While the Watcher's form faded into the shadows around him, Asher remained in the silence, his heart pounding and his mind clearer than ever. The dungeon all around him felt alive, the walls alive with flickering light as if they were the heart pulse of some dark creature. The battle was far from over — he could feel it.
Tentatively, he glanced around, still feeling the residue of dark energy, dancing around him as though the Rift had been injured by the clash. Even as the Watcher retreated, the dungeon was not finished with him. The sensation of being observed, of being pulled further in, intensified. Something else was waiting.
Asher's breath came steady. He was not going to fail now. He had already dealt with the Watcher's challenge, but before him now was the core of the Rift, the very center of the anomaly.
The Watcher had claimed he couldn't control it, but Asher wasn't here to just survive. He was there to claim it — to make this power his.
The energy within him throbbed, gaining in strength as he pressed onward. With each step, he felt more assured, more at home, as if the Rift itself knew him.
He followed the warped road and ventured deeper into the ruin. Strange symbols were carved into the walls here, arcane runes pulsing with a dim light. Shadows moved in the corners of his vision, but when he turned, there was nothing there but cold, shifting darkness.
Soon he reached a gigantic, circular chamber. The center their of the room held a giant stone pillar that jutted up from the floor, decorated with long-faded runes that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Atop the pillar was a clear core, barely broader than a small fist, filled with a churning, unnatural violet haze.
The source of the Rift.
Asher tiptoed closer, eyes peeled, ears perked up.] As he came closer, he could feel the power radiating from it, more intense with the proximity. It was the sensation of something more primal than magic, something greater than system-based powers; raw, untamed fury that transcended likely any kind of magic or system of powers.
He extended a hand, the heat emanating from the core. But as his fingers danced just above it, the air around him changed once more.
A rumble echoed through the chamber, and the ground beneath Asher's feet shook.
"You are here…"
The voice — familiar, yet strange.
It echoed in his head, low and resonant. Asher's heart dropped, his body instinctively preparing for the worst. He knew this wasn't just a voice in his head — it was part of this place, part of the very fabric of the Rift.
"I have waited for you…"
All at once, the ground in front of the pillar cracked open. A burst of dark energy around the core exploded outwards, and through the shadowy smoke was pulling to a figure.
It was a man — tall, cloaked in tattered robes that billowed as if they had been spun from the very threads of the Rift. His face was in shadow, but Asher could almost feel his eyes, those deep, glowing eyes, penetrating right through him.
He loomed, old in a way that rendered even Asher's might small. His voice was not angry or forceful, though—it was calm, like the sound of a storm far away.
"So, you have come."
Asher's breath quickened. This figure, this being, was no mere dungeon boss. It was something so much older, and so much more conscious, than anything he had encountered.
"Who are you?" Asher asked, his voice steady despite the parts of his mind that had started to feel anxious. "What is this place?"
The figure cocked its head a little, as if it found the question funny. "I am the Keeper of the Rift, of its heart, the one who tends this place. These shores have seen many before you come seeking power, and will surely see more after you." But you are different. **"
There were the words, suspended in the ether, heavy with significance. The Keeper's eyes felt like they were piercing into his soul.
"You are a remnant. A soul taken out of the time void. A fragment of a world that is no longer there."
Asher's heart skipped again. It was already shaping itself up to be the truth.
"Why am I here?" he demanded. "What is this world? Why was I brought to it?"
The Keeper smiled enigmatically. "You were brought here because you are the key. "For the Rift, for the breaking of worlds. At the cycle that must continue... or be over."
The words fell like a punch to the gut. Asher's mind reeled. The key. The Rift was not some random phenomenon. It was a purpose.
A purpose that was all about him.
The Watcher was watching you, and so were the others. But they are blind to the true nature of your power. You are not restricted by the rules of this world, or the one you've come from. You are the link between them. And I'm here to present you with a choice."
Asher stood tall, fists clenched. "What choice?"
The Keeper's eyes blazed, lit up more, the dark energy around him twisting like a snake.
"You may take the power of the Rift—bind it to your will, shape it to your desires, rule all that lies between worlds. Or, you could seal it away, breaking the cycle, and allow this world to return to its rightful place."
The words echoed in Asher's ears as a challenge. There was no doubt what this choice signified.
He could run to the Rift, accept this power and become something greater than anything this world ever knew. Or he could but turn away, break the cycle, and let the Rift collapse—annihilating everything it had built.
Both would come at a price.
Asher's head was spinning, but his decision was made. He was more than a survivor now.
He wanted to seize the authority that had been entrusted to him.
"I choose to take it."
The Keeper's smile deepened. "Very well."
The Keeper moved his hand slowly up toward the core. The dark energy encircled Asher, closer to the center of the Rift. The light of the core flared brighter, its energy crashing into his body like a tidal wave.
Recharge he was, at the next level—one with force so strong he thought it would consume him—overwhelm him, but rather, it hit him… The power flowed into him, not magic but pure, raw energy. And it wasn't only in his veins; it was in his soul.
He could feel it.
The power was his now.
And he would reshape this world.