"Marcusss."
He opened his eyes slowly to the sight of rubble surrounding him, dust still settling in the red lit air, the chamber ringing with the distant sound of Liz's blade intercepting stone.
He blinked once. Twice.
I got one shotted by a golem, he thought, lying in the rubble with the particular stillness of someone taking personal inventory. These things sure pack a punch.
He turned his head slowly.
Liz was across the chamber moving between both golems simultaneously, her blade blazing white. She was faster than both of them and she knew it, using that speed to stay just outside their reach, ducking under wide swings, redirecting off the walls, never staying in one position long enough to become a target. She was holding. Barely.
The Hollow Keeper stood at the far end watching everything with the mild disinterest of someone observing something too far beneath them to be worth moving for. Like a man watching insects argue.
Then the system chimed.
[SHOP: UPDATED]
[NEW ITEMS AVAILABLE]
[HP POTION — TIER C: RESTORES 60 HP — 5 COINS]
[MP POTION — TIER C: RESTORES 60 MP — 5 COINS]
Marcus looked at the notification from inside a pile of rubble.
"How generous," he muttered.
He pulled up his stats quickly.
[HP: 1/100]
[MP: 45/100]
[CURRENCY: 67 COINS]
He bought two HP potions and two MP potions without hesitating. Twenty coins total. He used both HP potions back to back and felt the restoration move through him like warm water filling a cold space, the complaints from his body dialing down from urgent to manageable.
[HP: 100/100]
He used one MP potion.
[MP: 100/100]
He kept the second MP potion in reserve and pushed himself upright from the rubble, brushing stone dust off the Devil Loom Coat with the focused energy of someone who had things to do and had already spent enough time on the floor.
[CURRENCY: 47 COINS]
He looked at the number.
"Guess we might eat dust after all," he said quietly.
Across the chamber one of the golems swung a fist the size of a cart wheel at Liz and she went under it by inches, her Threadreading pulling her clear at the last possible moment, the displaced air from the miss moving her hair.
"Liz," Marcus called.
She didn't look away from the golems. "You're alive."
"Don't underestimate these things," he said, moving toward the chamber floor properly. "One direct hit means instant death.
"How come you're still alive?," she said, ducking the second golem's backhand and coming up with a cut across its forearm joint that made it stagger. "Took you long enough to wake up."
"God had other plans for me," Marcus said. "Apparently it wasn't done with me yet."
The Hollow Keeper turned its attention to Marcus as he stepped fully clear of the debris. Something shifted in its posture, a slight adjustment, the recalibration of something that had dismissed him and was now revising that assessment.
"The coat," it said. The voice came from everywhere at once, low and layered. "L Death nullification." A pause. "Interesting although I new something minor won't kill you."
"Not until you've kissed this world goodbye," Marcus said.
The Hollow Keeper looked at him with the particular quality of something that found this genuinely worth its attention for the first time.
"A pure Drauven," it said. Not a question. "A statement he made as if he knew my origin. I have been waiting."
"Y'all stop this dra.. crap"
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm not here because of you. You're just a process."
Its gaze moved to Liz, who was still moving between both golems with everything she had. "The girl is capable. But she is a disturbance to what needs to happen here."
The Hollow Keeper watched Liz moving between both golems and something in its posture shifted.
"Playtime is over," it said quietly.
It raised one hand and the air in the chamber changed texture, thicker, charged, the red veins in the walls pulsing once in response to whatever it had just released. The golems absorbed it and the change was immediate and visible.
Their movements sharpened, the slow grinding patience replaced by something considerably faster, the gap between their swings tightening until Liz's speed advantage that had been keeping her alive stopped being an advantage.
"What…" Liz was startled.
The first golem was already inside her guard.
She blocked the strike but the force behind it was double what it had been and her feet left the ground for a moment before she found them again.
The second came in from the right before she'd finished recovering and she got her blade up but the impact drove her backward.
Then the third exchange happened and the golem caught her sword.
Not her. The blade. One massive stone fist closed around it mid swing and the sound that followed was sharp and final.
Crack.
The tiger handled sword Poco had forged from Cave Mrellie stone snapped at the hilt.
Liz stared at the broken handle in her hand for one full second.
The golem's other fist was already moving toward her face.
[SPD: 22 → 24]
SWISH!
Marcus was already across the chamber.
He crossed the distance in the time it took the golem's fist to travel half its arc, got between Liz and the impact, caught her around the waist and pulled her sideways and down and took the displaced air from the miss across his back as he lowered her to the chamber floor.
He stayed crouched over her for a moment, one hand on the ground beside her head.
She looked up at him breathing hard, her sword hand still holding the broken hilt, dust in her hair, a cut across her cheek from somewhere in the last exchange that she hadn't noticed yet.
"Stay down," Marcus said. "You've done enough. I'll handle the rest."
"Marcus I can still—"
"Your sword is in two pieces," he said. "Stay down."
She looked at the broken hilt. Then at him. Something moved across her face that wasn't agreement exactly but was close enough to it.
"Don't die," she said.
"Working on it," he said and stood up.
The Hollow Keeper looked at him across the chamber with something that had shifted from mild disinterest into something closer to genuine attention. It tilted its head slightly, the darkness around it moving with the gesture.
"How confident now," it said. "You have no sword. Your companion is down. Both golems are active." A pause. "Show me the power you have been hiding. I have been patient long enough."
Marcus looked at the two golems. At the broken sword on the floor. At the Hollow Keeper standing between them with centuries of patience behind its eyes and whatever was underneath that patience finally surfacing.
He rolled his neck once.
"You don't have to tell me twice," he said.
[MP: 100/100]
[MP POTION IN RESERVE: 1]
His hand came up and the words rose from somewhere underneath language, from the part of him that had died on a fortress floor and come back with something older than the system woven into the wound.
"Malachar."
The air split open.