"What in the world..."
Looking at Elias crumpled on the ground, Elyndra couldn't hide the shock spreading across her chubby face.
And this time, it was real.
Because up until now, she'd been acting. Every expression, every cringe word out of her mouth—it had all been deliberate. Just enough pressure, just enough tension to force him to push himself.
Don't get her wrong, she had been worried. Truly worried about that unnerving bastard. But she was far too much of a queen to turn into some trembling, anxious mess over him.
Everything had been carefully set up to lead to this moment...
And somehow, against her own awful judgement, he actually pulled it off.
He killed an Echoform with nothing but his scheming brain and that pathetic strength of his.
Even now, Elyndra still couldn't quite believe it. He didn't look like much, but the kid definitely had the battle IQ.
But now, a much bigger problem showed itself.
Elyndra lifted her gaze toward the canyon, catching the movement of shadows slipping between the rocks, pushing through the darkness.
Their maddened shouts and warped songs gave them away long before they got close.
Even the ground had started to tremble, the vibrations spreading as they advanced.
A lot of Echoforms were heading straight for them, the noise from the fight drawing them in like bees to honey.
Elyndra didn't know what had kept them away from this part of the canyon before, but whatever it was, it clearly wasn't enough anymore. Not when a human had walked right into their territory.
"Ugh, just the worst possible timing."
Still, she wasn't worried. A golden slip appeared in her hand, glowing softly, thin golden strings trailing behind it like the chime of bells.
[ Lament:
Slip of Dimensional Authority (Single use): Use this slip to escape from a Mirrorth, effective for only Mirrorths below the Violet Grade.
Grade: Legendary]
The moment Elyndra awakened, this slip had been placed in her hands as a fail safe. A Violet Grade Mirrorth sat two levels above red, which meant the slip would work here—and even in blue graded Mirrorths just above it. Elias didn't know about it, and she had no intention of telling him unless she actually had to use it.
And no, she didn't regret keeping it from him. Not even a little.
Elias was an impulsive, greedy bastard. She could already picture it—him flashing that stupid grin and diving headfirst into a blue graded Mirrorth the moment he found out.
Her gaze shifted back to the canyon.
A storm of Echoforms pushed through the darkness, closing in like an avalanche that refused to slow. Their warped songs carried clearly now.
Too close.
The sound clawed at her ears.
[ZEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAARAAAAA]
[DRAAAAASAAAAHUUUUUTHAAAA]
[GRIHIHISAAAASAAAASAAAASEEEE]
Each step they took cracked the rocks beneath them, breaking them apart before grinding the pieces into dust. The ground trembled harder, like an earthquake tearing through it, and the massive canyon walls vibrated with their maddening voices.
Elyndra prepared to activate the slip, but paused, her gaze drifting to Elias slumped on the ground.
There was a reason she believed an Echoform fragment would be the final push he needed to find his core. She had set this entire thing up for that exact purpose.
Elias was stubborn. If she had told him outright to enter a Mirrorth, he might've hesitated just enough to avoid it.
She'd read him well enough to know he hated being told what to do. So instead, she did the opposite—tried to convince him not to enter one.
And with the way his mind worked, plus the fact that he already wanted to, that was more than enough to push him straight into it... just to prove she had no right to look down on his stupid ass.
Humph. The bastard really took the bait and thought he was being clever too. Serves him right.
Telling him to meditate had just been for show. Something that simple was never going to awaken the [Devour].
Killing an Echoform on his own—that was the real test. The fragment was meant to be the hammer, the one thing strong enough to crack whatever invisible wall was keeping him from reaching his core.
At least, that was the theory. And it lined up with the ridiculous amount of information sitting in her head.
Now all she could do was wait and see if it actually worked. She didn't know if Elias would reach his core before the Echoforms got to him, but she could hold out a little longer and pull them out if he didn't wake up in time.
They'd already spent too long here. It would be a shame to leave without clearing the Mirrorth. This was her first outing with that despicable guy, and walking away without finishing the swarm? That would look terrible on her record.
It had to be pristine. It had to be fabulous—just like her.
Elyndra lowered the slip and looked at Elias, lips curling into a pout on her tiny face. "If we leave here without getting back at these monsters, I'm kicking you in the butt!"
Behind her, something shifted.
The sound of water boiling rose from below the massive stone bridge, blending into the chaos of the maddened monsters, like something down there had been stirred awake by all the noise.
And in the middle of it all, a lone boy lay unconscious, completely unaware of the horde closing in, their twisted faces brimming with malice.
***
Elias was falling again.
The thick, swallowing darkness around him felt familiar, the black so intense it made his head spin. There wasn't a single hint of light anywhere—just an endless, silent void stretching in every direction.
Then he heard it again.
This time, it wasn't that faint, quiet whisper.
It hit like thunder, crashing through his ears, loud and violent enough to make his very soul tremble with excitement.
His heart kicked hard against his chest.
BATHUMP THUMP THUMP
He could feel it—something was coming. And it didn't keep him waiting.
The void, still for so long, began to shift. Slowly at first, then faster, twisting in on itself until it became a massive whirlwind of suffocating darkness.
Standing at the center of it, Elias felt impossibly small against its scale, like a tiny moth caught in something vast and consuming, the spinning void closing in around him.
The whirlpool of darkness spun around him, then suddenly yanked him in, dragging him deep into its lightless depths—straight into the unknown.
SWOOSH!
