Chapter 12: Null Hymn

  Several hours of life and death situations had given Cole an instinct.

  It was not the kind of instinct you were born with. It was the kind you earned in a handful of brutal hours, where hesitation was a death sentence and fear was something you carried while you moved anyway.

  He didn’t think about the trap for long.

  He only felt it.

  That snap-over sensation. The air itself felt thicker, as if the dungeon had decided he belonged right there, right now, and nowhere else.

  And that was what terrified him.

  This was the dungeon reaching into him and saying no.

  Cole’s mind tried to panic. He felt it coming.

  Then his new instinct cut through it.

  Instead of panicking, he said, “Edict: Null Hymn!”

  The spell targeted that feeling, that unseen barrier, with a hymn of the forgotten.

  A low hum filled the corridor. It was a sound you felt in your teeth and behind your eyes..

  The bind resisted for half a heartbeat.

  Cole felt it. The pressure pushing back.

  Then the hymn did what it always did.

  It erased.

  It could not hold him.

  Just like that the barrier was gone.

  Cole dove out of the way, hitting the ground hard and rolling as his Authority stat hit him with a warning. He did not see the green fire until it was already moving, but he did not need to. That spike in his gut told him exactly where death was about to land.

  Green flame crackled past him and splashed against the wall.

  Stone hissed.

  Heat flared against the nape of his neck so sharply that his skin prickled. The torchlight wavered, and for a second the corridor looked like it had been painted in sickly colors.

  The elite monster stood where it had been, robes rippling.

  Its hands were out.

  No staff.

  Just robed arms, and the sense that the thing did not need a weapon to ruin them.

  With the other robed hand it cast a barrier that deflected Faelen’s shovel, the blue light sparking.

  Faelen grunted as the shovel hit that invisible curve of force and rebounded. He did not lose his footing, but it pushed him back enough that the elite got space, enough that the ghouls flooding in became a real problem again.

  “It’s still casting,” Faelen warned, voice tight. “It doesn’t need the staff!”

  Cole saw the movement of the rune stitching on the robes. It was shifting, crawling, rearranging in patterns that made his eyes want to slide away.

  His Authority stat pulsed.

  It was not telling him to run.

  It was telling him where the threat was.

  Cole raised his hand.

  “Black Halo Lance!”

  Black light lanced out of his palm, smashing into the elite. The runes on its robe flared, but Cole saw a dark singe on a patch of the robe where his spell had hit.

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  It was a small thing.

  A scorch mark.

  A weakness.

  But it mattered because it proved something important.

  This thing could bleed.

  Not blood, maybe.

  But it could be hurt.

  Faelen whirled his shovel, smacking it into the monster, pushing it forward. The elf continued his assault, jabbing the point of the shovel into the robes.

  The shovel struck cloth and then something beneath it that did not feel like flesh. It felt dense. Packed. Like damp earth in a bag.

  The elite twisted, and the blue barrier flared again.

  Faelen’s shovel rebounded with a snap of light.

  Cole focused his attention on the robes, and he did not hesitate.

  “Edict: Null Hymn.”

  The spell settled over the robe, and the hum returned, that subtle song of forgotten things.

  The runes flared on the robes.

  Then they flickered.

  Cole felt resistance again. Different than the bind. A layered resistance.

  The elite’s hands flexed.

  Green fire gathered again, boiling between its fingers, hungry and bright.

  Cole’s Authority stat hit him with another warning.

  The thing was trying to cast while it still had protection.

  It wanted him to choose.

  Dodge or erase.

  Cole clenched his jaw.

  “No,” he muttered, and he meant it.

  The hymn deepened.

  A moment later, the runes vanished.

  The robe looked suddenly like cloth again.

  Faelen’s shovel pierced inward.

  Clay-like dirt burst out of the robes.

  It scattered across the stone in soft brown clumps, and for a split second Cole’s brain stalled, trying to process that.

  Just earth, spilling out.

  The elite moved.

  Its hands snapped outward.

