Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Four: Dex Machina

  Magic tore the books from their hands, the pull so fierce they had no choice but to let go—or be dragged into the sinking earth themselves. And so they did, fingers unclenching as the volumes vanished into the collapsing ground.

  Above them, cracks zagged across the stone with the erratic precision of lightning seeking ground. Fissures that started as hairline fractures expanded with alarming enthusiasm into chasms wide enough to swallow a grown man, just steps behind them.

  Chunks of ceiling split loose with the dramatic timing of theatrical props, slamming into the floor with bone-crushing finality. A particularly large piece of ornately carved masonry crashed down mere inches from where Dex had been standing a heartbeat earlier. Dex, demonstrating the enhanced reflexes that came from spending too much time around Jace, had already bolted for the corridor.

  Jace didn’t look back at the chamber they were abandoning. He didn’t need to—he felt it. The room they’d just left was gone. Consumed by a defense system clearly built by someone with unlimited resources and a grudge against the world.

  The book. The evidence. All of it, devoured by the earth.

  They rounded a bend in the corridor, boots skidding on polished stone. The passage widened into a grand hallway lined with columns, each carved to resemble a different deity from a pantheon Jace recognized but couldn’t immediately place.

  “How exactly did you plan to get us out of this, Dex? You did have a plan, right?”

  “Yeah. Totally. Full plan. Crystal clear.”

  A beat.

  “Just... keep up.”

  It wasn’t the words that gave him away—it was the way his voice tilted up at the end, like even he didn’t believe himself.

  But there was nowhere else to go. The path behind them had caved in with a final, hungry groan. So they ran—faster than fear, if only barely—into the only direction left: deeper.

  The corridor snaked forward, narrowing into shadow. Their footfalls echoed, close and sharp, as if the stone didn’t just hear them but listened. On either side, the walls pressed in, shoulder-tight, lined with gargoyles every ten feet. Crooked things with chipped teeth and tongues like daggers. Some leered. Some grinned. All watched.

  Stone monstrosities with wings furled tight against their backs, claws extended, fanged maws frozen in silent screams that mirrored the very real screams still emanating from the walls. Their eyes—empty stone sockets that should have remained exactly that—suddenly flared with pale, unnatural flame.

  Then came the sound that turned Jace’s blood cold.

  Stone groaned against stone.

  It started with the smallest gargoyle. Its head twisted with a grinding noise like old millstones chewing gravel. Then another joined in. And another. One by one, the chorus built—stone limbs cracking as they bent, wings unfolding with brittle snaps.

  “Oh, come on,” Jace muttered.

  The largest of them—a slab-faced brute perched directly above the corridor—unfurled its wings with a sound like tearing masonry. Pebbles and dust rained down from its joints as it leaned forward, eyes glowing with that special kind of malice reserved for beings who hadn’t had the chance to stretch in a few centuries.

  “Shit,” Jace hissed, grabbing Dex and Shifting forward in jagged bursts.

  One. Two. Three.

  Each blink shoved them farther down the hall, past the hulking gargoyle just as it dropped from its perch and slammed into the ground behind them like a falling cathedral.

  Jace didn’t stop Shifting. Didn’t look back. Not until the hallway ended—or almost did. A tall arch waited ahead, embedded into the far wall. Cold, silent, inert.

  It looked exactly like the one they’d come through earlier to enter the hidden treasury.

  “That’s our exit!” Dex shouted, pointing.

  Jace didn’t reply. Not yet. Because behind them, the stampede had begun.

  Fifteen—no, more—gargoyles, each one distinct in size and nightmare, surged forward. Some ran on all fours, claws sparking against stone. Others took to the air, somehow flying despite wings made of solid rock and physics’ deep objections.

  Jace and Dex skidded to a halt at the wall, boots scraping stone.

  Dex pressed his hands to the cold surface, fingers sweeping frantically across the stone—searching for a seam, a glyph, a trigger. Anything.

  “Come on, come on...” he muttered, half to the wall, half to the gods, as though either might answer. “What type of lock are you?”

