Kael Lanpar's POV
The atmosphere of the place was oppressive, almost suffocating for anyone not accustomed to the bitter stench of death.
It wasn't just the air.
It was the lingering sensation that the world itself was watching in silence—alert, patient, expectant.
Moving forward was difficult among the remains of animal bones: brittle, eroded, slowly consumed by the cruel patience of time. Every step crunched beneath my feet, as if the ground remembered—and resented—everything that had been devoured there.
Terror had completely taken hold of me.
My legs trembled uncontrollably, and my skin was slick with a sickly cold sweat, one that reminded me this wasn't the first time I had faced the true horror of dying.
I tightened my grip on the hilts of my daggers, trying to suppress the memories of Matías, who still haunted me like a shadow fused to my soul.
His voice continued to seep into the deepest layers of a trauma I believed I had overcome. But the truth was simpler—and crueler: I was only pretending to be strong so I wouldn't have to face my own fragility.
Lost in those thoughts, I stumbled over one of the bones scattered across the floor.
I crashed against a jagged rock that violently scraped my right arm.
At once, I felt warm blood begin to slide down my skin, accompanied by an intense, nearly unbearable burning sensation. I clenched my jaw, smothering a scream that never escaped.
Everything began to blur. The world dissolved before my eyes, and I would have collapsed unconscious if not for Vastiar's voice.
"Boy, get up already."
His words sounded distant, warped, as if rising from the bottom of an abyss.
My mind barely managed to cling to them; my thoughts were no longer capable of forming anything clearly.
"I can feel your friends' auras," he continued. "They're in trouble."
I tried to respond, but the ragged gasps spilling from my mouth drowned out any attempt at speech. The air rushed in and out unevenly, refusing to obey me.
Even so, I gathered my strength and spoke.
"What's in there…" —my voice shook— "is far beyond my current level. What exactly do you expect me to do?"
The last words came out stained with raw anger, the kind I couldn't hold back.
Silence followed.
In the gloom, I heard the breathing of something approaching—slow, steady—claiming the space between each heartbeat.
My heart raced.
Every instinct screamed the same warning: this was no time to hesitate. Especially if I didn't want to die here.
"Do you want me to remind you why you chose to live?"
This time, Vastiar's voice carried reproach. I didn't listen. I ignored him.
I tore a strip from my shirt and, with clumsy but determined hands, fashioned a makeshift tourniquet around my wounded arm.
The pain was sharp, piercing—but not stronger than the visceral desire to keep breathing.
Maybe I'm doing this for a promise, I whispered in my mind, knowing Vastiar could hear me. Maybe it's pride… or maybe it's just fear of facing another ending.
Even I didn't know the real reason I wanted to keep living.
But I still have a path ahead of me, I added. I'm still young… and I don't intend to die here.
I braced one hand against the damp stone covering much of the dungeon and pushed myself upright with difficulty.
From the darkness, a grotesque figure began to take shape.
Its face was deformed, as if torn from the deepest pits of hell. It stood over two meters tall, but what truly sent a chill through me was its body—
it had the structure of a human.
It walked like us.
It moved with the lethal cadence of a predator fully aware of its prey. Yet the most disturbing thing was its arms: where hands should have been, long, razor-sharp crystalline blades emerged—fused to its flesh, one on each limb.
Our eyes met, and in the blink of an eye, the creature lunged at me.
I had barely a fraction of a second to decide what to do.
I knew that engaging it in close combat would be a fatal mistake. All I did was clench my fist, feeling mana particles begin to gather inside it, forcing my mana cascade to surge with dangerous intensity.
When its face came within inches of mine, I noticed something that froze my blood—
humanity in its eyes.
I had already suspected it. This wasn't a magical beast.
Its aura felt closer to that of a being aware of its own existence than to a creature driven purely by instinct.
My stomach twisted as the last scraps of mana I had left were torn from my body.
This time I didn't drop to my knees, but I had to double over from the pain. Mages say that losing all one's mana is a suffering no one can endure.
Now I understood why.
Veins bulged along my neck from the strain as I clenched my jaw hard, trying to contain a pain that threatened to shatter me.
With great effort, I lifted my gaze.
The creature had stopped dead in its tracks, unable to move, impaled by a pillar of earth driven straight through its head.
A sigh heavy with exhaustion escaped from deep within my chest.
