They walked forward in silence. Chains still limped, her burns dark against pale skin, but she didn't complain. Blue stayed close, glancing at her side every few steps, her expression unreadable. The hall sloped downward at first, then leveled, then narrowed.
The air changed.
Stone turned smoother. Less cracked. Less worn. The tower hadn't been kind to them so far, but here, it felt... unfinished. Like something old had stopped halfway through trying to make something new.
A door waited at the end of the corridor. Carved from bone-white stone, split down the middle, unmarked.
Chains glanced at Blue.
"Ready?"
Blue nodded once.
They pushed together.
The door opened into a vault-like chamber. Clean. Dry. High-ceilinged. Six pedestals stood in a circle, each with a different item resting on top—weathered, broken, dulled by time. Nothing shimmered. Nothing beckoned. It felt more like a grave than a reward.
Chains exhaled. "Loot?"
Blue didn't answer, but her eyes lingered on the ring. Chains moved toward the gauntlets.
The moment they touched the relics, the floor shuddered.
Stone cracked beneath them like ice.
A seam opened without warning between the two girls—no explosion, no roar. Just a silent split. A wall of solid stone slammed up from the ground, clean and final. It didn't rumble. It didn't shift.
It just was.
"Blue!" Chains threw herself forward, but her leg gave out. She hit the floor hard, skidding forward just as the room divided completely. Her voice echoed once. Then silence.
On the other side, Blue stood motionless. Her hand still clutched the ring. She didn't yell. Didn't bang on the wall. She just stared at it.
The floor beneath them shifted again.
And then they were gone—each pulled into a different chamber.
Alone.
The moment the floor shifted, she knew something was wrong.
There was no drop, no jerk, no sign that she'd moved at all. But the weight in the air was different now. It was thicker. Dry. Her throat scratched just breathing it in.
Chains braced her back against the nearest wall, but there wasn't one.
She opened her eyes.
The vault was gone. Blue was gone.
The pedestal, the cracked stone, the dead air—all of it replaced by a narrow chamber that radiated heat. The light was orange, bleeding from thin cracks in the ceiling like magma crawling behind bone. Everything around her pulsed with faint tremors.
The floor beneath her was fractured, veins of red glowing faintly through the stone. A loud crack echoed above her, and instinct kicked in.
She moved a second before the ceiling buckled.
Stone rained down. She dove, her weight dragging her into a roll that sent fire through her leg. The acid burn along her thigh tore open again, and she bit down on the pain, hard enough to taste metal.
A chunk of stone slammed into the ground behind her and burst into shrapnel.
She didn't wait.
Chains pushed up and ran.
Not toward anything. Not with direction.
Just forward. Just away.
The walls around her began to split, seams widening into jagged mouths of stone. Each step became harder than the last. The air pressed down like a weight on her back. The heat swelled with every breath she took, building like pressure beneath her skin.
The chamber wasn't chasing her.
It was grinding her down.
She ducked under a falling arch, then stumbled across a section of floor that gave out beneath her heel. The drop was shallow—just a break in the stone—but the landing jarred her burned leg and her arm slammed into the ground, taking her full weight.
She cursed.
Loud. Raw. Not from anger, but survival.
"Blue?" Her voice cracked in her throat. She couldn't call out as loud as she wanted to. "You still alive in there?"
No answer.
The only response was another low groan from the stone, deeper this time. More deliberate.
Another quake hit. This one came with no warning. A thick support beam crashed from the ceiling and cracked the floor in two.
Chains threw herself sideways and slammed shoulder-first into the wall. Something in her collar popped. Her vision blurred.
She didn't move.
Not right away.
Her breath came in short, staggered pulls. Her lungs burned. Her hands shook.
But she wasn't broken yet.
She looked down at her arm.
The skin was cut in places. Bruised in others. Her knuckles were bleeding, probably from the last fall. But there was something else now.
Something glowing.
A chain—not real, not metal, not weighty—coiled around her forearm. It was made of light, faint but visible, like embers given shape. It pulsed in time with her heartbeat, each throb making it burn a little brighter.
"What the hell" she muttered under her breath.
But she didn't have time to be confused right now.
Chains ran and ran until she couldn't anymore, now exhausted she leaned her right arm against the wall, out of breath, tired, and lost of all hope.
She punched the wall with her right arm, still glowing red.
"FUCK!!" she yells
She falls to the floor finally too tired to stand, but then a small stone hits her head, smaller than any that have fallen the whole room, "from where?" She wondered, she looked up, and right where she punched the wall was a crater.
She broke the wall with her fist "how?" she was lost and confused but that didn't matter
She stood ready to risk it all one final time.
The room cracked again. Another stone slab plummeted from above, this one wide enough to crush her where she stood.
She didn't dodge.
She stepped forward and drove her fist straight into it.
The pain should have been unbearable.
But instead, something surged.
The glowing chain around her arm blazed.
Her punch didn't just hit—it shattered.
Stone burst apart on impact, exploding outward like glass under pressure. Dust filled her mouth and nose. Her ears rang.
But she didn't stop.
She walked forward through the dust cloud, coughing once, then again. Her legs ached. Her back screamed. Her burned skin peeled against her clothes.
But she was upright.
Not fast. Not clean.
But upright.
The chamber groaned. A final tremor passed beneath her feet, then faded.
The heat lessened.
The pressure lifted.
The floor in front of her smoothed out, leading to a short passage, and beyond it, a door.
Chains stared at it.
Then back at her arm.
The chain was fading.
But it had been there.
Real or not, it had answered her.
She let out a slow, ragged breath.
"Alright," she said. "Guess I'm not done yet."
Then she limped toward the door, dragging one boot behind her.
Still alone. Still burning.
But not broken.