Chapter 25: Hail The Eclipse
They walked through the golden light of the Sun chamber.
The warmth had faded behind them, replaced by something different. The air grew cooler with each step, carrying a strange stillness that felt older than the stone around them.
The light gradually shifted as well, losing the intensity of the Sun chamber until it became a pale, muted luminescence caught somewhere between silver and gold.
Long shadows stretched across the black stone, moving independently of their footsteps.
Caelus felt it before he saw it: a presence heavy enough to press against his consciousness. It settled into his bones with a weight he couldn’t identify, ancient and strangely familiar despite the fact that he had never encountered anything like it before.
Veyra noticed it too. Her posture changed, her steps becoming more deliberate as her eyes scanned the walls ahead.
Something was wrong.
Then they reached the door.
It was fundamentally different from the previous gates. The Moon Gate had been silver, carved with phases and crescents. The Sun Gate had been gold, radiating warmth and intensity.
This one combined both symbols into a single design. Sun and Moon fused together, their rays and crescents intertwined like they had always been one entity.
The door radiated ominous energy. Even Veyra seemed to take it seriously. She studied it for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Her hand moved slightly, fingers twitching with barely contained energy.
She raised her hand. Violet needles formed around her fingers, condensed sound magic crackling with contained violence.
Caelus stopped her.
"Wait."
She glanced at him. Her eyes were sharp and questioning. "What?"
"I’ll handle it from here."
She stared at him. "You can’t open this. You’re D-rank. This door is reinforced with something beyond your—"
"I know." He paused. "But I brought you specifically to get me this far. From this point, I need to proceed alone."
Her eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because the door only permits one person to enter."
"How do you know that?"
He didn’t answer.
He walked toward the door. The engravings on its surface seemed to pulse as he approached; a slow, rhythmic glow that matched his heartbeat. The fused Sun-Moon imagery seemed to shift in the pale light, the rays and crescents flowing into each other like living things.
He bit his finger and drew blood. Pressed it into the engraving.
The blood spread through the carved grooves, and a dark crimson glow followed in its wake, tracing the fused symbol like veins and filling them with life.
The door gave a low hiss before beginning to open.
Veyra tried to peer inside. She leaned forward, her eyes straining against the darkness beyond the threshold.
She couldn’t see anything.
The darkness beyond the threshold swallowed everything. Even Veyra’s perception failed to penetrate it, as though something on the other side had deliberately closed itself to her sight.
Caelus looked inside.
His expression changed, color drained from his face, his eyes widening.
For a long moment, he didn’t move. He stood at the threshold, frozen, staring into the darkness.
Then he stepped through.
The door closed behind him.
The chamber was vast, swallowed almost completely by darkness.
Caelus stood at the entrance, his eyes adjusting slowly. The pale light from the door had vanished, leaving him in near-total blackness. Only a faint, cold glow from somewhere ahead provided any illumination, a ghostly luminescence that seemed to come from the very air itself.
Then he saw the statues.
They lined the path through the chamber, standing motionless on either side. Winged humanoid figures, each wearing a mask divided between half Moon and half Sun.
The two symbols fused into one design, crescent and rays intertwined, the same imagery as the door behind him.
They were completely faceless, like unfinished sculptures waiting for someone to give them identities.
Their bodies were carved from the same black stone as the walls, their proportions slightly too long, their wings folded against their backs. Yet their faces were completely smooth.
Caelus stepped forward. His footsteps echoed against the stone. The sound seemed to linger too long in the chamber, bouncing off walls that shouldn’t have been close enough to echo.
The statues began to tremble.
Their bodies shuddered almost imperceptibly. A faint tremor running through stone. The sound was wrong, like grinding bone rather than shifting rock.
Then features began appearing across their faces.
The transformations were grotesque, as though something was trying to create a human face without understanding how one was supposed to work.
Eyes emerged in the wrong places. One statue developed an eye on its cheek, another on its forehead. A mouth formed where no mouth should exist, stretching horizontally across a jaw that wasn’t designed to accommodate it.
Features became stretched and misplaced, noses appearing sideways, ears growing from eye sockets, lips forming on bone that had no business shaping speech.
The process was gradual enough that Caelus had time to realize something was terribly wrong.
One statue’s head turned. As though its neck had never been intended to rotate.
But one figure at the center of the chamber remained different.
It stood several steps ahead of the others, partially obscured beneath a tattered stone shroud that hung from its shoulders to the floor. Unlike the surrounding statues, its features had not twisted into the same grotesque arrangement. Its face remained hidden.
Only its silhouette was visible beneath the shroud.
Caelus stopped.
Something about it felt familiar.
