep. Elise hooked his staff with a looping line and re-wrote the rivets so his grip slipped at the worst time. Varga’s shield edge took his teeth. Spiral hit the pylon and stayed.

[Hostile Neutralized — Ashspawn Listener (A-Rank)]

[EXP +180 → 360]

[Level 22 Progress: 120 / 2200 → 480 / 2200]

Triangle was still drawing nets with blood.

"Stop that," I said, and did.

[Gloamthorn — Critical (Artery)]

[Result: Fatal]

He sagged against his own geometry like stained glass surrendering.

[Hostile Neutralized — Ashspawn Binder (A-Rank)]

[EXP +200 → 400]

[Level 22 Progress: 480 → 880 / 2200]

[Drop: Ember Ink (A) • Chainbone Rivet (B) • Listener Shard (B)]

We stood there—breathing, glowing, ugly—with the four down and the gate frame humming smaller than before. Elise killed the last of the bars with two disdainful taps. Lucien checked Varga’s ribs by eye, then by palm. I flexed my bleeding forearm and pretended it wasn’t important.

The platform’s work-beat fell out of time.

The dais didn’t feel safer with the mages gone. It felt like a held breath.

Varga pointed at the frame. "Bolts."

We got to work—fast, methodical. Elise cooled the upper pins without feeding the grid; Lucien damped the lines with a prayer that pretended to be math. I jammed Fangpiercer into wedges that had never planned to meet steel and made them reconsider. Varga braced cables and broke tension with his shield like it was a crowbar.

Two bolts screamed loose. The frame lurched. A third held like a tooth.

"On three," Varga said. "One—"

The forge stopped singing.

The drums changed keys.

And a sentence walked out of the dark.

He was too big for the word orc. Six meters of wrong proportion built out of basalt and tendon steel, draped in a cloak that moved like chain in slow water. His tusks were capped in bone-gray metal carved with words I didn’t want to read. He wore no helm. A circlet of ribs sat on his brow like someone else’s crown. In his left hand: a staff grown from something’s spine, every vertebra inlaid with red that hadn’t cooled in years.

When he spoke, the platform listened.

"Falseborn," he said, in perfect human. "You come to steal breath from a living mouth."

Varga’s stance narrowed. "Form on me."

Elise’s flames went quiet and blue. "That’s not a general."

Lucien didn’t whisper. "High shaman."

My band buzzed my bones.

[Identify: Ash Warden Hierophant — S-Rank (High Orc Shaman)]

[Traits: Dark Conduit • Grid-Synced • External Regen Carrier]

[Environmental Effect: Shadow Saturation (Wards weaken; listeners strengthen)]

[Warning: Regen suppression persists.]

[Advice: You cannot out-tank this. Move.]

"Conversation later," I said. "We tip the frame and run."

The hierophant lifted two fingers as if to bless us. All four dead mages jerked on the floor like meat that remembered choreography. Staves rattled. The gate frame brightened—feeding on their last heat.

I hate magic.

"Ethan," Lucien said. "Keep him aimed at me, not Elise."

"Copy."

We hit first because that’s the only time it’s polite.

Varga arrived inside the hierophant’s reach, shield high. The staff flicked down like a judge’s gavel and the impact ran through Varga into the floor with enough force to make a pylon spit sparks. His knees bent and held. Lucien slammed both hands to his back and stitched a hymn through him that my bones tried to learn.

Elise threw a geometry that turned the platform into angles the shaman hadn’t ordered. The air bent wrong—her favorite trick. It should have made his spell graze.

The staff didn’t graze. It chose a new path mid-swing.

"Neat," I said, and went anyway.

[Lightning Step — Step 1/3 Active]

[Cooldown: 2.0 s]

[Crit Stack (Preview): Base 5% + AGI 6.3% + Positional 15% + Height 5% + Twin Resonance 5% + Step 20% → 60% (Cap)]

[Projected Multiplier: ×2.52 Fangpiercer / ×2.46 Gloamthorn]

I took his left—the off-hand, the one people forget. Fangpiercer slid for tendon under bone-metal, a wedge to make his grip a rumor—

My knife missed something that didn’t move.

