Chapter 23: The First Test
Veyra watched Caelus descend several steps ahead of her.
She had stopped trying to decide whether he was lying. Every answer she could reach left another problem behind.
His family alone made him troublesome and his knowledge made him worse. The Hero duel should have ended with Caelus dead; instead, he had walked away after predicting movements he had no reasonable way of knowing. Then came Eve, followed by the sacrifice at the valley.
Somehow, the strangest thing he’d said was the one she couldn’t completely dismiss.
I’m the author who wrote this world.
It was ridiculous.
Yet he’d said it with the ease of someone stating his own name.
Veyra’s gaze remained on his back as he descended.
Caelus was going to cross paths with the younger Awakened of this generation. He would meet them, influence them, compete with them, perhaps even fight alongside them. After what she had seen, letting him move freely among them without supervision was irresponsible.
Whatever Caelus Vespera was hiding, she would rather watch him closely than deal with the consequences after the fact.
She would stay close enough to stop him if he became a problem.
And if he didn’t, she would lose nothing by watching.
Veyra descended after him.
The descent continued.
Black stone surrounded them, smooth enough to reflect the faint silver light running through the walls. The architecture stretched far beyond what the entrance had suggested: vaulted ceilings lost in darkness, bridges crossing distant gaps, and corridors disappearing into places Caelus couldn’t see.
Lunar engravings repeated across the walls, each one depicting a different phase of the Moon.
The silence was stranger than the scale. Their footsteps sometimes reached them late, and once Caelus heard his own breathing from somewhere behind him.
He kept walking.
Ordinary labyrinths didn’t allow people like Veyra to walk through them freely. The deeper a dungeon went, the more aggressively its laws pushed back against high-rank Awakened, suppressing their strength or rejecting their presence entirely.
Corrupt Fractures were even less forgiving, often suppressing or outright rejecting high-rank Awakened.
This one didn’t.
That was why he’d brought Veyra.
He hadn’t brought her to carry him through the labyrinth. He’d brought her because this place didn’t care about rank.
And if the deepest section really held the Eclipse Ring, wasting that advantage would have been stupid.
Veyra watched him. She noticed the way his gaze lingered on certain engravings, the way he adjusted their path without explanation, the way he seemed to sense danger before it appeared.
They entered a massive chamber.
Figures filled the space, scattered sparsely across its vast expanse.
At first glance they looked like statues.
Then Veyra noticed one of them had fingers resting against the stone, each digit far too long.
Another hung motionless from an upper arch.
Another stood half-submerged in a wall.
They were humanoid, but only in the broadest sense of the word. Their limbs were stretched unnaturally thin, their joints too angular, their proportions subtly wrong.
The masks were worse.
Enormous Moon faces had fused directly into the flesh, their edges swallowed by skin as though the creatures had grown around them.
None moved.
None seemed to breathe.
Caelus stopped.
Veyra noticed his sudden halt and said nothing.
Caelus’s gaze moved across the chamber, lingering on the creatures nearest the path before shifting toward the deeper corridor.
He knew the rule of this place. They creatures attack when noticed. The problem was that there were too many of them to weave through carefully, and every second they spent here increased the chance of someone else finding the entrance.
Caelus cleared his throat and looked toward her with an almost innocent expression.
"You mind handling the crowd?"
Veyra glanced at him.
Her eyebrow twitched.
"Wasn’t I supposed to be the young lady being escorted?"
Caelus gave her a flat look.
"Young? You are ol—"
A violet line flashed past Caelus’s cheek.
The air cracked.
A compressed spear of sound slammed into the creature beside him, punched through the Moon mask, and detonated on the other side.
The creature’s upper body burst apart.
Caelus’s hair whipped backward from the pressure wave.
Veyra smiled.
"Fine."
Veyra lifted one hand.
Purple needles condensed around her fingers, each one vibrating with a pressure that made the air tremble. They were sound compressed until it had become something solid enough to see.
Caelus’s eyes narrowed.
Veyra flicked her fingers.
The room exploded.
Violet streaks crossed the chamber from every direction.
One punched through a Moon creature’s shoulder and detonated inside its torso. Another shattered a mask from the side, sending white fragments skittering across the floor. Three struck the same target in rapid succession, each impact folding its body backward until the final blast tore it apart into pale shards.
The creatures finally moved.
Hundreds of masks turned.