  The blue barrier exploded outward as a wave.

  Faelen was knocked back, boots sliding, shoulders twisting as he fought to stay up.

  Cole’s Authority hit again.

  He threw up his hand without thinking.

  “Ashen Aegis!”

  Reality around him decided no.

  The wave slammed into the Aegis and stopped abruptly. The pressure still made Cole’s bones ache.

  Faelen hit the ground anyway, rolling with the force, coming up on a knee.

  Cole did not look away from the elite.

  It was reeling, the robe sagging where the runes had been erased, the barrier sputtering.

  Cole lifted his palm.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  The seraphic black light hit it square in the chest.

  This time there was no flare of runes to soften it.

  This time the Lance bit.

  At the fringe of the robes, ash began to flake off of it. It was black fire, the light traveled, and where it traveled, ash followed, peeling the elite apart in strips and curls.

  The robe tried to hold its shape.

  It failed.

  The ash spread.

  The elite collapsed inward.

  Then it was gone.

  There was nothing left but a neat pile of ash, along with a soft pile of brown dirt.

  For a moment, Cole could only hear his breathing.

  The corridor filled with the dry whisper of things coming apart.

  When it was over, Cole stood there, shoulders rising and falling, and realized he did not feel injured.

  Not anymore.

  The potions had done their work. His body still carried fatigue, still carried stress and hunger and the dull ache of too much adrenaline, but wounds were gone.

  That mattered.

  Because if he kept letting himself “remember” pain that was already healed, he would start fighting like a broken man even when he was not.

  A notification blinked at the edge of his vision.

  EXPERIENCE GAINED: 500

  Then the heavier one.

  LEVEL UP: 2→3

  ONE SPELL POINT GAINED.

  ATTRIBUTE POINT ASSIGNED TO AUTHORITY PER TITLE RESTRICTIONS.

  Cole waved away the first message and let the second hang long enough to register.

  He felt the Authority increase.

  “You okay?” Cole asked as he waved away his notifications.

  Faelen stood, brushing dirt from his knee, shovel still in his hands.

  “Yes,” he said, breath rough. “I gained a level from that.”

  Cole nodded, then focused on the spell point.

  He had been thinking about this since the beginning, since he realized the Ethereal was not handing him “cool magic.”

  It was handing him tools.

  And tools meant choices.

  He considered where to assign his point. After a moment, he decided he wanted one more spell. After that, further level ups, if he got them, would be used to start upgrading them.

  A new notification unfolded.

  SPELL POINT USED.

  NEW SPELL ACQUIRED.

  CHORUS OF VERDICT (TIER 1): TEMPORARILY CAUSE HOSTILES OR DESIGNATED INDIVIDUALS TO HALT, KNEEL, OR DROP EQUIPMENT.

  Cole felt it before he understood it. The spell showing itself briefly.

  A shift behind his back, pressure spreading outward.

  Something unfolding in the space behind his shoulders.

  He could not see them.

  He could feel them.

  A faint choir-hum stirred in his skull again, softer than Null Hymn.

  Faelen stared at him.

  “That one feels… different,” Faelen said.

  Cole swallowed.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “It does.”

  He wanted to test it.

  He did not get the chance.

  The dungeon rumbled, stone grinding against stone, and a path opened before them.

  A seam in the corridor itself, stone shifting apart.

  The air beyond was darker.

  The torches were spaced wider.

  The stone looked older, and the shadows felt thicker.

  It did not look inviting.

  Cole was sure they had no choice to go down the new path, and whatever awaited them was not good.

  He adjusted the makeshift sack tied to his pants. The vials in his jacket clinked softly as he moved.

  Faelen rolled his shoulders, tightened his grip on the shovel.

  “Maze corridors,” Faelen said quietly. “The dungeon likes to separate people here.”

  Cole stared into the dark.

  His Authority stat pulsed once, a quiet warning without specifics.

  He took a breath.

  Then he stepped forward into the new path, and the darkness swallowed the torchlight a little too eagerly.