Daemon stood at the mouth of the skull, his boots just brushing the wet stone where the blood-like water pooled. For the first time, real hesitation flickered in his chest. No torch. No map. Just darkness yawning back at him like an open grave.
"Tch." His teeth clicked in irritation. Stepping into blackness blind wasn't bravery. It was stupidity.
But before the thought could fully settle —
Fwmp.
A row of ancient, iron-forged torches along the stone walls lit up one by one, like a path welcoming him inside. Their flames didn't burn yellow — but pale blue, casting cold shadows that danced along the jagged, narrow corridor.
Daemon's eyes sharpened.
"A dungeon?" His voice echoed slightly, lost in the hollow space.
He turned back once, looking at Caldrin, who stood rooted to the spot, refusing to cross the boundary. Smart animal. Even without aura, the horse could sense it.
Daemon took a breath and moved deeper, step by cautious step. The air grew heavier with each stride, as if the walls were squeezing in.
In his past life, dungeons were something even seasoned knights feared. They weren't just underground mazes filled with monsters. They were living things. Ancient, old as the world itself. Watching, shifting, setting traps like a spider waiting for its prey to exhaust itself before the final strike.
Even the entrance could disappear if you weren't careful. Seal you inside. Lock you away. Let the monsters wear you down, night after night, until you either starved or bled to death in the dark.
Daemon didn't need a sword to understand the rules of this game.
It was simple. Kill or be killed.
He crouched, picked up a small stone, and flicked it into the corridor ahead.
FWIP!
Arrows ripped through the dark like a wall of steel rain, embedding themselves into the stone and ground.
Daemon's lips twitched into a dry, knowing smile.
"Figures. The dungeon knows I'm here."
His mind sharpened. Without a weapon, without backup, this was a death sentence. But there was no turning back. Whatever lay at the end of this maze his sword, his history, his future,it was waiting.
He pressed forward, deeper into the cold veins of the dungeon.
The further he went, the more savage the traps became.
Rusty spiked walls that sprang out sideways like jaws — he'd ducked just in time, feeling the sting of one scrape against his cheek.
Stone tiles that sank the moment his foot touched them — sending a rain of sharpened iron stakes from the ceiling. He only survived by hurling his body forward, rolling across the rough floor.
A swinging guillotine, rusted and jagged, that missed his neck by inches when he slipped through a narrow passage, panting like an animal cornered for slaughter.
Luck had carried him this far — but luck wouldn't carry him much longer.
The deeper he went, the more the traps moved like they had minds. Faster. Smarter.
One arrow finally found its mark, slashing through his shoulder before he could pivot away.
"Shit!"
The pain was sharp but clean. He gritted his teeth, yanked the shaft out without a flinch, and pressed forward.
Blood dripped, trailing behind him like breadcrumbs.
The dungeon wanted him to bleed.
But Daemon wasn't about to die here.
Not until he took what was his.
Finally, after weaving through another maze of pressure plates and hidden blades, his strength buckled. He stumbled into a hollowed-out alcove in the stone wall, the perfect dead-end to collapse for prey too exhausted to fight.
Daemon, panting, dropped to the ground, back against the cold stone. He had no choice. He had to recover.
Closing his eyes, he drew what little strength remained, focusing it inward. His astral core flickered, unstable from the fight with the ogre and the relentless traps. But one card was still left.
"Inverse Divinity."
The crimson glow sparked at his fingertips, flooding his broken body with corrupted healing energy. It wasn't painless — his muscles burned as if re-forging themselves. His veins pulsed like they'd burst from the overload.
"Faster... You can do more."
He grit his teeth, forcing the current to flow, feeding it into his core, watching the star flicker brighter — not perfect, but enough.
When his breathing finally steadied, Daemon stood. Half-restored. Half-broken. But alive.
This time, he didn't walk.
He ran.
Channeling his aura into his legs, the stone beneath his boots cracked from the force of each step. He dashed through the halls, no longer dodging every trap but enduring them, trading skin and blood for speed, outrunning the dungeon's malice.
Until finally — the maze opened.
Before him stretched a chasm, deep and vast like a split earth wound, and down below...
A faint light.
The river of blood that he'd followed all this way wasn't natural. Its source wasn't nature or curse. It came from one thing.
The sword.
There, buried deep within a temple structure carved from bones and old stone, the blade sat — impossibly dark, its edge drinking what little light flickered from the chamber's torches. It wasn't resting on a pedestal.
It was being held.
By thousands of hands.
Pale, gray, rotted hands, all layered on top of one another like a grotesque shrine. Arms twisted and locked, bone fused to bone, locked in eternal vigil around the hilt.
Daemon froze, breath caught.
The tale wasn't a myth. It was real.
All of it.
After the Demon King had fallen, the sword went berserk — slaughtering angels and humans alike, driven by the leftover will of its master.
To contain its hunger, a single desperate king had taken the sword and fled with it to the ends of the world.
But the sword wouldn't be left unguarded. His people, loyal to madness, had severed their own hands. Piece by piece. They gave them to the king. To shield the sword, to bury it in devotion, to wall it off from the world.
Daemon stood there, staring at the morbid monument.
All that sacrifice. All that suffering.
For a sword.
His sword.
A bitter smile curled on his lips.
"Pathetic."
The hands might have held onto it for centuries. But they wouldn't hold it from him.
Not anymore.