  “Dex?” Jace called, glancing back as the horde surged forward—stone claws, burning eyes, and far too little time.

  “There—got it. It’s glyph-locked,” Dex said. “It’s sealed, but I can crack it. I just need time.”

  He was already kneeling, pulling tools from his inventory—a thief’s kit, but etched with runes and pulsing faintly with magic. Picks shaped from black clinked against stone as he went to work on the glyph-locked arch. This set was the finest, Dex’s personal thieves’ kit.

  Jace turned and put space between them, planting himself between Dex and the advancing beasts.

  At the far end of the corridor, behind the charging beasts, half-veiled in shadow and silence, stood something different. It didn’t lurch or snarl like the others. It didn’t move at all. It simply watched. Towering, statuesque, carved from a darker stone that drank the light instead of reflecting it. Metallic veins spiderwebbed its frame, etched with runes so deep they seemed to pulse with slow, molten breath. Its wings were folded with rigid precision, not for flight, but for war—shields locked in place, waiting. Its claws were too sharp, too clean, as if they had never needed a second strike.

  Its eyes—gods, its eyes—burned low and steady, not with heat, but with gravity. Crimson, patient, old. A quiet malice that had no reason to rush.

  Jace’s Truthsense shuddered to life. Not a flare. A reverberation. A pressure in the air like a held breath. This one wasn’t bound by the same rules as the others. It wasn’t another piece on the board.

  It was the board.

  The first gargoyle landed like a curse.

  Twenty feet ahead, talons struck stone with a shriek that reverberated through the corridor. The creature rose, runes crawling across its form in patterns too complex to track. Its eyes flared—ember-red, filled with ancient hate. Not alive. Not dead. Something in between.

  “Hi,” Jace offered, flashing a tired smile. “Appreciate the warm welcome, but we’re just passing through. Structural instability. Very serious code violations. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  The gargoyle’s mouth yawned wide and screamed—a low, grinding wail like a tomb collapsing inward.

  “Right then.”

  More stone scraped. Two additional figures dropped from the ceiling, flanking the first. Their movements were jarring, limbs twitching in ways that betrayed the lie of animation. Like puppets strung together by forgotten rituals.

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  A particularly ugly one launched from the shadows—stone wings spreading wide as it hurtled toward them.

  Jace Shifted.

  One blink, and he was gone.

  He reappeared at the creature’s flank, sword drawn, and struck without hesitation—blade flashing toward its neck in a clean, practiced arc.

  The beast didn’t dodge. Didn’t counter. It only turned its head and looked at him—calm, silent, with an expression carved into its face that felt far too much like a smile.

  The moment the blade connected, it began to die.

  Jace felt it—metal unraveling beneath his grip. The sword decayed in his hands, flaking into useless shards before it hit the ground. The guardian stood unharmed, watching. Mocking.

  Whatever enchantments shielded these things, they’d just claimed the sword he’d gotten from Twig’s colleague—claimed it like it had never mattered at all.

  Jace Shifted back, grimacing, then called Veilsteel with a surge of will. The twilight energy coiled around his arm, shaping into a pointed Viking-style pike. Not elegant. Not precise. But brutal.

  Fine.

  He Shifted again, reappearing behind the gargoyle mid-swing. The pike connected with the side of its skull in a brutal crack that sent shockwaves up his arm. The stone split. The creature staggered—surprised, even—then let out a keening scream that vibrated in Jace’s bones.

  The weapon vanished into mist.

  The beast did not.

  Another gargoyle swung faster than stone had any right to move. Jace Shifted again, barely dodging—but the first had learned. Its claws caught him mid-transition, raking his arm. Blood spilled hot and fast.

  “Right,” Jace hissed. “No more games.”

  He slammed his palm to the floor.

  Chains of Oblivion.

  Dark metal burst from the stone, hungry and fast—barbed chains inscribed with shifting sigils. They snared the legs of two gargoyles, yanking them backward, anchoring them.

  Jace formed Veilsteel again—this time a spiked mallet—and drove it down onto the skull of the nearest bound beast. It crumpled.

