Upon passing through the concealed gate Aurel had uncovered, all doubt vanished. The sensation was unmistakable. The pressure in the air. The subtle distortion of space. The faint hum beneath reality itself.

  This was a gateway to another world. In this land, such places had a name. Dungeons.

  “So the Citadel was built on top of a dungeon…” Claudiu murmured.

  The Messiah, Aurel, and Claudiu all turned toward Magister Luke. If anyone should have known, it would have been him. But the confusion on the man’s face was genuine. He stared at the landscape beyond the gate as if seeing it for the first time.

  He clearly knew nothing the Messiah realized.

  Above them stretched what appeared to be a vast blue sky. Yet anyone with vision-enhancing abilities could see the truth. It was manacyte layered across the ceiling, glowing faintly to imitate daylight. There was no sun. No moons.

  Clouds drifted lazily across the artificial firmament.

  Below spread endless green plains, grass swaying gently in a wind that felt almost too measured, too perfect. The path beneath their feet led forward in a straight line, cutting through the idyllic scenery.

  In the distance rose a tall ivory white tower. At first glance it seemed solitary. Then they noticed the city around it. An entire settlement sprawled outward from the tower’s base. Large enough to rival a minor capital. White stone buildings. Wide avenues. Market squares.

  And not a single sign of life.

  No smoke curled from chimneys. No figures walked the streets. No sound echoed between the buildings. The closer they moved, the heavier the silence became.

  The Messiah had entered dungeons before. He recognized this. A constructed city. A hollow mimicry. A stage built by the dungeon to house its spawns.

  “Messiah, what do we do now?” Aurel asked.

  He turned to his long standing companion. Aurel still held the severed head of the Citadel’s Magister. His expression carried a manic sharpness. This mission was not merely strategic for him. It was personal. Claudiu felt it too.

  “We proceed to the tower,” the Messiah said.

  He selected the original strike party intended for the Elven Queen and her protectors. Two angels. Six heavily armed archangel constructs. Four high ranking Highbreed and Verdenkind.

  Then he looked at Aurel.

  “You will remain behind. Along with Christopher and…”

  His gaze shifted to Magister Luke. The hatred burning in the man’s eyes was unmistakable. Christopher stiffened at the look.

  “…You two remain here.”

  Aurel nodded without protest and stepped back with Christopher.

  The Messiah and his chosen group advanced into the city.

  They searched briefly. For spawns. For hidden defenders. For the devoted elven guardians they had encountered above.

  Nothing.

  The streets were as empty as they had appeared from afar.

  With Aurel’s assistance, they bypassed the city entirely. Space folded.

  Teleportation in Fiendfell worked very differently than how one perceived it. For the most part teleportation was movement through parallel layers of reality stacked upon one another. A traveler shifted from Point A to its reflection in another layer, then across that plane to the reflection of Point B, and finally back into the original layer at Point B.

  A sequence of controlled slips.

  But here’s the thing, dungeons were sealed spaces. There were no adjacent layers within them. Teleportation here obeyed a simpler and harsher rule: Point A to Point B.

  Nothing between.

  They appeared at the base of the tower. The doors opened just as those of the Ebony Tower had before. This time however with no resistance. No magic discharge. No defensive barrage.

  A familiar corridor stretched ahead. They entered in silence. In the Ebony Tower above, every step had been contested. Blood spilled by the ascetics had marked their advance.

  Here, while the architecture was identical, no one opposed them. The silence and emptiness felt wrong. Like a held breath. Like the quiet before something far worse revealed itself.

  That silent promise of confrontation reached its peak when they stood before a sealed metallic door, heavy and seamless, reminiscent of the one that had once guarded the tomb of cold. If this were the ebony tower, behind should be the grand staircase. The place they met Christopher at.

  The Messiah gestured for someone to open the door. Two angels stepped forward.

  Metal groaned in protest as the doors were forced open. The sound rolled through the chamber beyond, echoing into unseen heights. The Messiah readied himself, senses sharpened, magic coiled beneath his skin.

  An ambush was expected.

  None came. Even when the doors stood fully open, the space beyond remained utterly still.

  Frowning, they advanced inside and found that what awaited them was not another mirrored sanctum. It was something else entirely.

  “…What is this place?”