Violet shockwaves continued to carve through the chamber as Veyra redirected the barrage with minute movements of her fingers, every projectile changing angle in midair.
She wasn’t even moving from her spot.
Caelus stared for half a second too long.
The walls moved.
One creature pulled itself free.
Then another.
Shapes dropped from the ceiling.
Others crawled out of the walls, their elongated limbs striking stone as they surged toward the group.
Veyra lowered her hand.
She had drawn the attention of the entire section.
Caelus looked at her. His expression tightened.
For a moment, he thought she was actually leaving the rest to him.
Then—
Pressure descended.
The first creature lunged
Its charge faltered.
Another followed.
One by one, the entire front of the horde slowed as an invisible weight settled over the chamber.
Limbs dragged and knees buckled, a chourus of cracks and buckles resounded.
Several creatures dropped to one hand just to keep themselves upright.
Caelus watched another Moon creature break apart beneath the pressure, its body collapsing into pale fragments that scattered across the floor.
Veyra had barely moved.
The needles, the pressure, the sheer control over the entire chamber had been effortless. She had fought like this while holding back, and even then the difference between them was absurd.
So this is S-rank mage.
He had written Veyra’s abilities.
Seeing them tear through a chamber was different.
And this was her holding back.
He glanced at the corpses scattered across the chamber.
His eyes narrowed.
If I want to survive this world, knowing what happens isn’t going to be enough.
Information had carried him this far. It wouldn’t carry him forever.
Eventually, he would need enough strength to stand beside monsters like Veyra without becoming a liability.
And standing beside them wouldn’t be enough forever.
His grip tightened around the sword.
Caelus looked at them.
Veyra finally looked back at him.
"Your first test."
Caelus frowned. "Test?"
"As my disciple."
He glanced at the creatures crawling toward them.
"Since when was I your disciple?"
"Since now."
"You can’t just—"
"Kill them."
Then she turned away and began walking to the edge of the chamber.
Caelus stared at her retreating back.
"You’re actually serious."
"Don’t worry, Eve will help you."
Eve emerged from Veyra’s shadow. Her movements were fluid. Controlled. She positioned herself beside Caelus, her blade already drawn.
Caelus sighed.
"I regret bringing you here."
Veyra didn’t respond.
He looked at Eve.
She looked back at him.
Neither of them spoke.
The first Moon creature lunged.
Caelus stepped inside its reach, letting the elongated arm sweep over his shoulder before his sword cut through the joint.
The resistance lasted less than a heartbeat.
The limb fell.
No blood.
The creature twisted toward him, its enormous mask tilting unnaturally as Caelus drove his sword beneath it.
The blade sank in with a dull crack, the creature collapsing into pale fragments.
Caelus pulled his sword free and glanced at the blade.
Nothing.
His gaze settled briefly on the remains.
Would it be the same with blood?
His eyes narrowed slightly.
With a human?
The thought lasted no longer than a heartbeat before another creature lunged.
Caelus rolled beneath its claws as they smashed into the floor. Stone cracked beneath the impact.
He came up on one knee and drove his sword through the creature’s throat.
The blade struck something hard beneath the mask.
The creature shuddered.
Pale dust spilled from the wound.
Caelus pulled the blade free.
Predictable.
The first few attacks were almost exactly as he remembered them. The creatures relied heavily on reach, using their elongated limbs to control distance before committing their weight to a strike. Their bodies were powerful, but their strange proportions made sudden changes in direction difficult.
A third charged from the left.
Caelus waited until the last moment before stepping across its attack. Its arm swept past his chest. He turned with it and cut behind the knee.
The creature buckled.
He raised his sword to finish it.
A black blade emerged from its shadow first.
Eve’s sword pierced through its chest.
The creature stiffened.
Eve stood behind it, one hand still resting against the hilt. Her body had emerged only halfway from the darkness beneath its feet, as though the shadow itself had given birth to her.
She pulled the blade free.
The creature collapsed.
Eve was already gone.
Caelus’s eyes narrowed.
Every shadow in the chamber was another place she could attack from. Every creature standing beneath the silver light cast a potential entrance at its feet.
Another Moon creature swung at Caelus.
He ducked.
A second arm came from the opposite side.
He blocked it with his sword, the impact driving him backward several steps.
Before the creature could follow, Eve appeared beneath its raised arm.
Her blade flashed upward.
The creature twisted violently, trying to catch her.
She was already sinking back into its shadow.
