Tyrish exhaled. “Did any of you wonder where all those spiders came from?”

  A cold wave passed through the group. No one spoke. No one needed to.

  Vanra simply nodded once. “Positions.”

  The order carried weight. The team shifted with precision, like pieces sliding into place on a war board.

  Rhoen moved to the far back, near the stairwell. From there he would have a clean, controlled lane into

  the chamber without exposing himself to close-range distortions. Korvex, Vanra and Bash formed the

  midline several meters ahead of him, enough distance to support the frontline but enough space to react

  if the distortions twisted the environment. Kayris, Tyrish and Orran stepped into the front rank,

  shoulders forward, bodies angled for immediate engagement.

  Each footfall was quiet.

  Each breath measured.

  Tyrish stepped ahead, bracing himself against the ruined frame of the doorway. With a slow push, he

  widened the broken door until there was nothing left between them and the massive chamber beyond.

  The throne room had once been grand, no question. Even in ruin, its structure hinted at wealth and

  power. Tall pillars rose like the ribs of an ancient beast. Fragments of red and gold banners clung to the

  cracked stone walls. The toppled throne lay shattered across the dais, its once ornate design now

  nothing but jagged fragments.

  And standing near it, the mother spider.

  It dwarfed every spiderling they had fought in the districts below. Four times the size, at least. Its eight

  legs were thick with coarse dark hair and ridged plating. Spatial distortions shimmered along its joints,

  bending the air like heat waves. Its abdomen was massive, pulsing slowly, as if rift energy gathered

  inside it with each breath. Thin veins of shimmering space flickered across its back.

  Its mandibles clicked rhythmically, a slow metallic scrape that echoed across the chamber.

  Dozens of egg sacs clung to the walls and pillars. Pale, swollen, quivering. Hundreds of tiny legs

  pressed against the translucent membranes from the inside, shifting like restless shadows beneath the

  surface.

  The spider did not turn.

  It remained facing the shattered throne, tapping its legs lightly against the stone as if mapping the

  vibrations of the room.

  The team stepped inside, one by one, as quietly as possible.

  But then something else hit them.

  A pulse.

  Not essence. Not a beast. A relic.

  The sensation washed through the room like a wave of deep, pressurized energy. It hit their bodies like

  heat against metal.

  Every member of the team stiffened.

  Vanra’s eyes narrowed and her breath caught.

  The relic’s resonance radiated from the far right corner of the chamber. A glass case had been

  obliterated long ago. Shards glittered across the floor. The remnants of velvet lining and golden clasps

  lay scattered.

  The relic’s presence was unmistakable. Heavy. Strong.

  SC hummed in Bash’s mind. “Well. That one you definitely will not be able to hide.”

  Bash almost snorted but forced his expression to remain still. The team slowly shifted their focus back

  to the giant spider.

  Vanra raised one hand. A small gesture. They moved accordingly.

  Rhoen stayed back and braced his rifle.

  Korvex, Bash and Vanra moved a few steps further into the center of the chamber.

  Kayris, Tyrish and Orran advanced with slow, controlled steps. None of them gave even the smallest

  sound away. The spider’s abdomen rose and fell with steady rhythm. It still had not turned.

  Korvex reached out and tapped Bash’s arm, sending four affinities into him. Wind. Mineral. Fire.

  Water. It was not the full five he usually carried, but it was enough. His suit hummed, his relic

  activated, and the echoes surged through his gear.

  Twenty-five seconds. Enough to turn him into a weapon.

  Kayris nodded. Tyrish nodded. Orran raised his shield in silent readiness.

  The signal.

  The entire team attacked at once.

  Rhoen fired a precise burst. Bash’s sidearm roared with layered echoes. Korvex unleashed a wide,

  slicing wind-mineral blast. All three attacks slammed into the spider’s back.

  But the beast did not stagger.

  It folded.

  It vanished into a rift with perfect smoothness, as though falling through an invisible sheet. Every

  attack passed through empty space.

  It reappeared instantly on the right side of the room.

  A ripple of distortion followed, bending the light around it.

  Orran charged forward and planted his shield, bracing himself. The spider’s leg slammed into it with

  violent force, and Orran vanished into a rift like a stone dropped into water.

