While the chamber was an impressive sight to behold, I only had eyes for the singular object stored within it. At the far wall, only a few feet from the black door, stood a waist-high marble podium holding a large glass box. Though I couldn’t make out the details of the object it held, the blinding crimson light it radiated told me it was the origin point of the dark energy feeding me, the final goal of our expedition.
CLAIM IT. I took a single step forward, and the room shook violently beneath my feet, knocking me to one knee. A deafening hum filled the chamber as the space above the display case began to vibrate, distorting like air over hot stone. There was an ear-splitting sound of glass shattering as the air itself ruptured, and a gout of dark flames burst from the crack in reality. I watched as the fissure split open and revealed the black void between worlds, just as it had once before in the Lybesian forest. The gaping wound grew wider and wider as the chamber trembled, expanding until it was nearly twenty feet across. Shadows danced back and forth beyond the veil as a new wave of Serathids began to pour through the gap, falling haphazardly to the marble floor below.
“Lux!” A familiar voice from behind me cut through the reverberating hum that rattled my bones. I spun, sword blazing, to find Lia and Val standing half a dozen yards away. Their faces and armor were painted with a fresh coat of Serathid ichor, and Lia was panting heavily from exertion with a hand over her chest. A strange sense of vertigo spun my head as I saw brief flashes of myself through her eyes: a dark, distorted figure, hidden beneath black smoke and shimmering air, too bright to stare at but too dark to see.
I’m...here, I thought through the furious haze in my mind. While I had lost my sense of self when I relinquished control to the dark presence, Lia had apparently refused to let our connection fade, despite the obvious toll it took on her. Lia, I’m...still here.
“Lux, I can see it,” she called out to me. “The darkness; I can see it. Where the Serathids are coming from.”
Through all the warring forces that clouded my psyche, the statement still managed to plant a seed of fear in my chest. You shouldn’t...see that...
“You have to stop them!” she cried, pointing her sword across the room. “Whatever is in that box, you have to destroy it!”
I turned my attention back towards the source of the rift and the massing force of beasts that crowded around it. The hunger flared in my stomach as I drank in the red light pouring from the display case. “I’ll kill...every last one of these—”
“No!” Lia interrupted my fiendish curse. I whirled on her in a sudden fury at the idea of being denied my quarries, but she held my gaze without flinching. “Leave the monsters, Lux. Get the box! You have to stop them!” While her lips stopped moving, I heard her voice continue in the safe bastion within my mind. I’m with you. You’re strong enough to do this. I love you.
I stared into her eyes, my body continuing to seethe with rage as her message registered in my mind. A flicker of movement caught the corner of my eye, and my attention snapped suddenly to Val. I caught a rare, unguarded expression as our eyes met: terror. Those are Marin’s eyes. Is that how you see me now, too?
CLAIM IT. The dark presence thundered back in full force as my mind began to wander. THE SOURCE. CLAIM IT. My body turned and lunged ahead before I could react, and I found myself sprinting headlong across the chamber towards the growing wave of Serathids and the pedestal behind them. While my sword rose above my head and burned with renewed energy, I reached out into the empty air with my other hand and closed my fingers around an unseen object.
No. My stomach lurched as the world blinked away into darkness, only to reappear a moment later from a different perspective. I won’t claim it. My empty hand rested on the edge of the glass display case, and I stared down into the box at the ultimate source of the Serathid invasion. A distorted, oblong skull made entirely of black glass stared back at me, radiating a wave of void energy more powerful than even my memories of the void itself. You don’t control me. I felt my connection with Lia growing stronger, even as the conflagration around my body intensified.
CLAIM IT. BECOME WHAT YOU ARE MEANT TO BE.
I am what I’m meant to be. I brought the point of my sword down onto the skull with both hands and shattered the artifact into dust. An ominous stillness fell over the room as the incessant hum ceased. The dozen Serathids that had fallen through the rift paused in their charge and turned as a high-pitched hiss rushed out from above my head. Black smoke poured from the wound in reality as it stitched itself shut, vanishing entirely within a few seconds. With the link to the void removed, the dark energy that had suffused the space dissipated, and I immediately took back full control of myself as the black flames covering my body sputtered out.
A pair of warcries echoed through the chamber as Val and Lia charged the remaining beasts that lingered between us. The battle was short-lived; by the time I was able to gather my senses and round the marble podium, the last Serathid had already fallen. After scanning the chamber to ensure we were finally alone, I dropped my sword and let out a ragged sigh of relief. The feeling was echoed through my bond with Lia, and I braced myself as I heard her light footsteps racing towards me from across the