  The chamber was vast. Cylindrical. It stretched upward so far that the uppermost reaches faded into dim obscurity.

  Bookshelves lined the curved walls in perfect rings. Layer upon layer. Floor upon floor. Each tier formed a suspended circular balcony hugging the outer wall, like the coils of a colossal serpent wrapped around the interior.

  Stolen story; please report.

  But there were no stairs. No ladders. No visible means of ascent.

  Each level floated as an isolated ring, separated by open air. The center of the chamber was hollow, an immense vertical shaft running all the way to the tower’s unseen summit.

  “This is a library…?” Christopher murmured.

  “It seems—”

  The Messiah’s words died in his throat. Something had changed. At first it was subtle. A pressure in the air. Then it grew.

  A presence settled over them. Heavy. Oppressive. It pressed down on their shoulders and tightened around their chests, as if invisible fingers were closing around their throats.

  One by one, they felt it. Even the angels stiffened. Slowly, instinctively, their gazes lifted. The Messiah’s eyes narrowed. His irises shimmered faintly as he activated his vision-enhancing skill.

  And then he saw it. Silence fell within him.

  Clinging to the distant ceiling was a vast, writhing mass.

  It pulsed.

  Its surface glistened with a slick, wet sheen. It was flesh. Raw. Quivering. Folded and knotted into a grotesque tangle that defied symmetry. Veins as thick as tree roots bulged across its surface, throbbing with a sickly green luminescence.

  “What… is that…” he whispered in horror.

  The thing moved.

  Its folds twisted inward with a nauseating contraction. A wet tearing sound echoed through the chamber.

  Then it disgorged.

  A torrent of dark green liquid burst from within its mass and rained downward.

  SPLASH. SPLASH. SPLASH.

  The Messiah reacted instantly. His hand snapped upward and a barrier of radiant light flared into existence above them. The foul downpour struck the shield and sizzled on contact, sliding off in greasy streams that splattered against the marble floor.

  The barrier held. But by its nature it did not protect them from unarguably the worst aspect of that liquid: the smell.

  It struck them like a hammer. Rot. Putrefaction at a whole new level. The dense stench of countless corpses left to fester.

  “What the fuck?!”

  “Ghh—!” one of the Highbreed choked.

  A Verdenkind warrior, powerful enough that in a certain era he would have had what it takes to bear the title of king, gagged violently. His face drained of color as he fought to suppress the urge to vomit.

  “The smell… it’s death itself…” someone rasped.

  “Hold your composure!” the Messiah commanded, though strain edged his voice.

  Above, the mass shuddered again. A wet splitting sound followed. Something else began to fall. Solid this time.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Struck against the barrier, they fell to the marble like hail—similar in sound, size, and color—but then they did something hail cannot: they writhed with grotesque vitality. These were maggots, pale and swollen to the thickness of a man’s thumb.

  “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  The scream ripped through the cavernous library. The Messiah’s focus snapped to the man to his side.

  “Aurel?!”

  The man had collapsed to his knees. His fingers dug into his own arms with savage force, nails carving through skin. Blood streamed down as he clawed at himself. Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were wide, unfocused, drowning in something unseen.

  “On your guard!” the Messiah roared, pivoting sharply. “Mental assault. Fortify your minds!”

  Yet even as he issued the command, something felt wrong. There was no psychic pressure. No foreign will scrape against his thoughts.

  “Under my skin! UNDER MY SKIN!” Aurel shrieked, voice cracking into something raw and animal.

  The Messiah stilled.

  “Get them off! They’re crawling. They’re eating me. AAAH!”

  It took him long enough but when it hit him, it struck with brutal clarity.

  “Queen Arianna,” that’s the name that came to his mouth in resentment.

  Claudiu and Aurel had faced the woman before. It was an encounter that left them with dreadful parting gifts.

  Cursed, Aurel had endured agony equal to centuries. The torment could only be broken by freeing him from his vessel and transferring his soul into another.

  Claudiu had received his own cruel farewell.

  The late queen had grafted parasitic worms onto him, creatures that drove him into a frenzy for a time. Though they had long since been removed, and though they had managed to save Aurel’s vessel, which is very useful considering how unique and convenient teleportation is for their cause, the memory of those things squirming beneath his skin remained. The trauma never vanished. It only slept.

