The silence at the bottom of Telesto Canyon was absolute, almost unreal after the carnage. The air was laden with a grayish dust that clung to the throat with every breath. The stench of sulfur mixed with the metallic smell of the thick, dark fluid still oozing from the shattered remains of the rock colossus.
Darian, leaning against a large obsidian rock, tried to swallow, but a whiplash of agony ran through his ribs and forced him to close his eyes. His right forearm was destroyed; the bone was fractured and pushing from within, while the skin showed severe, reddened burns from the savage plasma blast that had sent him flying. Centimeters from his hand, a sad trail of gray dust was all that remained of his iron sword, disintegrated from failing to withstand the thermal pressure.
A few meters away, Aria and Varkas lay on the ground, trying to catch their breath after the brutal shockwave. Aria's face was covered in soot, gritting her teeth and trembling slightly as she tried to push herself up onto her knees. Varkas, the immense warrior, held his side with a grimace of pain, silently watching Vaelor's sky-blue egg resting intact among the scorched stones.
Before them, floating above the remains of the aberration, the grimoire emitted a dark violet pulse. The effect on the surroundings was purely physical, raw and crushing. The loose stones around the book trembled against the ground, unable to rise a millimeter, subjected to an invisible pressure that made the air thick as mud.
Darian felt the pull at the center of his chest. It was a gravity that didn't pull at his body, but at his own empty mana nodes. Using only his left arm and clenching his teeth until his gums bled, he began to drag himself forward.
"Darian..." Aria murmured weakly, a warning that drowned in a dry cough.
He didn't stop. The obsidian dust scraped his face and knees, but he continued until he was before the black leather tome displaying the dark eclipse and broken chains on its cover. When he placed his left hand on the frozen cover, the impact cut off his breath at once.
It wasn't a magical flash; it was as if a lead anvil had dropped directly onto his sternum. Violet threads of energy drove themselves into his flesh, piercing his defenses and dragging his consciousness toward the void. Darian wanted to scream when the air abandoned his lungs and gravity slammed him face-first against the canyon stone. The ringing in his ears became deafening, reality cracked around him like broken glass, and the darkness swallowed him whole by force.
When he opened his eyes, the suffocation had vanished. There was no more sulfur, no pain, no broken rocks.
He found himself standing in an immense room of dark stone columns and high ceilings carved with millimetric precision. A huge window let in a soft, warm orange light that bathed the marble floor.
In the center, seated at a desk of solid wood, was Sarion.
He had skin of lunar paleness and dark horns curved backward. The man wrote quickly, absorbed and deeply engaged with his notes, tracing runic symbols on a scroll with absolute concentration. He emanated no killing aura, no bloodlust; only the dedication of a scholar lost in his own world.
The heavy oak door opened and a woman entered with a calm, elegant step. She wore a dark, loose dress that revealed an advanced pregnancy. Upon seeing her, Sarion set his quill on the table. His face, marked by lack of sleep and the demands of study, lost every trace of tension in an instant. He rose quickly, took her hands with extreme delicacy, and guided her to a reading armchair.
"These calculations are complex, Lireth," said Sarion, sitting on the floor beside her and resting his head on her knees with a sigh of exhaustion. "If I can't stabilize the flow of these portals, King Drevath will think I've failed. I can't allow the city's defenses to be weak."
Lireth stroked his dark hair with a serene smile.
"You are the most brilliant of us. You won't fail," she responded, her voice transmitting absolute peace. "Drevath built these walls so that we would all be safe. Our child will be born in a secure kingdom. We will be happy here."
Sarion closed his eyes and placed a hand on his wife's belly with pure devotion.
Darian, invisible in his corner, looked through the window. Out there were no barren wastelands or torture pits. There were canals of clean water reflecting the orange light, orderly plazas, and people walking in tranquility. He saw civilians laughing, merchants arranging their stalls, and children playing under the watch of guards who didn't grip their weapons. They weren't the demons of legends; it was a living city. A peaceful home.
A savage, invisible pull in his chest tore him from the vision.
Darian returned to reality choking, coughing blood and ash. Varkas held him by the shoulders with brutal force to keep him from smashing his head against the ground in his desperation to breathe. Aria was kneeling beside him, eyes wide open.
"Breathe, pup!" the giant shook him urgently.