  He fell from one in the ceiling near Bash and crashed onto the floor behind the team.

  Vanra swept her arm toward him, cushioning his landing with a controlled pulse of healing that

  softened the blow. Orran rolled twice and pushed himself upright.

  The spider flickered again.

  Rifts bloomed across the room like dark flowers. One after another. Ceiling to wall. Wall to floor. They

  twisted the chamber, making it bend in ways the eye could barely follow.

  Bash fired through the distortions, but the beast phased too quickly. His echoes timed well, but the

  spider slipped between them with unnatural speed.

  Another rift opened beneath his feet.

  He fell.

  Then he reappeared near the door, tumbling across the stones. His lungs seized and dust filled his

  throat.

  Vanra sprinted in, crouched beside him, and sent a restorative pulse rippling through his chest.

  “Fall back,” she said. “This is not a T3G like the others. It is at least T3S. Maybe stronger. You are not

  durable enough to be in the crossfire.”

  Bash gritted his teeth but nodded. “The relic is in the corner. I felt it the second we walked in.”

  “Then get it. We will handle the fight.”

  He rose and sprinted across the side of the chamber.

  Behind him the room erupted into chaos. The air warped. Rifts swallowed members of the team only to

  spit them across the room seconds later. Distortions bent the floor like rippling waves. The egg sacs

  shook from the vibrations.

  Bash vaulted over the remnants of a broken table and reached the shattered display case.

  He dropped to a knee and dug through the rubble. Stone scraped his gloves. The rift pulses made his

  fingers tremble. But he forced himself forward.

  SC guided him with precise direction.

  “Left. Under that slab. Brush away the dust.”

  Bash lifted the chunk of stone carefully.

  A silver medallion lay beneath it.

  Circular. Polished. Humming with power.

  SC’s tone sharpened. “I do not know its function. But its resonance is extremely strong. Very potent.

  Far stronger than the ring.”

  Bash swallowed. “How do we keep it?”

  “You cannot hide it,” SC said.

  Bash frowned. “Not even in the void storage? Wouldn’t that block the resonance entirely?”

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  “It would,” SC answered. “Under normal circumstances it would suppress the signature completely.”

  He waited.

  “But they already sensed the relic the moment we entered the room,” SC continued. “The initial pulse

  is what alerted them. Even if you hid it now, they would assume you took it, it is too risky.”

  “But the resonance increased the closer I got. That might matter, right?

  “Not now. Focus.”

  He looked over his shoulder.

  The battle had become controlled chaos.

  The mother spider could only maintain one major rift at a time. The team discovered this quickly. They

  used themselves as bait, forcing the spider to trap them in a cycle.

  Orran disappeared.

  Kayris rushed in.

  Kayris disappeared.

  Tyrish rushed in.

  Tyrish vanished.

  Then Orran fell back through another rift and sprinted forward again.

  They kept the primary rift open, preventing the spider from changing its pattern. Korvex fired bursts of

  wind, fire, and mineral every time she caught a flicker of its form. Rhoen fired continuously, wind and

  fire, his healing pulses supporting Vanra’s rotations.

  The spider weakened with every moment.

  Its abdomen flickered. The rifts grew unstable. Distortion pulses grew shallow.

  Finally the major rift collapsed.

  Now the melee fighters made their move.

  Kayris darted in first, silver from her swords and speed braided into one streaking motion, slicing at the

  nearest leg joint.

  But the mother spider still had energy left.

  Not much but, enough to keep going.

  The air warped sharply as the spider snapped a burst of spatial force outward. The floor stretched

  beneath Kayris’s feet, lengthening the distance between her and her target so suddenly she nearly lost

  balance. At the same moment, Tyrish was yanked toward the beast as if an invisible hook had grabbed

  his armor and pulled. Orran was shoved backward three meters, skidding until he planted his shield and

  leaned into the pressure.

  Vanra’s voice cut through the chaos. “It still has power. Watch the distortions.”

  The spider lashed out with two legs. The space around them bent like a warped sheet. Kayris found

  herself suddenly dragged too close, closer than she intended, forced to twist hard at the waist to avoid a

  crushing leg. Sparks danced across her blades as she redirected the attack.