  And now, in this chamber where maggots rained from the ceiling, it had awakened.

  “Tran!” the Messiah commanded. “Cast Dragon Heart. Now.”

  Tran moved instantly, hands weaving the sigil. Golden light blossomed around Aurel, warm and steady. The spell sank into him, calming his racing pulse, dulling the phantom sensation tearing through his nerves.

  Aurel’s screams fractured into ragged breaths. His fingers loosened from torn flesh. The golden aura held him together where memory had tried to rip him apart.

  The Messiah exhaled slowly.

  “This is not the place to—” something happened, interrupting him.

  Clank.

  Metal struck marble. His head snapped toward the sound. The shackles that had bound Magister Luke lay empty on the floor.

  The Messiah’s jaw tightened. Despite no longer being restrained by the shackles, Magister Luke had not fled the scene.

  He was still there but changed.

  Where the restrained angel once stood now hovered a being of dreadful radiance. His humanoid form had collapsed inward, reshaped. His face was gone, replaced by a vast golden eye that rotated slowly in its socketless mass.

  Six wings extended from his back in layered pairs. Around him spun concentric rings, each lined with countless unblinking eyes.

  Recognition came to the Messiah instantly.

  “Surrendering your sentience,” the Messiah sneered coldly, “insanity.”

  The man known as the second magister of the vault, had once, as a highbreed, ascended to become an angel. Now he did the opposite of that, devolving into a Throne. A being of instinct and divine mechanism. A being with no will of its own: A monster of the angelic kind.

  The rings around the creature accelerated. Light gathered at the center of its colossal eye. Without hesitation, it attacked.

  The Messiah’s vision flickered with cold text.

  Ability detected: Eyes of Judicature.

  A spear of golden radiance erupted from the Throne’s central eye, carving a straight path toward them.

  He did not move. The beam struck. And dissolved harmlessly against him.

  “This is a shame, Magister,” he said quietly.

  His blade formed in his hand as he poised to finish this in one motion. “I will end you and reclaim what little remains.”

  He was halfway through his thrust when he noticed the floor darkening. A figure abruptly burst from Magister Luke’s shadow, with black veil trailing, curved blade coated with what could only be venom.

  Clang.

  The Messiah intercepted the strike inches from his skin. Sparks flared between their weapons. Their gazes locked.

  Her eyes were sharp. Focused. Unafraid.

  She twisted, her free hand snapping outward. A second blade manifested in midair, already coming to nail him.

  Unfortunately for her, she was too slow. His sword reversed direction in a clean upward sweep. A wet sound split the air. Her arm separated from her shoulder.

  Before the severed limb struck the ground, his blade drove forward and pierced her chest, lifting her slightly as steel punched through bone.

  Crimson bloomed across black fabric.

  The veil tore free. Long black hair spilled over her shoulders. Pointed ears framed a youthful elven face, now pale above spreading crimson.

  “De… vo… tee…”

  The distorted murmur echoed from the Throne.

  Her lips trembled. Blood frothed at their corners. “Leave,” she rasped.

  At these words, the Throne shimmered. Then vanished, dissolving into empty air like light swallowed by water.

  The Messiah’s eyes narrowed. He knew the Magister was still close. Hiding in a folded plane, something that angelic monsters like him have access to. Waiting. He was about to deal with that, when he realized he had no time to spare for that.

  Above them, the grotesque mass clinging to the ceiling convulsed violently. Veins bulged. Flesh tore.

  SPLURCH.

  The swollen surface split open with a nauseating rip. Something forced its way out, displacing folds of pulsing tissue as it descended.

  A towering humanoid form dropped heavily onto the marble floor.

  Its body was bloated, stitched crudely together by blackened sinew. Festering wounds leaked thick ichor. Patches of skin hung loose, revealing layers of rot beneath.

  It opened its mouth, letting out a scream that was not merely sound. It carried pressure. The air trembled. Several of them staggered as blood trickled from their ears.

  “Appraisal. Now!” the Messiah commanded, since he didn’t have the skill.

  One of his comrades stepped forward, eyes igniting with analysis. “Type… Undead. Class… Regent of Putrescence.”

  A silence followed.

  “…A Class?” someone breathed. “A monster with a Class?”

  The appraisal continued, voice faltering.

  “Name… Cleon.”