  Only to begin knitting back together.

  “They’re reforming,” he shouted. “The place is rebuilding them.”

  “Keep them occupied.” Dex barked, fingers flying across glyphs. Sparks leapt between tools. “I need—“

  ”—Time. Yeah. I’m working on it!”

  Another Shift. Another strike. Veilsteel becoming hammer, flail, spear. Chains snapping outward, draining aether with each bind.

  And still they came—more and more, spilling forth, crawling from the walls, their numbers swelling with every breath, as if the dungeon itself had an endless supply of hate to throw at them. His Etheric Cloak rippled around him.

  Jace fought with rhythm: Shift. Strike. Chain. Drain. The onslaught of stone was endless. For every gargoyle shattered, another clawed its way free from the rubble, rising from the fragments of its fallen kin, refusing to stay buried.

  Over and over, the pattern held. Movements burned into muscle. Thought stripped away, peeled down to the raw loop of survival. Each step bled into the next, a seamless blur of motion. Shift. Strike. Chain. Drain.

  Time lost meaning.

  There was no end. No edge to the moment. Just the next monster. The next scream. The next flicker of dying light behind stone eyes.

  Pain came and went like breath. His wounds sealed mid-motion, only to reopen elsewhere. Magic surged, flickered, emptied, refilled. Veilsteel became hammer, spear, glaive, shifting in his hand like it was part of him. The Chains of Oblivion slithered out from the floor without command, responding now to will before thought.

  Somewhere, he heard screams. Not his. Not Dex's. Maybe memories. Maybe ghosts.

  His body was ragged. His soul scraped raw.

  And yet—he moved.

  Warning!

  Spirit has received Fatal Damage.

  Spirit Constitution has repelled Spirit Damage.

  Each blow fed him. Each death bled into his core. Overflow pulsed beneath his skin, pressure rising. And from that endless rhythm, something new stirred.

  Stillness in motion. Focus in chaos.

  Battle Trance: Active.

  As he fought—Shift, strike, bleed, recover—Jace felt it. That old rush. The sharp pulse of recognition.

  And then there was a change within him. He could feel his abilities leveling again.

  The system had gone mostly quiet for days. But now, the notifications came fast.

  His breathing slowed. His heart didn’t race—it beat. Like a war drum, echoing through his limbs.

  In that trance, he began to cultivate. Aether threaded inward, just a trickle—but constant. Steady. Clean.

  Pain became fuel.

  Fatigue became distance.

  Fear became irrelevant.

  There was only the fight.

  Only the moment.

  Only the next blow.

  New Ability Unlocked: Battle Trance, Experience Fortification Method

  In the heart of combat, instinct overrides thought.

  While actively engaged in high-intensity battle, you may cultivate small amounts of aether from adrenaline, pain, and focus.

  Effect: Gain minor XP-to-cultivation conversion per second during combat. Maximum of 15% of EXP gained per day may be spent this way.

  Stacks with overflow.

  Spirit Constitution shields against memory drift, identity erosion, and fragmentation during cultivation or extended Trance states.

  Warning: Extended use of Battle Trance may lead to memory fragmentation and Spirit Damage.

  He chose to ignore that last line for now. He glanced at his battle logged.

  Gargoyle Defeated – +1,440 XP

  Gargoyle Defeated – +1,310 XP

  Gargoyle Defeated – +1,520 XP

  Gargoyle Defeated – +1,470 XP

  Critical Strike x2 – Bonus XP Awarded

  Chains of Oblivion – Level 4 ? Level 5

  Chains of Oblivion – Level 5 ? Level 6

  Veilsteel Conjuration – Level 5 ? Level 6

  Shift– Level 6 ? Level 7

  Etheric Cloak – Level 3 ? Level 4

  Veilsteel Conjuration – Level 6 ? Level 7

  As the gargoyles fell, their animating aether flowed through the chains and into Jace, siphoned straight into his core. The magic filled him, flooding torn muscle and cracked bone, sealing wounds from the inside out. His breath steadied—but the power didn’t stop there.

