The battlefield was flame and ruin.

  Magma boiled across fractured stone. Starfire screamed from the heavens. Steel clashed against rot and thorn.

  And still, the Verdant Depths endured.

  “Enough,” the voice growled—no longer theatrical, no longer taunting. Now it was low, trembling with raw, ancient fury. “Enough of your defiance. Enough of your tricks. If I must burn to bury you—so be it.”

  The sigil above the battlefield warped, veins of green magic unraveling into jagged lines, unstable and flickering. The magic swelled—too much, too fast. A grotesque bloom of energy began to unfold from the center of the chamber, the vines pulsing with sickly light.

  Emil’s eyes widened. “Brent. That’s not a surge. That’s an overload.”

  Brent’s voice was flat with realization. “He’s going to take us all down with him.”

  The Verdant Depths howled as it poured its essence into the expanding storm.

  The ground cracked open beneath the defenders’ feet. The heat vanished—replaced by something colder than death, a draining, leeching void of pure unbeing. Zyrris fell from the air, his arcane wings folding. Ferron stumbled, buckling under the force of it. Constructs collapsed, twitching and inert.

  Ignarok roared, but even his magma dimmed, as though the very core of him was being siphoned.

  The light from the Core Room sputtered, Brent’s projection weakening, barely holding together.

  “Yes…” the Verdant Depths whispered, its voice stretched thin across the growing void. “Let your tomb be your legacy.”

  The storm grew—swelling, cracking the chamber, pulling the walls inward with vines that hissed with power older than time.

  And then, through the collapsing battlefield—a figure stepped forward.

  Shadow.

  No longer cloaked in only mystery and sarcasm, but in purpose. His blades were still sheathed. His hands were open. His body still.

  But his eyes… his eyes burned.

  He lifted one hand and twisted the air.

  And the vision began.

  At first, it was subtle.

  A shimmer across the battlefield. A moment of vertigo. Like the world blinked.

  And then reality—folded.

  The chamber fell away, and in its place—

  A small dungeon. Cramped. Choked in vines. Rotting from within.

  The green glow of its walls was pale and pitiful, like dying moss in a cave no light ever touched.

  The walls wept rot. The floor cracked beneath the weight of forgotten power.

  And at its center—a Dungeon Core.

  Not like Brent. Not vibrant, or pulsing with purpose. This core was caged—suspended in a lattice of black crystal and bone-thorn. Its glow was faint, like the last breath of a dying firefly.

  It trembled.

  Its pulses were weak, erratic. Each flicker came with a shudder of pain as veins of jagged magic pierced into it, drawing out what little energy remained.

  Across from it, another core loomed—massive, cold, distant. The ancient shape of a dungeon so old, its magic had turned to stone. Runes lined its frame like scars, and from its shell extended feeding roots, tapping directly into the withered core like parasitic veins.

  “No more games,” that greater core growled. “No more pride. You are mine now. My pet. My fuel.”

  The caged core pulsed again—a flicker of resistance—and the cage tightened. It spasmed, and its glow dimmed even further.

  The Verdant Depths—still anchored to its avatar above the chamber—screamed in a voice that echoed across every wall of the dungeon.

  “NO—NO! NOT AGAIN—”

  Shadow stepped forward into the illusion, into the vision made real.

  His voice was low. Gentle. Cruel.

  “You know this place, don’t you?”

  “You cannot—this isn’t—you don’t know what this is—”

  “Oh,” Shadow said, his smile cold, “but I do.”

  The vision flickered again—now showing years of torment. The caged core twisted with each flicker, suffering relived. Every defiance punished. Every memory stripped.

  It begged. It screamed. It went silent.

  Then began again.

  The Verdant Depths pulsed wildly, trying to withdraw—but Shadow held the spell fast. The illusion tightened like a net.

  “I ESCAPED!” the voice howled. “I SURVIVED! I TORE MY WAY FREE!”

  “You did,” Shadow whispered. “And now you become the thing you feared most.”

  The vision turned one final time—showing the core again in the cage. But now… now its cage was green.

  Its captor—a mirror.

  The voice it feared… was its own.

  The magical storm shuddered.

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  The energy stopped growing. And then it began to collapse.

  Vines shriveled. The air cleared. The overwhelming pressure cracked like glass, shards of pure magic scattering into the void.

  The Verdant Depths gave one last, choked cry of denial.

  And then—the power failed.

  The moment the storm broke, the silence was deafening.

  The green light of the Verdant Depths flickered—once blinding and oppressive, now hollow, reeling in the aftermath of its own fear. Its grip on the battlefield faltered. The vines, once thrashing with venomous intent, drooped like dying tendrils in a frost.

  Shadow lowered his hand and stepped back, his spell dissolving like smoke in sunlight. What remained of the illusion echoed faintly in the walls—just a trembling pulse, the echo of a memory too old to die cleanly.

  Then—Zyrris rose.

  Like a star rekindled, his form surged with power. The arcane halo around him flared wide, runes spiraling in a radiant orbit. His eyes snapped open, pure white light pouring from them as he lifted his hands and seized the magic that had once been twisted by the Verdant Depths.

