Rethan took a step forward. The anger needed somewhere to go, the words already sharp on his tongue,ready to finally name what had been happening since the moment they'd entered.
Caelan didn't even look at him.
It was like, in a single breath, he'd decided Rethan no longer deserved a reaction.
The mage walked up to the gate.
Up close, its sheer mass was unmistakable,stone and lava fused together into something that looked less like a door and more like a sealed wound. Heat pulsed in the cracks to a rhythm that had nothing to do with any natural flow of energy. It felt like something watching from the other side.
Caelan set his palm to the molten surface without hesitation.
His aura thickened almost instantly, answering the dungeon's resistance. For a fraction of a second the gate seemed to hesitate,then the stone shuddered, deep and low, like something enormous shifting inside.
The gate began to open, slowly, with a long, grinding boom of cracking rock and retreating lava. A wave of heat slammed into the corridor so hard that several adventurers threw up their arms to shield their faces.
"If any of you feel like staying out here," Caelan tossed over his shoulder without turning his head, "be my guest."
He gave a short, contemptuous snort.
"We'll kill the boss ourselves anyway."
The words hit Rethan harder than he wanted to admit. In that instant, something he'd only suspected became painfully clear: Caelan hadn't treated this expedition as a shared operation,or even a test.
It was proof. Proof he was right, no matter the cost.
The anger was still there, hot and thick, but something else slid over it.
Memory.
Otto's desk,heavy, cluttered with paperwork. Otto's voice, calm and stripped of illusions, delivering the line Rethan had thought was exaggeration at the time, and which now returned with its full, crushing weight:
"If Caelan dies, the consequences won't fall only on the Guild. They'll fall on everyone who was present. On me. On you. On the people who did exactly what they were told."
Rethan bit down so hard he tasted blood.
Because it wasn't metaphor, and it wasn't political theater. It was the brutal arithmetic of a world where the name Halven mattered more than the lives of a dozen men.
If Caelan died here, in this dungeon, it wouldn't matter who made the mistake, who warned them, who followed orders. The Head of House Halven's wrath would fall not only on them, but on everyone connected to this raid,down to the adventurers waiting outside, people who'd come here to earn coin, not to become an example.
Rethan drew a breath and forced himself to move.
"Up," he snapped, turning to his people. "Move. Now. We go in after him."
A few of the adventurers stared at him like he'd lost his mind, but there was no time for questions. The gate was opening wider by the second, and from within came a low, deep sound,something that wasn't a roar or breathing, but something in between. Like the dungeon itself reacting to someone pushing into a place it didn't intend to surrender without a price.
"Move," Rethan repeated, louder. "Now!"
Exhausted and burned, leaning on weapons and on each other, they hauled themselves up and stumbled forward,step by step,into the boss chamber.
The moment they crossed the threshold, what struck them wasn't a sight.
It was silence.
Not the absence of sound,more like sound being stopped, as if the chamber had held its breath the instant an intruder crossed a boundary that wasn't meant to be crossed.
The space opened wide, far wider than the corridor had suggested. The chamber was enormous, almost unnaturally symmetrical. Its walls and ceiling were a single continuous shell of black, glassy rock, split by veins of lava that didn't run chaotically, but formed repeating, pulsing patterns,as if the dungeon had sculpted this place with patient precision rather than impulse.
The heat was different here. Less aggressive, more focused,concentrated toward one point. The air trembled, distorting outlines, but it didn't burn on contact. It was as if the room's energy was held in reserve, unwilling to waste itself on intruders until it had to.
As the adventurers and mages took a few steps in, the rock beneath their boots began to glow,slowly, in patches,reacting to their presence. Cracks in the floor brightened, spreading into a gradual circle that radiated from the center toward the walls, like the dungeon itself marking the boundaries of an arena.
Only then did it become obvious that what they'd taken for natural irregularities were deliberate design. Columns of fused stone stood at even intervals. The ceiling rose high and angled subtly inward toward the middle, where faint light seeped from lava veins,enough to track every motion, not enough to feel safe.
At the center was a raised platform of black stone, like a backless throne or an altar.