Its claws tore through empty air.
Eve emerged several meters away behind another creature and drove her sword through the back of its mask.
She didn’t stay long enough to watch it fall.
She vanished again.
Caelus’s mouth almost curved.
She’s good.
The pressure around the creatures made their movements slower, but there were still too many of them.
One came from the front.
Another from the right.
Two more descended from the upper platforms.
Caelus stepped backward, forcing the first creature to commit. Its arm swept toward his chest. He twisted aside and severed the limb.
The second was already behind him.
Eve appeared between them.
Her blade caught the creature across the abdomen.
It staggered.
She stepped into its shadow.
The creature turned toward where she’d disappeared.
Caelus finished it from the side.
The body crashed to the floor.
They moved again.
This time Caelus stopped trying to match Eve’s pace.
She created openings.
He exploited them.
A creature lunged at him, only for Eve to appear beneath its arm and force it to twist away from her attack. The movement exposed its ribs.
Caelus’s sword went through them.
Another tried to strike Eve from behind.
She sank into the shadow before the attack arrived.
The limb passed through empty air.
Caelus cut the creature’s wrist.
Eve emerged behind it and cleaved its head.
Their movements began fitting together without either of them needing to speak.
Caelus handled what reached him.
Eve handled what tried to reach him.
The creatures were strong enough to kill him if they caught him cleanly, but their patterns gave him something far more valuable than an easy victory.
He began recognizing the subtle shifts that preceded their attacks.
A tightening shoulder.
A slight change in weight.
The angle of the mask.
The way their fingers dug into the stone before launching themselves forward.
He stopped reacting to their attacks and started moving before them.
One creature descended from above.
Caelus shifted two steps to the right before it struck.
Its claws missed.
He drove his sword through its throat as it landed.
Another came from behind.
He turned before it reached him.
Its arm swept past his face.
Caelus caught the limb with his free hand, twisted with its momentum and drove his knee into the creature’s torso before cutting across its neck.
It fell.
The next one was different.
Its mask was cracked, and its limbs were thicker than the others. The pressure Veyra had placed over the chamber slowed it, but the creature’s sheer physical strength allowed it to force its way forward.
Caelus didn’t meet it directly, he watched its legs and waited.
The creature lunged.
Caelus stepped aside and cut through the right knee.
The leg folded.
The creature crashed forward.
Sword went through the back of the creature’s mask.
He pulled it free.
A shadow passed over the floor.
Eve stepped over the remains and emerged beside him.
She glanced at the remaining creatures.
More were coming.
Caelus tightened his grip.
The pressure Veyra had placed over the chamber was beginning to weaken as the creatures adapted to it. Their movements were becoming faster.
One broke away from the others.
It lunged directly at Eve.
She disappeared.
The creature’s arm tore through the place she’d occupied.
Its mask turned.
A shadow moved beneath its feet.
Eve emerged from behind it, blade raised.
The creature twisted faster than expected, its hand catching her wrist.
Caelus moved.
His sword struck the creature’s elbow.
It cracked, grip loosening from the impact.
Eve twisted free.
Instead of retreating, she stepped forward and drove her forehead into the creature’s mask.
The mask cracked.
Her blade followed immediately, plunging through the fracture.
The creature collapsed.
Eve stood over it for a moment, then dragged the edge of her blade across the creature’s fractured mask before turning away.
Another charged.
Caelus met it.
Steel collided with stone.
He turned its arm aside, stepped into its range and drove his shoulder into its chest. The creature staggered.
Eve appeared behind it.
Her blade passed through its neck.
The body fell between them.
Silence slowly returned.
The last creature collapsed under the combined assault.
Caelus lowered his sword.
His forearm was bleeding. Dust clung to his clothes, and his breathing had grown heavier than he wanted to admit.
Across the chamber, Veyra hadn’t moved from where she’d stopped.
Not a scratch.
Not even a broken strand of hair.
Caelus looked at her.
"You could have killed all of them."
Veyra’s mouth curved faintly. "I know."
Caelus stared at her.
She turned toward the passage beyond.
"Come along, disciple."
His eye twitched. "I’m still not your disciple."
Veyra kept walking.
Eve slipped silently back into her shadow.
Caelus looked from one to the other, then at the dead creatures scattered across the chamber.
He sighed and followed.
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A/N: I’m open for feedback!
If you have any specific advice or points I need to improve on, point it out!