  "No more," Zyrris said—not loud, but the words reverberated across the chamber with the weight of galaxies. "Your rot does not belong here."

  He reached toward the pulsing green sigil above the battlefield—still writhing, still reeling—and clenched his fist. The starfire in his palm erupted outward, piercing through the symbol, cutting its bindings like threads of silk.

  The Verdant Depths let out one final, wounded howl—

  “This… is not… the end—”

  And then it vanished, pulled away like a fleeing shadow, yanked backward across reality into whatever twisted sanctuary it still called a home.

  The vines withered.

  The spores blackened.

  The air cleared.

  For a heartbeat, no one moved.

  Then Brent’s glow ignited.

  Mana flooded through the walls. With the Verdant Depths’ siphoning gone, the channels reopened—rivers of raw energy coursing through the foundation of Golem’s Gambit. Trap sigils flared to life. Support spells reformed. The power Brent had been forced to hoard now flowed like a breached dam.

  He didn’t waste a second.

  “Hold on to something!” he pulsed, and unleashed it.

  A wave of energy surged through the chamber. Constructs flared, rising to their feet with new clarity. Support glyphs activated beneath every minion’s boots, repairing armor, recharging weapons, refreshing their strength.

  Ferron’s axe gleamed as the enchantment reawakened, its edge glowing like molten gold. The big golem cracked his neck and grinned. “Finally.”

  Caldron’s frame surged, blue arcs flickering with new life. He stood, shaking off dust, and shouted, “Round two, mosslickers!”

  Kagejin emerged from the shadows, breathing deep, his cloak reweaving around him. “Now they see our true shape.”

  Ignarok shifted, rising to his full, towering height as lava coursed through the seams in his stone-and-metal frame. The ground trembled beneath him, and when he spoke, his voice was a grinding bellow of molten iron and thunder.

  “I was built to end wars. And now… I fulfill that purpose.”

  From behind the molten titan, Vulcanis stomped forward, flames licking from the seams in his armor. His twin hammers spun once in each hand, gleaming red-hot.

  “Hope they brought marshmallows,” he rumbled with a wicked grin, “’cause I’m about to roast every last root-sucking twig-worm in this room.”

  Then he laughed—a deep, fiery sound that promised ruin.

  Zyrris, alight with stellar power, lifted both hands—and the sky fell.

  He called down a storm of radiant bolts, each one targeting a corrupted beast and erasing it from the battlefield. No death throes. No cries. Just pure removal. The balance had shifted.

  And at the center of it all—Ignarok burned brighter than ever.

  His magma roared back to full blaze. The air warped around his body with radiant heat as he thundered forward, slamming into the front lines like a molten avalanche. He swung with both fists, each strike launching enemies into the walls—or straight into the magma river.

  Brent pulsed across every communication channel.

  “Drive them out. Don’t hold back. They came into our home, and now we’re sending them back in pieces.”

  The minions surged with renewed fury. The constructs advanced like a wall of vengeance. The traps ignited—no longer signs of clever design, but of wrath.

  The Verdant Depths had come to bury a game. Instead, they had awakened a war machine.

  One room at a time, the enemy was pushed back. One shriek at a time, they were cut down.

  And for the first time since the siege began—Golem’s Gambit stood in control.

  The light of the Verdant Depths had vanished. The great pulse of its power extinguished, leaving only ruin in its place.

  And yet—its children remained.

  Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of twisted stalkers, brute fungi, vine-choked horrors still filled the outer edge of Ignarok’s chamber, trembling as the mana that had once puppeted them flickered and failed. Their strength was gone, their resilience cracked.

  But not their numbers.

  Shadow stepped forward slowly, cloak drifting behind him like spilled ink, his expression unreadable beneath the still pulled hood. He stood atop a crumbled stone outcropping, overlooking what remained of the enemy force.

  He extended both hands. No blades. No words.

  Only fear.

  The spell was silent at first. A pressure. A presence. Something primal.

  It slid through the air like a cold wind slipping down the spine. Then it pressed harder—burrowing into minds not built to withstand magic of that caliber.

  A wave of raw terror swept over the battlefield.

  The fungal brutes twitched. The stalkers paused mid-step. A silence stretched… and then they broke.

  It was not a retreat. It was not tactical.

  It was panic.

  Creatures began to scream in shrill, alien voices as the spell rooted itself in their minds. They turned from the battle—not to regroup, not to fight again—but to flee.

  They ran. Scrambling over one another. Trampling their own kind. Some collided with walls. Others dashed into still-burning lava channels without thought, choosing death over whatever nightmare had bloomed in their vision.

  And ahead of them—no escape.

  The exits been sealed. Brent’s rerouting of energy had collapsed half the outer track. Every corridor was closed, every gate barred.

  They were trapped.

  They clawed at walls. Slammed into stone. Piled in heaps at the barricades.

  And above them, Shadow lowered his hands, eyes gleaming like daggers drawn beneath moonlight.

  Brent watched the chaos from the Core Room, silent for only a moment as it unfolded.

  Then he pulsed into every minion’s link.

  His voice was quiet. Final.

  “End it.”