Darian grabbed onto the warrior's leather breastplate. The dark energy was already inside, beating heavy and dense. He was in shock. The images of Lireth stroking her husband's hair collided violently against the stories of merciless monsters that the Empire's priests had taught him since childhood.
"They were people..." Darian said, his voice broken, looking at Aria with a mixture of horror and fury. "They weren't monsters. I saw their city, Aria. Sarion... had a pregnant wife. They were going to have a child. They were building a home."
Aria frowned, completely bewildered, and exchanged a quick glance with Varkas.
"What are you talking about, Darian?" she asked, leaning closer. "Who did you see? What did that book do to you?"
Darian swallowed, tasting the metallic flavor of blood in his mouth.
"It showed me the past. Sarion's memories," he explained with broken breath, trying to make the words make sense. "They lied to us our whole lives. They massacred them... and told us they were savage demons to cover up what they did."
Aria lowered her gaze, processing the magnitude of a deception on a global scale. Varkas, however, let out a rough grunt from deep in his throat. There was no surprise on the weathered face of the wolf warrior, only a dark recognition of how the world worked.
"For those in power, the enemy always has to be a monster," the giant stated, with a cold, direct bluntness. "If you tell an army of peasants that they're going to march to kill families and burn cradles, they throw down their swords and rebel. But if you tell them they're going to hunt soulless demons who want to devour the world... they march happily."
The ascent to the surface was genuine physical torture. Varkas operated the old chain elevators by sheer brute force. His biceps trembled from the effort of lifting the platform while he ignored the dark bleeding from his own side. Darian, seated on the creaking wooden planks, protected Vaelor's sky-blue egg with his uninjured arm.
Upon arriving at Amber Refuge, the silence of the town was total and oppressive. The dwarf leader made his way through the crowd and, upon seeing the egg in the young human's hands and confirming that the sky guardian wasn't returning, bowed his head. The entire settlement sank into silent mourning.
There was no time for celebrations or grand victory speeches. They were escorted to a separate room in the local tavern. The town healer was relentless: he set Darian's shoulder with a dry yank that made him bite his lip until it bled, and splinted the fractured forearm with thick wood and tight bandages. They spent barely three days shut inside, sleeping from extreme exhaustion, eating in silence, and healing the bare minimum needed to stay on their feet.
It was on the night of the third day that Darian tried to get out of bed to approach the small fireplace. When he put his boots down, the floorboard cracked with disproportionate violence, as if the wood were about to split.
He felt that every step required double the muscular effort. The new dark gravity nested in his chest like a lead stone. Every movement felt strangely heavy, as if everything around him was trying to crush him toward the center of the earth.
Aria, finishing adjusting the bloodied bandage on her leg, looked at him intently.
"You move differently," she noted, lowering her voice in the dim room. "Like you're carrying solid iron armor."
Darian leaned against the doorframe to keep his balance. The wood groaned under his grip.
"It's this magic..." he murmured, breathing deeply, feeling how the air weighed in his lungs. "It pushes down constantly. I'm going to have to get much stronger physically if I don't want it to break my own bones from within."
The following morning, ready to depart, the dwarf leader intercepted them at the main door. He carried a heavy leather sack that he set on the ground with a dry thud.
"The Resonant Core Crystals, the dragon's core, and the thick rock plates for the giant. And the official sealed report," said the dwarf with a rough expression, without a trace of joy. "Valerius will know exactly what it cost to pull this from the abyss."
They began the march away from the canyon. The return toward Arkania's walls forced them to cross through the deep scars of the Emerald Forest, where ancient trees lay uprooted by the titans' battle. The thick mud clung to Darian's boots, but the real pressure came from within. The grimoire's energy pulsed dense in his chest with every step, and the sky-blue egg stored in his pack vibrated faintly in response.
However, hundreds of kilometers away, beneath the cold darkness of forgotten ruins, a pair of crimson eyes snapped open.
The demon they had faced in the Black Coral cave raised his pale face. He had felt the vibration cross the continent. That resonant, crushing mana signature was unmistakable. The human boy hadn't just survived; he had just assimilated another of the lost grimoires.
A twisted, dark smile spread across the demon's face. He wasn't going to go after him yet. He would let the young man keep gathering the power scattered across the world, doing the hard work. Only when he was ready and the power had matured would he seek him out, to tear the magic directly from his chest.