The posture.
The proportions beneath the shroud.
His breath caught.
No.
He stared longer.
The figure’s head was slightly lowered, its shoulders relaxed, one hand hanging loosely beside its body.
It looked like him.
Not Caelus Vespera.
Lark.
The name surfaced before he could stop it.
His expression hardened.
That’s impossible.
He had never written a statue like this. He had never designed a character resembling himself to stand in the Eclipse chamber.
Yet the figure was there, watching him from beneath its shroud.
Before he could stop it, a fragment of his conversation with the Goddess resurfaced.
You are not a mortal.
Caelus immediately suppressed the thought and focused on the statue.
The resemblance was gone.
The shrouded figure stood exactly as before, faceless and motionless.
He couldn’t tell whether he’d actually seen anything at all.
Caelus slowed. His hand moved to his sword.
He approached one of them.
His hand remained on his sword, but he didn’t draw. He studied the statue’s face, or what was becoming its face. The eyes were still forming, still moving beneath the stone, like something alive was pressing against the surface from within.
The statue’s newly formed features twitched.
Its eyes opened.
Blood seeped from them.
At first it was only a thin line beneath each eye. Then more followed, running slowly down its stone face.
The statue trembled. Its body shuddered violently. Then it stammered:
"Hail..."
Caelus stopped.
The statue’s mouth twitched. The sound that emerged was broken and distorted, as though speaking physically hurt it. As though the words were being forced through a throat that had never been designed to produce sound.
"Hail... the Eclipse..."
Blood seeped more heavily from its eyes. The crimson liquid ran down its cheeks, its jaw, its neck. It dripped onto the stone floor, forming a small pool beneath the statue.
The statue repeated the phrase, its broken voice growing steadier with each repetition.
"Hail the Eclipse..."
Caelus instinctively retreated a step. His hand tightened on his sword.
The other statues began reacting. One developed a mouth. Another followed. Their eyes began bleeding. One whispered the same phrase. Another repeated it. Several joined together.
"Hail... the Eclipse..."
More voices followed.
"Hail... the Eclipse..."
Soon the entire chamber joined them.
"Hail the Eclipse."
"Hail..."
"Hail..."
Dozens of voices merged into one, too perfectly synchronized to sound human.
Blood continued streaming from their eyes.
Crimson rivers traced paths down their faceless faces, pooling at their feet.
Caelus was pale. His hand trembled on his sword.
This wasn’t in his memories.
This wasn’t something he wrote.
There had been no statues here in the original labyrinth. No worship and no chanting.
The path had always been simple.
Enter.
Reach the altar.
Take the Eclipse Ring.
Leave.
He looked around the chamber. The statues continued their chant. Their bleeding eyes fixed on him in something that looked disturbingly like recognition.
"What the hell is going on?"
His voice was quiet.
The chanting continued behind him. The voices grew louder.
"Hail the Eclipse. Hail the Eclipse. Hail the Eclipse."
He backed away, his eyes sweeping across the chamber for the path he remembered.
Whatever this was, whatever had changed, he still needed the Eclipse Ring.
He moved around the shrouded statue, keeping his distance. The surrounding statues bleeding eyes tracked him as he passed. Their mouth continued its chant, blood dripping from their lips.
And there it was. The altar.
Exactly where he remembered it.
The Eclipse Ring rested on the small stone surface. Pale gold. A single eclipse-like circle forming the central design.
It looked almost ordinary in the dim light.
His hands trembled slightly as he reached for it.
"I got it."
His voice was barely a whisper. Disbelief mixed with relief.
He picked up the Ring. It was warm in his palm. Warm and solid and real.
Nothing happened.
He waited. His heart pounded in his chest.
For a brief moment, Caelus believed everything was fine. That the statues were just decoration. That the chanting was just atmosphere. That he had made it through.
Then he put the Ring on.
Nothing happened again.
Then the backlash began.
Blood burst from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes.
His vision blurred instantly, the world turning crimson as something inside him seemed to tear apart.
He tried to steady himself, one hand closing around the Ring as he attempted to pull it free, but his fingers refused to obey.
He fought against the sensation tearing through him, forcing his body to remain upright even as his strength rapidly disappeared.
His thoughts narrowed. The world became a tunnel of pain and blood. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, fragmenting like glass under pressure.
I’m actually going to die.
He tried to endure it anyway. Tried to hold on and stay conscious.
His vision darkened.
He lost consciousness.
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A/N: Hello, readers! Your author here.
The first arc, "Hail the Eclipse", has officially come to an end. Thank you for all your support so far xD, and don’t forget to leave a comment or review if you have any thoughts on the story!