And above it,floating several feet off the surface,hung a sphere.
Not a wild knot of energy. Not an unstable core you'd see in younger dungeons. Its light was clean, deep, and calm, as though something perfectly ordered burned inside it. The color faded smoothly from bright white at the center to warm gold and red along the edges.
The dungeon core.
Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with power. Anyone with even a trace of sensitivity could feel it: the meaning of this place, the source that fed the entire dungeon.
Beside it, leaned against the raised platform, sat it.
At first glance it could've been another formation of rock,massive, wide, fused with stone and lava so completely the line between creature and chamber blurred. Then your eyes caught the symmetry of its arms, the shape of its head, the huge hands resting motionless on its knees.
Its armor wasn't armor. It was natural growth,black, cracked stone with ember-glow leaking from within, the same glow that lived in the chamber walls. Like the dungeon had used the same material to build its heart and to shape its guardian. The fissures across its body pulsed slowly, in the same rhythm as the core hovering beside it.
Its head was bowed. Its eyes closed.
Sleeping,or waiting.
Then the last of them crossed the threshold, and the gate behind them flickered, still open.
The guardian's eyes opened.
Heat ignited inside them,focused, sharp, not spilling outward, but stabbing straight into the intruders. The whole chamber trembled in response, as if the dungeon itself confirmed: someone had stepped onto its territory, and from this moment on there was no retreat.
Only fight.
Or death.
The core floated a little higher. The light around it brightened. The beast slowly lifted its head, straightening that enormous body with the unmistakable message that it did not appreciate intruders meddling in its domain.
The glow in its eyes hadn't even dimmed from that first flare when its entire body lit up,deep, fiery red. Not like flames bursting chaotically, but like iron heated until it stopped being merely metal and became danger made solid.
Rethan reacted on instinct, faster than thought could turn into words. He knew this moment too well. He shouted, trying to force his people into a half-circle,shields angled, spacing set,anything that might give them a chance to survive the first strike.
"Formation! Spread out,don't stand in a line!" he barked, twisting to see if anyone was listening.
The mages didn't move.
Caelan stood a few steps ahead, focused solely on the guardian, like the rest of the world had ceased to exist the second the enemy finally deemed them worthy of attention. Dorian and Lysand drifted into positions guided only by their own instincts, ignoring any attempt at coordination. In their eyes, this wasn't a team fight.
It was power versus power.
The adventurers tried to move, but exhaustion lagged in their limbs. Their breath tore in their chests as the chamber shuddered again and the heat thickened in the air.
Garrik was a fraction of a second too slow.
The beast lifted one massive hand. The cracks across its body flared brighter, compressing energy into a single point,then it released it in a concentrated wave of fire.
It didn't spill through the chamber.
It hit like a battering ram.
It struck Garrik full-on.
There was no scream,just a short, strangled sound as flame swallowed him in an instant: skin, clothes, protective charms, all of it. The stench of burning fabric and flesh slammed into everyone's nostrils at once.
Garrik collapsed, motionless, still burning,like the fire refused to let go of him right away.
"Garrik!" Rethan roared, his voice cracking halfway through.
His jaw clenched so hard it hurt. There was no time for grief, no time for rage,only decisions, now, or they'd join the body on the floor.
He looked at the remaining adventurers: scorched faces, shaking hands, eyes where fear was starting to beat reason as the truth set in. In this state, with no read on the boss's patterns, death wasn't a possibility.
It was a forecast.
"Listen to me!" he shouted. "Set up! When its skin starts glowing red, it's a ranged fire attack! Cover, scatter, don't stand still!"
A few nodded sharply, scrambling to obey, but even as they moved, Rethan saw from the corner of his eye that Garrik's death was just background noise to the mages.
Caelan didn't even glance that way.
He raised both hands. Dense and blinding energy gathered at a single point before him.
"Out of the way," he said, more to the space than to anyone.
Rethan turned his head just in time to see Caelan draw his arms across his body, locking into full focus as wavering flames began to manifest around him.
"We'll see how you handle this, you disgusting beast."