The descent stretched longer than it should have. Every step into the void echoed too loudly, yet nothing returned. Mo and Aylen walked in silence, shadows folding around them like a second skin. The staircase was slick beneath their boots, formed of stone that wept a steady trickle of liquid light.
At last, the stairway ended.
They emerged into a vast hollow chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness. Unlike the crystal-wrought halls above, this place felt older, rawer. The walls pulsed faintly, veins of molten color slithering through the rock like the arteries of a sleeping giant.
Mo drew a breath. The air tasted of ash and memory.
Aylen stepped beside him. "This doesn't feel like the trial anymore."
"No," Mo said. "This feels... like the place the trial was hiding."
In the center of the hollow, a dais stood, rimmed by six jagged monoliths. Each bore symbols—languages lost to time. They didn't glow. They pulsed. Like beacons. Like warnings.
Aylen took a step forward, but Mo halted her with a hand.
A presence stirred.
From the shadows beyond the monoliths, something emerged. Not walking. Not slithering. It was like smoke made solid, shifting between form and formlessness. A humanoid shape—barely.
It didn't speak with words. Instead, the air around them thickened, the pressure of thought pressing down.
You carry the blade of the Unbound. You walk in the skin of fire and ice. But do you understand what you are bound to?
Mo didn't answer.
The presence circled him, tendrils of black smoke teasing the edges of his cloak.
The Shamshir is not a weapon. It is a consequence.
Aylen raised a hand, sparks curling from her fingers. Mo shook his head slightly. No sudden moves.
"Then tell me what it cost," Mo said. "Tell me what this blade remembers."
The presence paused. Then, in the air before them, images formed.
A battlefield—endless and red. Titans falling from the skies. Cities burning like candles. And at the center of it, the Shamshir. Driven not by warriors, but by those who had nothing left to lose. A blade forged to end not armies, but cycles. To cut through fate itself.
Aylen whispered, "It was never just a weapon."
Mo stepped closer to the dais. The presence recoiled but did not resist.
If you step forward, you do not inherit power. You inherit burden. That is the truth of the Shamshir. Every strike is a memory. Every kill, a tether.
"And if I refuse?" Mo asked.
Then the cycle begins anew.
The chamber pulsed. The monoliths vibrated with sudden urgency. Aylen reached out instinctively, drawing closer to Mo.
"What are they doing?"
Mo focused.
The monoliths weren't reacting to them.
They were reacting to something else.
A distant rumble. Not just sound. A shift. The world above them—shaking.
Aylen's eyes widened. "Something's wrong. Something woke up."
From the far side of the hollow, a tear opened in the wall—a clean rupture in space, spiraling with smoke and gold fire. A figure stepped through. Not smoke. Not memory.
Flesh.
Armor of deep emerald. A helm shaped like the jaws of a lion. And eyes like burning coals.
Mo stepped forward, hand on the Shamshir. "Who are you?"
The figure did not answer with words.
He drew his blade.
The chamber responded instantly. The presence vanished. The monoliths flashed. And the floor beneath them fractured like glass.
"Move!" Mo shouted, grabbing Aylen as they leapt clear of the collapse.
The ground caved in, leaving only the dais intact, suspended above nothingness.
Mo and the armored figure landed opposite each other, blades drawn, eyes locked.
The stranger's voice finally came, deep and hollow.
"You are not ready."
"I don't care," Mo growled. "You're in my way."
The clash was immediate.
Faster than lightning. Louder than thunder.
Blades collided, sparks flaring, the Shamshir wailing with pressure. The stranger fought like a hammer—every strike intended to break, not kill. Mo responded with precision, weaving, slipping, carving through the momentum with intent.
But the stranger was old. Not in age. In battle. Every move was practiced, refined, brutal.
Aylen shouted from above, energy crackling in her palms. Mo gave her a quick glance. "Don't! He's testing me. Not us."
The stranger's blade slammed into Mo's shoulder, cracking his pauldron. Pain flared, but he didn't falter. He stepped into the next strike, inside the rhythm, inside the fire, and drove his blade forward.
Steel met flesh.
A thin cut across the stranger's ribs.
He staggered back, hand touching the wound.
Then—laughter.
A low, echoing laugh.
"So the Shamshir remembers how to bleed. Good."
And without warning, the stranger stepped backward—into the rift.
Gone.
The chamber quieted. The monoliths dimmed. The pressure lifted.
Mo stood still, chest heaving. The cut across his shoulder burned.
Aylen landed beside him, checking him over. "Who the hell was that?"
Mo looked at the fading rift. "Someone who knows more than we do. Someone who thinks this is a game."
Aylen looked around the chamber. "And what now?"
Mo turned toward the dais.
The monoliths shimmered once more. One of them cracked open, revealing a scroll. Bound in iron. Marked with the same script carved into the Shamshir's hilt.
"Now," he said, taking the scroll, "we stop playing by their rules."