[Warning ⚠️ graphic and gore content]
The path narrowed until the air itself felt heavy — like wading through water. The torch in Altheron's hand flickered violently, its flame bending backward as if resisting the way ahead.
A faint sound rose above the echo of his boots — not breathing, not dripping water…
Rustling.
He slowed, every instinct screaming caution.
Then came the smell — iron, rot, and something sickly sweet that clung to the back of his throat. The walls pulsed faintly, their veins glowing like dull embers.
The light fell upon the floor — and he froze.
Bodies.
Dozens of them. Adventurers and Sentinels alike, scattered across the chamber in grotesque disarray. Armor cracked. Weapons snapped. Faces pale beneath a sheen of dust — and flies.
For a moment, he thought they were still. Then something moved beneath one of the corpses — a subtle ripple across the skin, a shimmer like crawling shadows.
The rustling grew louder.
Clicking.
Whispering.
He took a shaky step forward — and nearly slipped.
The ground was slick. His boot came away red.
Now he could see them — insects, pale and glistening, swarming through the dead. They burrowed through flesh, writhing inside hollow eyes and open wounds.
Some bodies were missing heads, others had their faces split open, insects feasting within.
Several lay torn apart, their insides exposed — guts unravelled, a living swarm crawling in and out of every wound.
One body still twitched, its fingers spasming weakly as the creatures feasted within.
Altheron's vision blurred. His stomach turned. He clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from vomiting — but the stench of rot and bile filled his lungs anyway.
Then a voice cut through the horror.
"...Help… me…"
His torch snapped toward the sound.
One man still lived — a Sentinel, pinned beneath his shattered shield, eyes wide and bloodshot. His hands clawed weakly at the ground.
"Please," he whispered. "It hurts… gods, it hurts…"
Altheron stumbled toward him, dropping to one knee. "Hold on! I'll—"
The man convulsed, back arching violently. Beneath his torn armor, something moved — bulging, writhing, feeding.
Through the gaps in his ribs, Altheron saw them — hundreds of pale insects, eating their way out from within, crawling up his throat, spilling from his mouth.
"Kill me!" the man screamed. "Please! End it—"
Altheron's mind shattered into panic. He tried to brush them away, but they kept coming, endless, unstoppable. The man's begging turned into a gurgling sob.
"It hurts! Gods—kill me!"
Altheron's hand shook as he drew his sword. Tears blurred his vision. He whispered through clenched teeth,
"Forgive me."
Steel met silence.
The insects scattered, vanishing into cracks and shadows as if retreating from the act itself. The chamber fell still — except for Altheron's ragged breathing and the faint, wet drip of blood on stone.
He staggered back, bile rising again, his heart pounding like war drums. He wanted to scream — to tear the sound from his head — because one unbearable thought tore through him:
What if Emi had seen this?
He turned in despair, torchlight trembling in his grasp — and then he saw it.
At the far end of the chamber, roots hung from the ceiling like veins, converging around a vast, half-rotted figure. Once, it might have been beautiful — shaped like a woman, formed of wood and light. Now, its body was blackened and split, its eyes hollow and leaking faint trails of pale mana.
The Tree Spirit.
It stirred faintly, voice trembling through the air without sound.
"Bearer of the Sword Sigil… thou hath come…"
Altheron froze. His torch dimmed as the air thickened, vibrating with power and pain.
"I was the heart of the Millennia Tree… the seal's keeper…"
"But the seal weakens… and I am unmade."
Her tone broke, fragments of sorrow echoing through the cavern.
"The corruption spreads through root and stone… through flesh and memory alike…"
"Help me… end me… or all will fall to the hollow."
She raised a trembling hand, bark cracking and bleeding faint light.
"Kill me, bearer… free me from this torment… and seek me again where the final seal sleeps…"
Altheron's throat went dry. His sword weighed like a mountain.
That same shimmer — that same crawling movement — now spread across her wooden flesh. The same thing that devoured the Sentinel was consuming her.
The Spirit's hollow eyes glowed faintly.
"You fear what you must become. But the hollow has already chosen you."
The roots writhed behind her, the ground splitting open in a surge of black veins. The torch sputtered, its flame gasping for life — then died.
And in the dark, her fading voice whispered one final time—
"Kill me, Bearer of the Sword Sigil… before it wakes…"