For the first time since the fall began, Elias felt something solid under his feet. He staggered a bit, still dizzy, then looked up as the darkness pulled back just enough to reveal where he was.
And he froze.
"Well... shit."
A black expanse stretched out in every direction, running from one horizon to the other without end. At its center stood a colossal tree, its branches as wide as mountains, its trunk rising endlessly into the lightless sky above. But there were no leaves—just withered wood, its limbs dry and lifeless, like something caught between living and dead.
Above it, the sky churned. It twisted and turned nonstop, like a massive whirlpool made of pure, suffocating darkness.
Elias started walking through the empty expanse, a strange mix of excitement and unease settling in his chest.
He was excited because he had finally found his [Harmonic Chamber]—the physical expression of a Chordbearer's attribute, a personal space where their Resonance Strings existed... or in his case, his Harmonic Core.
And he was also a little petrified, because the place looked terrifying.
He slowed to a stop when he reached four towering grey pillars, their surfaces covered in strange symbols and stretched patterns. They stood like ancient monuments, impossible to miss in the empty darkness.
But the moment he tried to focus on the markings, something felt off. Like a thin veil slipping over his mind, blurring the meaning out of reach. Every time he tried to hold onto what he saw, it just... slipped away.
Elias winced and looked away.
A moment later, his gaze landed on a large stone jutting out of the ground, faint words carved across its surface.
Strangely, this time, he could read it without any problem.
"You are standing in the last dimension."
"No Song shall resound here."
"For this is..."
"The Voidsong."
"The Unsinging."
"Deadair."
"The Last Note."
"The dimension where all songs die, and the void hungers for more."
Elias stared at the lines, his eyebrow twitching. Seriously... how did something as simple as his Harmonic Chamber turn into an entire dimension?
Wasn't that a bit too much?
He let out a quiet sigh and finally looked toward the one thing that had been impossible to miss, yet he'd somehow ignored it this whole time.
Hanging above the swirling, lightless sky was a massive black sun, its surface folding inward like the starving maw of something far too big to exist.
Thick, colossal chains wrapped around it, stretching across its vast surface, rattling endlessly as they strained to hold the devouring sphere in place.
It was calling him—its voice so sweet it filled his soul with something close to pleasure.
Even though the Harmonic Core was nothing like what Elias had expected, definitely not the size of a damn sun, he still felt something sour rise in his chest at the sight of the chains suppressing it.
It was obvious now. Those chains were what had been blocking him from reaching the Core all this time.
And that thought alone carried a sharp kind of resentment. Not just at the chains, but at the shameless god had probably done this on purpose for some twisted reason.
Still... now that he was here, Elias couldn't see a way to break them. Hell, standing next to that massive surface made him feel like dust. How was he supposed to even scratch something like that?
He shook his head. "No, there has to be something—"
He didn't finish.
A speck of blue light cut through the dark sky like a shooting star, so small it was almost swallowed whole by the darkness around it.
Elias watched, eyes widening, as it streaked straight toward the chains and dissolved into them with a quiet, gentle impact.
Then he felt it.
The chains groaned.
They rattled violently, like something ancient being forced awake, before they shattered all at once.
The sound rolled across the entire expanse like thunder splitting the sky.
The black sun came free, expanding outward like a devouring storm.
Elias felt its call sharpen and clear. Sweet in a way that made his mind drift, cool enough to draw a low groan out of him, and strangely gentle—like floating somewhere high above the clouds with no weight at all.
It wasn't just calling him. It was excited. Frantic, almost. Like a child squealing after finally finding someone it thought it had lost.
Elias felt his feet lift off the ground as he was pulled toward it. He didn't resist. That would've been stupid.
Soon he stood right before the massive orb of darkness, the call brushing against his senses like a living thing.
He took a slow breath, then instinctively reached out and touched it.
The moment his hand made contact, a storm of power crashed into him.
It wasn't gentle anymore.
His mind reeled under the force of it.
His eyes shifted—darkness swallowing them whole, becoming something like the sun in front of him. His body tensed as something deep inside him answered, muscles tightening with a terrifying surge of strength, like a locked potential had finally been cracked open.
And then it happened.
Ripples formed around him.
But they didn't spread outward.
They turned inward.
Pulling.
Condensing.
Like the world itself was being drawn toward him.
Anyone looking at him now would feel it instantly—like staring into a void that wanted to swallow them whole.
A wistful sigh drifted through the dimension, echoing like something vast and tired.
"Ahhh... so another Silent One has emerged. It seems the terror of the Eldritch gods can never truly die... sigh..."
Despite the power still thrumming through his body in waves, Elias lifted his head, confusion and caution flickering across his face at the unfamiliar voice.
But just as quickly as it came, it was gone. The entire space settled back into silence.
Elias exhaled and shook his head. "It's not like I can do anything about it anyway."
His gaze shifted to the massive black sun—something that now felt like it belonged to him in every sense of the word. It hovered in front of him with an almost affectionate stillness, like a child finally returning to its mother's arms.
Elias smiled faintly, a quiet sense of satisfaction settling in his chest. So that was it. The key had been the Echoform fragment all along. His gamble had worked. He was right not to listen to that tiny gremlin ranting about meditation and whatever else.
Then his expression cooled.
His eyes turned sharp, almost like ice settling over fire, as he remembered the Echoforms still waiting back in the canyon.
Get ready bitches, you are all fucked.