[Shadow Slip — Displacement 0.7 m]

[Result: Glancing]

The staff sighed through air where my head had been a half-second earlier. I felt the sentence in my teeth.

[Lightning Step — Step 2/3 Active]

I reappeared at his spine and cut low for kidney space that oversized bodies still need. Gloamthorn bit—

—and drank night.

[Gloamthorn — Dark Affinity Overload]

[Result: Absorption / Feedback]

[Status: Grip Instability]

"Uh," I said, because my knife had opinions now. The hierophant’s cloak stirred like a pond under wind. He did not look at me. He looked at Lucien and flicked two ribs on his circlet.

A coil of black silk unrolled from nothing and tried to tie my healer to the floor.

Lucien sang. The silk browned like old fruit and fell away. "Not today."

Elise split the air again—two lines kissing at the staff’s throat. The lines burned cold and should have shaved bone.

They dimmed when they touched him. Like his shadow ate color and returned quiet.

"Okay," she said. "Rude."

Varga shoved, not to move the giant, but to take his attention. The shield rang like a bell failing to warn a town. The staff came down again. Barrier loads climbed. My heartbeat tried to race the drums and lost.

[Lightning Step — Step 3/3 Active]

[Cooldown: 2.0 s]

[Chain Exhaustion: New chain after 5 s idle]

I gambled the last Step and went through his cloak—through the cold that lived there—came up inside his arm arc and drove Fangpiercer for the wrist where the staff’s bones made a hinge—

The steel hit, sang, and bit a finger’s width.

[Fangpiercer — Critical (Mitigated)]

[Damage: Low]

[Status: Grip Integrity 84 %]

He looked at me like I was interesting. That did not feel like a win.

The air changed. Not hotter. Heavier. The drums stopped pretending to be forges. The red veins went dark in a slow wave that rippled outward from the shaman’s feet. All our shadows stood up a little.

He raised his staff and spoke a word that made my ears bleed. It wasn’t a shout. It was the memory of a shout.

"Kneel."

Varga did not. His knees tried. Lucien caught them with a spell like a brace. Elise answered with a wall that wasn’t there and turned the command into friction. I answered by being obnoxiously alive and stepping wrong on purpose.

"Not my kink," I said through my teeth.

He didn’t smile. Of course not. He opened his palm and the dead mages’ blood ran uphill to his staff, drew a circle in the air, and set it spinning.

The circle ate light.

[Cataclysm: Veil of Black Iron — Channeling]

[Area Effect: Absolute Darkness → 60 m radius]

[Secondary: Sound Drown • Heat Mask • Grid Desync]

[Warning: Vision will fail. Listeners will not.]

[Advice: Touch wall. Count. Stay moving.]

"Varga!" I barked. "We tip the frame now or we never—"

The world went out.

No dim. No dusk. Gone. A lid slid over everything that had ever been called light and twisted the latch. The forge’s glow vanished like someone apologized and put it back where they found it. Heat turned into shape without color. The platform’s hum hid under the bed and waited for adults.

Footsteps multiplied. Not his. Ours. Mine.

Elise swore once. Lucien’s hand found the back of my neck and squeezed—count beat, count breath. Varga’s shield touched my hip like a wall that had opinions.

I took one careful step and the floor moved without moving. My inner ear tried to invent a sea. Something breathed a meter from my left ear and there was nothing there.

Then the gate—the not-our gate, the ribbed frame we’d almost unbolted—lit inside the dark. Not with light. With absence shaped like a door.

The hierophant’s voice came through the black like a lighthouse heard underwater. Calm. Patient. Annoyed we’d made him walk.

"System user," he said, "you will learn the name of night."

I couldn’t see Varga. I could feel him—anchor at my right. Elise was a warm thrum at my ten o’clock. Lucien’s grip kept counting.

I considered saying something brave and stupid.

Instead, I did something honest.

I reached for Step—and found a brink.

The staff hit somewhere inside the black. A sound like a cathedral spine breaking punched through my chest. Varga grunted. Lucien’s grip stuttered. Elise’s ash wall screamed and fell apart like memory in water.

"Uh," I said to the thing in my bones that had opinions about my continued existence. "Yes. Please. Now."

The system didn’t answer in words.

It pulled the floor out from under everything.