Without wasting time, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch containing Avella Citra flowers.
In addition to acting as a sedative for almost any kind of pain, Avella Citra was known for its high florion content—a compound capable of forcing an adrenaline response, pushing the body to keep fighting when it really shouldn't.
Inhaling it induced a deep sleep.
Chewing it, on the other hand, granted hours of artificial clarity… before the side effects came to claim their price.
Vastiar, I'm out of mana, I said in my mind. Do you know where the others are?
For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. But in the end, he relented.
"They're not too far," he replied, clearly annoyed. "Keep moving straight and you'll find them. You'd better hurry—one of yours is already badly wounded."
I picked up the daggers that had fallen to the ground and paused for a moment, staring at my reflection in the polished edge of one of them.
But it wasn't me who appeared.
Matías's dim, lifeless face surfaced on the metal, staring back at me from the other side of the steel—reminding me that I still saw him. That I still carried him with me.
Shaking my head in resignation, I hesitated no longer.
I broke into a run, slowly absorbing the mana that resided within Crimson Shadow. That weapon wasn't just a dagger: inside it dwelled Vastiar's soul, and with it, a reserve of power that wasn't entirely mine.
With every step, the metallic stench of blood grew stronger—an unmistakable sign that I was close.
Instinctively, my body threw itself to the side as I felt the ground begin to tremble.
Where I had been standing just a second earlier, a stalactite tore loose and slammed violently into the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust that stole my vision for an instant.
My muscles tightened to their limit.
My survival instincts screamed a single command:
Run.
Without thinking, I dug my feet into the ground and channeled the little mana I'd managed to draw from my dagger into my legs. The world compressed around me as I activated Gale Step, propelling myself forward at an unnatural speed.
Too many stalactites began to break free from the rocky ceiling. I could barely see them falling behind me, unable to catch up—
but danger still lurked with every step.
Suddenly, a massive curtain of dust rose up, completely devouring the little visibility I had left.
I no longer knew where I was running. I was guided only in a straight line, following the rancid smell that permeated the air in front of me, thick and unbearable.
When I finally broke through the cloud of dust, I had to stop dead in my tracks.
The massacre unfolded before my eyes.
My feet refused to move forward as I felt the ground give way slightly beneath them. I looked down and understood why: I was standing in a pool of blood.
"…What the hell…?"
The words slipped out without permission. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Aiza was floating in the air, held aloft by the hand of a creature that showed no emotion whatsoever. The grip was firm, unyielding, and it took only a glance to understand that she no longer had the strength to keep fighting.
Rage hit me instantly.
I had to do something. Everything pointed to the same conclusion: at that moment, I was the only one who could still move.
My eyes swept across the area, trembling involuntarily when they landed on Alfin. He was gravely wounded; his breathing was weak and uneven, and his body was covered in deep cuts.
Even so, I could see his own magic slowly beginning to close the wounds.
Before acting, I crouched down and gathered Emira's body into my arms. I channeled mana into my muscles and lifted her carefully, pulling her free from her own pool of blood.
She was in the worst condition.
Aiza, at least, had managed to break free from the creature's grasp.
In the blink of an eye, my body moved to where Alfin was, resting with his back against a rock.
"Well… you really are quite the gentleman," he murmured.
Speaking alone seemed to cost him effort, yet he still forced himself upright, swallowing the pain behind a bitter grimace.
"We're doomed," he continued. "Your team—aside from Aiza and that crazy friend of yours—is made up of members from a division that's useless in combat."
I didn't answer.
I knelt carefully and set Emira down on the ground, making sure not to cause her any further harm. Then I stood and placed a hand on Alfin's shoulder.
"Is there anything you want to say," I asked, "before we head straight toward our deaths?"
My eyes never left the battle unfolding ahead.
Aiza, Zeitra, and Soka were fighting what appeared to be another elf.
Those pointed ears… I never mistake them.
It took only a single step forward to feel the overwhelming magnitude of our enemy's power.
That chaotic, untamed force—closer to a calamity than a living being—was not a threat.
It was an omen of ruin.
When our gazes met, even if only for an instant, my body stopped responding. Every fiber of my being screamed at me to run… yet something deeper, something older, commanded the opposite.
Fight.
They say only a Broker can kill another Broker.
I wanted to find out just how true that law really was.