The shrine's altar pulsed with a sickly green light as I withdrew my hand, the afterimage of the shadowed figure still seared into my vision. Lin Mo stood beside me, his lantern casting flickering patterns on the ancient carvings. The air smelled of ozone and decay.
"Did you see it too?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Lin Mo nodded grimly. "Fragments. The seal here is breaking. We're too late."
Before he could elaborate, the ground beneath us cracked with a sound like splintering bone. Black tendrils of smoke erupted from the fissure, coalescing into humanoid shapes with glowing red eyes. Their limbs elongated unnaturally, fingers ending in razor-sharp claws that scraped against the stone floor.
**"You shouldn't have come."** The voice boomed from all directions, vibrating in my teeth. The shadowed figure from my visions materialized above the altar, its form shifting between corporeal and smoke. Its eyes burned brighter than the lantern's flame. **"The system was meant to prepare you, not defy me."**
The Serpent's Eye Pendant seared against my chest. I drew a talisman, but the characters burned black before I could activate it. Lin Mo's dagger clattered to the ground as his arm suddenly went rigid, veins bulging with dark energy.
"Control... slipping..." he gritted out, sweat dripping from his chin. "The shrine's energy—it's amplifying the corruption!"
The smoke creatures lunged. I dodged a claw swipe, rolling behind a crumbling pillar. The pendant's heat intensified, its glow revealing strange symbols etched into the pillar's base—a spiraling pattern that matched the carvings on the blackened copper coins we'd collected.
"Clever child."The entity's laughter echoed as another pillar exploded into shrapnel. "You've been gathering anchors for my prison all along."
A tendril of smoke wrapped around my ankle, yanking me toward the fissure. I slammed the pendant against the stone floor. Golden light erupted in a shockwave, scattering the creatures. In that brief illumination, I saw it—the central altar wasn't stone, but petrified flesh, threaded with pulsating black veins.
Lin Mo screamed. His right eye had turned obsidian-black, his fingers clawing at the creeping corruption spreading from his neck. "The coins!" he choked out. "Use them with the pendant—!"
The entity's form solidified into a monstrous parody of Elder Wu. **"You'll join him soon enough."** Its clawed hand plunged toward my chest.
I threw myself sideways, tearing the pouch of black coins from my belt. The pendant's chain snapped as I pressed it against the coins. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the world inverted.