The Void Dungeon breathed differently today.

  Where its obsidian halls had once hummed with the steady cadence of challenge and reward, the air now vibrated with a discordant buzz that set teeth on edge. Jagged crimson sigils clawed their way across the walls of Level 3’s antechamber, their angular forms oozing viscous light that pooled on the floor like freshly spilled blood. The glyphs pulsed to the rhythm of a fractured heartbeat—two quick throbs, then a long, arrhythmic pause, as though the dungeon itself struggled to remember how living tissue should function.

  Veyra stood motionless at the threshold, her crow-feather cloak rippling in a wind none could feel. The garment’s beaded eyes—plucked from long-dead Apostate seers—swiveled wildly in their sockets, tracking invisible currents. Behind her, the Modern Apostates clutched their stolen Seraphim pendants, the gold charms blistering against their chests where Void energy clashed with holy metal.

  “Canoness?” rasped Orris, his scarred palms pressed to the shuddering wall. Blackened veins spread up his arms where he touched the stone. “The hymns—they’re not ours.”

  Lissa crouched nearby, silver-veined fingers splayed over a weeping sigil. The crimson light recoiled from her touch, hissing like grease on a griddle. “It’s not singing anymore,” she whispered. Her pupils dilated unnaturally, swallowing the irises whole. “It’s… screaming. But quietly. Through clenched teeth.”

  Claire stepped into the bleeding light, her rapier casting jagged shadows across the vaulted ceiling. The air reeked of burnt myrrh undercut by iron—the stench of old battlefields and older altars. “Veyra. Explanation. Now.”

  The Apostate leader turned, her milky eye reflecting the sigils’ sickly glow. Where her left iris should have been, a shard of Void-touched obsidian glittered, its edges fused to the lid. “The First Choir stirs,” she intoned, voice layered with echoes not her own. “They who carved their faith in flesh and bone. They who built temples from their children’s teeth.”

  Georg’s axe scraped against stone as he leaned forward. “Speak plain, witch. My patience wears thinner than the Monarch’s mercy.”

  Veyra’s staff struck the ground. Violet motes erupted, weaving into a phantom scene that made even Myrtle lower her rifle.

  The memory unfolded in gut-churning clarity:

  Robed figures knelt in a circular chamber, their backs branded with the same crimson sigils that now plagued the dungeon walls. Where their faces should have been, smooth flesh stretched taut—no mouths, no eyes, only the faint impression of screaming features pressed against skin from within. A swirling Void portal dominated the room’s center, its event horizon rippling with half-formed hands and teeth.

  “Through sacrifice, ascension!” chanted the lead figure, his voice buzzing through the nasal cavity where lips should have moved. He dragged a blade across a bound prisoner’s throat. Blood arced into the portal, each droplet freezing mid-air before being sucked into the maelstrom. The victim’s scream condensed into a glowing orb that hovered above the congregation.

  “Through pain, transcendence!” The worshippers began cutting—not the prisoner, but themselves. Fingers severed. Eyes plucked. Ribs cracked open to offer glistening viscera. The portal pulsed hungrily, its edges solidifying with every sacrifice.

  “Through oblivion, apotheosis!” The leader raised his arms as the portal stabilized, revealing a towering figure within—skeletal and radiant, its skull crowned with jagged Void-crystal. The Apostates prostrated themselves, their blood pooling into channels that fed the sigils on the walls…

  The vision shattered.

  Lissa retched, void-moss tendrils squirming from her pouch to lap at the bile. Myrtle steadied her rifle with hands that shook only slightly. “So your precious forebears were just Monarchs with worse interior decor. Big revelation.”

  Veyra’s staff glowed brighter, pressing back against the creeping crimson light. “The First Purge wasn’t rebellion—it was replacement. They sought to become the Void made flesh. To rule as gods over ash.”

  Georg’s knuckles whitened around Lara’s ribbon, the fabric stained darker where his grip never loosened. “And the Monarch?”

  “Learned from their hubris.” Veyra gestured to the sigils. “His censers, his soul engines—pale imitations of their work. But where they failed…” Her obsidian eye fixed on Lissa, who trembled as silver veins climbed her neck. “…the Prophet plants seeds instead of pyres.”

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  Claire stepped between them, buckler angled to catch the dripping light. “Enough history. How do we survive this?” She kicked a puddle of crimson, which hissed and recoiled.

  The Apostate leader pressed her palm to a sigil. Flesh sizzled. “The First Choir hungers for completion. Their ritual was interrupted when the Monarch razed their temples.” She withdrew her hand, the skin regrowing in shiny, hairless patches. “They’ll test us. Tempt us. And if we falter…”

  A deep groan shuddered through the chamber. The sigils flared, their light coalescing into a path that led deeper into the dungeon—a road of blood and bone.

  Myrtle spat on the ground. The saliva evaporated before hitting stone. “Let me guess—we’re the main course.”

  “No.” Veyra’s gaze lingered on the trembling Lissa. “We’re the inheritors. The key and the lock.” She strode forward, the crimson light parting around her like Red Sea waters. “Stay close. And do not touch the offerings.”

  The trial chamber defied reason—a cathedral of blasphemous anatomy suspended in a starless gullet of the Void. Blackened bone shards floated like rotten teeth adrift in cosmic spittle, each platform pockmarked with marrow-filled craters that wept viscous, yellow fluid. They drifted without pattern, colliding silently before recoiling as if repelled by invisible magnets. Between them stretched bridges of braided sinew, glistening with fresh lymph that pulsed to a nauseating rhythm—thrum-thrum… thrum-thrum—like arteries pumping blood toward some unseen heart.