  Tyrish, pulled forward again by another spatial yank, slammed his zweihanders together to absorb the

  impact of the next swipe. The collision shook the floor beneath him. He shoved back, trying to regain

  distance, but another flickering distortion snapped at him sideways and sent him stumbling into a

  collapsed pillar.

  Orran dug himself in, shield angled, his entire body vibrating from the gravitational twists. Whenever

  he tried to advance, the spider stretched the distance between them. When he tried to retreat, the beast

  condensed space and slingshot him forward.

  It was chaos made physical.

  Short, violent bursts.

  Never in the same place twice.

  Never predictable.

  The mother spider could no longer summon large rifts, it had burned through too much energy trapping

  and tossing the team earlier, but its short-range distortions were still vicious. Rapid pushes and pulls

  capable of throwing even elite fighters into lethal positions.

  The melee trio staggered through each manipulation.

  Kayris cut at the legs whenever she could slip between the distortions.

  Tyrish anchored himself through brute strength, forcing his swings through bending angles.

  Orran absorbed impacts and redirected them, trying to box the spider into a corner it couldn’t twist out

  of.

  Behind them, Korvex and Rhoen never stopped firing.

  Wind bursts hammered the spider’s side.

  Mineral dust rounds tore at its joints.

  Rhoen’s shots thudded into the abdomen, each one stripping a little more stability from its phasing.

  Bash stayed crouched in the far corner, the relic still in his hand.

  He kept his head low behind the shattered cabinet, watching the room pitch and twist as the spider

  burned through what remained of its energy. He stayed exactly where Vanra had ordered him, out of the

  way and alive.

  The spider grew frantic.

  Its abdomen pulsed erratically.

  Its legs hammered the floor with desperate force.

  Its distortions shrank in size and duration.

  Orran felt the shift first. A distortion washed over him, but it barely tugged at his feet. The floor didn’t

  stretch beneath him. His stance didn’t slip.

  “It is weakening,” he shouted.

  Kayris sprinted in again, this time without losing momentum. The distortion hit her, but only nudged

  her off by inches rather than meters. She adjusted her angle and carved a clean line through the first leg

  joint.

  Chitin cracked.

  Tyrish surged forward, ignoring the sputtering distortions trying to hold him back. He brought both

  blades down on the next leg. The spider shrieked as the limb severed and fell.

  Orran slammed his shield under another leg and locked it in place. Straining, he pushed upward with

  everything he had. The spider tried to warp space to lift the limb away, but nothing happened. The

  manipulation flickered and died like a spark failing to catch flame.

  Kayris stepped in and sliced the pinned leg clean off.

  Three legs down.

  The spider stumbled hard, abdomen slamming into the stone floor, tiny rift-veins blinking erratically.

  Tyrish roared and pushed forward through a final weak tug of distortion. He hacked down another leg,

  then another. Kayris mirrored him on the opposite side, slicing with rapid, precise cuts.

  The mother spider collapsed onto its remaining limbs, screeching as it tried one final burst of spatial

  backlash, but it was nothing more than a flicker.

  It had nothing left.

  With a final coordinated push:

  Orran braced the last flailing leg.

  Kayris severed it at the joint.

  The spider pitched forward, unable to hold itself upright.

  Tyrish took three steps, leapt, and brought both zweihanders straight down.

  The blades sank deep into the spider’s skull, carving through chitin and bone.

  The massive body twitched once, then stilled.

  The mother of rifts was dead.

  The creature finally collapsed.

  Silence washed over the room.

  Then came the pulse.

  T3S Space Essence.

  It slammed into Bash like a collapsing star. His chest tightened sharply. His vision tunneled. But he

  stayed conscious. He forced his grip to loosen around the medallion and steadied himself.

  The dust settled.

  The team gathered, breathing hard.

  Orran wiped a streak of grime from his face and gave a weak grin. “That was an interesting fight. A

  whole lot of running to go nowhere in a hurry.”

  A few chuckles followed.

  Then Vanra turned to Bash.

  “Did you find it?”

  Bash nodded. “I did. But I don’t know what it does.”

  He opened his hand.

  The moment it was exposed, every member of the team’s eyes glowed.