  He could feel it now, more clearly with each kill—the raw, hostile aether that powered these things. It wasn’t just fuel. It was instruction. Purpose. The fractured will that animated stone and forced it to move like flesh. Animation magic.

  It surged through him, erratic and potent, humming with violence. He didn’t yet know how to shape it. Not fully.

  But he had an idea.

  Teeth clenched, he focused—then opened the channel.

  And with deliberate force, Jace began funneling all of it—all that stolen aether—straight into the White Raven Ring.

  Fatigue burned away like morning mist, only to be replaced by more fatigue. He was locked in a painful balance of pain and recovery. But still, he stayed above the current of endless creatures.

  But the air grew heavier. Magic hung thick, cloying. More gargoyles emerged, stone stretching and splitting as forms birthed themselves from the walls. Whatever way powering them, bringing more to life, wasn't fading anytime soon.

  Then came the largest.

  Twice the height of the rest. Horned. Runes etched deeper, older. Not a guardian. A weapon.

  Jace moved first.

  Veilsteel snapped into a glaive mid-swing. It cleaved the thing’s side, spraying chips of stone. The creature didn’t falter—it backhanded him across the corridor.

  He crashed into the wall. Pain bloomed. He stood anyway.

  Veilsteel reformed. A spiral blade, serrated and strange, etched with runes he’d never seen. It sang.

  He drove it into the beast’s chest. Light exploded from the wound.

  Chains struck again. The creature screamed.

  And still it rose.

  “One more sequence!” Dex shouted.

  “Make it now!”

  A massive stone spear screamed through the air—aimed at Dex.

  Jace Shifted the spear mid-flight, ripping it from its path and slamming it into the wall with a ragged twist of space. The backlash was immediate and brutal—his head snapped back, vision shattering into white noise as a scream caught in his throat. Before he could recover, a second spear punched clean through his thigh and out the other side. A heartbeat later, a third tore straight through his left arm, just below the shoulder—bone splintered, muscle shredded.

  He hit the ground hard, numb and burning all at once, the world a blur of blood and stone. His thoughts scattered, drowned beneath the weight of agony. He tried to move—his body didn’t listen. He Etheric Cloak flickered and faded.

  Claws raked across his back. The Shroud flared, failed. He screamed—not from pain, but fury. Fury that this was it. That he would die here, not in triumph or sacrifice, but crushed beneath a tide of stone and failure.

  He forced Veilsteel to form. Chains lashed out, desperate, tangled. Ten, maybe more—too many, too wild. His focus cracked. The flow of aether slowed. His strength slipped through his fingers.

  Dex was shouting. The archway flared with light. None of it mattered. There were too many.

  And then—

  From beyond thought, beyond the flesh:

  “You have to survive.”

  The voice threaded through him like a needle of starlight. Alex? The thought barely formed.

  Then another voice followed. Not his brother’s. Not anyone’s. It was a woman’s—soft, vast, inevitable.

  “I awaken.”

  Something stirred. Not the borrowed magic of his chains. Not the half-drained power of the Veilsteel. Something older. Quieter. He felt it rise from the ring on his finger, a pulse that wasn’t magic so much as transition. A death, a birth. A threshold crossed.

  Jace’s eyes snapped open.

  No longer green—now silver-white, blazing. The pain dulled. Not gone. Transformed. Fed into something deeper.

  “White Raven,” he whispered.

  His ring sprung from his finger, turning into a white spark of light and vanishing in the air.

  Then, from where it vanished, reality split.

  Not with noise, but with absence. The air rippled like a pond torn by a stone, and from that ripple—a breach. Cracks of luminous frost stretched outward as the space above him folded inward.

  Out of that impossible tear flew wings. Wings like storm light. Wings like unspoken names.

  A raven, massive and gleaming white, burst into the world. Its feathers shimmered with the light of far stars and ancient moons, edged in violet shadow. Its eyes, mirror-bright and endless, locked onto Jace—and burned. A scream followed—not sound, not voice, but judgment. It shook the stones. It stilled the air.