  The air stank of gangrenous meat left to rot in a sealed tomb.

  Lissa gagged, her silver-veined hands flying to her nose. “It’s… breathing,” she whispered, voice muffled. The observation wasn’t metaphorical—the chamber’s walls rippled in slow, peristaltic waves, ribbed muscle contracting and expanding as though the entire space existed inside the gullet of a slumbering leviathan.

  Above them hung the cocoons.

  Translucent sacs of membrane quivered like gelatinous tumors, each the size of a burial shroud. Inside, humanoid figures curled in fetal positions, their features blurred as if viewed through warped glass. A closer look revealed the horror: mouths stretched wide in soundless screams, eyes bulging against the membrane, fingers clawing at their fleshy prisons. Some had split their nails to the quick, leaving dark smears that might have been blood or bile.

  “Ambush positions!” Claire barked, her voice sharp enough to slice through the miasma. She planted her buckler against a bony outcrop, its surface etched with spirals that resembled screaming faces. “Melissa—scan for weak points! Georg, guard the rear!”

  Melissa’s goggles whirred as she activated the mana-tracking lenses scavenged from a dead Seraphim engineer. The world fractured into overlapping auras—sickly green for the floating platforms, throbbing crimson for the sinew bridges. “Structural integrity’s shot,” she reported, voice tinny through her rebreather. “Those bone platforms? They’re not just floating—they’re growing. See the tendrils?”

  She pointed to hair-thin filaments extruding from the platforms’ undersides, questing blindly through the void. Where they touched, the sinew bridges swelled, pumping fresh lymph that reeked of copper.

  Georg hefted his axe, the blade’s edge still caked with treant viscera from their last dive. “Just say where to swing, gearslut.”

  The nearest cocoon twitched.

  A wet, tearing sound echoed through the chamber as the membrane split vertically. Amber fluid gushed forth, carrying the stench of a septic wound. From the rupture spilled a figure—or the parody of one.

  Seven feet tall and genderless, its emaciated frame sheathed in translucent skin that revealed writhing Void tendrils where muscles should be. The creature had no face—only a smooth oval of flesh pierced by two vertical slits that hissed acrid smoke. Its hands ended in serrated bone blades that clicked together rhythmically, sharpening themselves with each pass.

  “Hostiles!” Georg roared, already in motion.

  The axe arced downward in a silver streak, shearing through the creature’s collarbone with a wet crunch. Black ichor sprayed, eating through Melissa’s boot treads where it landed. The thing didn’t scream—it laughed, a sound like grinding teeth amplified through a cracked resonator.

  More cocoons ruptured.

  Two. Four. Six.

  The creatures dropped with insectile grace, bone blades scoring deep grooves into the bony platforms. One lunged at Myrtle, who backpedaled while unloading Void-tempered rounds into its chest. The bullets punched through its ribcage, revealing a hollow cavity where a heart should beat.

  “Aim for the—” Claire’s order died as Lissa stumbled into the kill zone.

  The girl’s silver veins blazed like live wires, casting jagged shadows across the chamber. The creatures froze mid-lunge, blades quivering inches from her throat. Their faceless heads cocked in unison, a grotesque parody of curiosity.

  “Wait!” Lissa pleaded, tears carving clean trails through the grime on her cheeks. “They’re… they’re not attacking. They’re asking.”

  Veyra materialized behind her, taloned fingers digging into the girl’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood. “Asking what, child?”

  The chamber itself seemed to lean closer.

  Lissa trembled, her voice barely audible over the creaking sinew bridges. “Which god we’ll feed them to.”

  As if summoned, the central altar pulsed—a massive ribcage fused from what might have been dragon bones or the remains of a titan. Between its bars floated an orb of corpse-pale light, its surface swirling with galaxies of trapped souls. Now it shifted, the light condensing into a human heart suspended in glowing amber. Every detail matched Lissa’s own—the branching silver veins, the faint scar from childhood pneumonia, even the irregular flutter of its beat.

  “Ah,” Veyra breathed, her milky eye reflecting the heart’s trapped light. “The First Choir always demanded a conductor for their symphony of ruin. It seems they’ll accept nothing less than your rhythm, child.”

  A grinding noise echoed through the chamber as the bone platforms rearranged themselves, forming a spiraling path to the altar. The cocoon membranes stretched taut, their prisoners’ screams finally audible—a chorus of “Choose! Choose! CHOOSE!” that vibrated in their molars.

  Somewhere in the Void, Devon’s voice cut through the static—not through their ears, but behind their eyes: “They’ll try to make you architects of the same old prison. Don’t build thrones in the ashes.”

  The dungeon held its breath.

  Lissa reached toward the orb, her veins flaring brighter. “It’s not lying. If I… if I take it, I could fix things. Make the Void listen.”

  Claire grabbed her wrist. “That’s how it starts. A little control here, a ‘necessary’ sacrifice there.” Her grip tightened. “We’ve seen where that road ends.”

  Myrtle chambered a round, the click deafening in the sudden silence. “So what’s the play, boss? Put the kid on a leash? Smash the freaky heart?”

  Veyra stepped forward, her crow-feather cloak dissolving into a swarm of shadowy mites. “There’s a third path.” She pressed her palm to the nearest creature’s chest, where a loyalty sigil smoldered beneath its translucent skin. “The First Apostates knew only domination or submission. But the Void’s true song is…”

  The sigil crumbled. The creature shuddered, bone blades retracting with a sickening slurp. Where its face should have been, a single silver vein blossomed like a crack in glass.

  “…harmony.”

  The chamber screamed.