Iker stared at the green sprout, feeling the ground shudder under his boots. His facade of apathy felt like a tattered cloak, barely clinging to his shoulders. Nerea’s simple honesty had stripped it away, leaving him raw. He scooped her up, pressing a kiss to her dusty hair. Bihotz, now a purring lump of scales at his feet, nudged his ankle. “Right,” Iker said, his voice rough. “No running.” He turned, the flower still pulsing a vibrant green in the desolation, and walked back towards the gaping maw of the Abbey, Nerea tucked securely in his arm. The clerics who had trailed Gorka outside still huddled at the chasm's rim, skin chalky beneath the soot. High Priest Gorka, his hem torn where Bihotz had nipped it, stumbled forward. His dry throat wheezed. “The… the Calamity’s ultimatum! Only hours remain! We must prepare for the grand cleansing! Our prayers must be amplified!” Iker stopped, fixing Gorka with a flat stare. “Where are the crypts? The deepest ones. Under the main spire.” Gorka blinked, his already precarious composure slipping further. “The crypts? Unhallowed ground for the uninitiated! They hold the sacred slumber of our founders, the most revered High Priests of the Luminos Order! A place of profound sanctity, not for casual… exploration!” His chest puffed out, a desperate, pathetic attempt at defiance. Iker’s gaze drifted to the flower, still burrowing with unwavering purpose into the earth. He glanced back at Gorka, a slow, exasperated sigh escaping him. “Listen, it’s not for exploration. It’s for fixing. Do you want the world to end or not?” “Fixing? The Core is beyond repair!” Gorka wailed, his gaze flicking toward the choir brothers. He saw the doubt in their faces, the questioning looks. This was his chance to reassert control. “This… this is heresy! Blasphemy! To suggest tampering with the sacred Core! You, outsider, presume too much! Guards! Seize the imposter! Imprison him in the deepest penitentiary! Let the Luminos cleanse his soul!” Six armored paladins in dull adamantine plate stepped forward, gripping heavy glaives inscribed with pale runes. They boxed Iker into an arc. “High Priest Gorka, with respect,” the scarred lead knight rumbled, “he cured the plague. He quieted the beast. Perhaps we should listen.” “Silence, Commander Urko!” Gorka shrieked, his cheeks mottling violet. “Are you questioning the divine will of the Luminos? This… this demon seeks to defile our holiest sites! He must be stopped!” Iker merely shook his head. “This is getting tiresome. Just point me to the stairs.” “There are no stairs for *you*!” Gorka spat, puffed up behind his guard. “You will be confined! For the good of the world, we must protect the Core from your… meddling!” “Fine,” Iker said, a new note of finality in his voice. He shifted Nerea higher on his hip, adjusted Bihotz, who was now peeking out from behind his neck, and then looked down at the floor of the Grand Abbey, a massive slab of polished obsidian that had stood for millennia. He sighed again, a sound heavy with resignation. “If you won’t show me the door, I’ll just make my own.” With Nerea still comfortably nestled, Iker casually extended his free hand. He didn’t clench a fist or wind up. It was a simple, open-palmed tap, like testing the ripeness of a melon, directly onto the obsidian floor. A low, resonant hum vibrated through the air, shaking the very foundations of the structure. It wasn’t a destructive force, more like a gentle, insistent pressure. The obsidian floor didn’t crack. It simply… liquefied. The solid stone groaned, not in rupture, but in utter dissolution, turning into a churning, gray dust that fell away into an impossibly deep abyss. The entire nave of the Grand Abbey, from the towering support columns to the gilded altars, simultaneously groaned, then disintegrated. Dust billowed upwards, choking the air. “No! The Holy Abbey!” Gorka squeaked as the floor dissolved beneath his soles. The armored men shouted oaths, arms windmilling into empty air. Iker, however, descended with unnatural grace, a halo of unseen energy cushioning his fall. Nerea giggled, thinking it was a new game. Bihotz let out a happy little chuff from his perch. Below them, a vast subterranean chamber opened, reeking of stale draft and copper rot. Mineral spurs jutted from the ledges like crooked teeth, shedding a faint violet haze. The clerics struck the scree below with sharp cracks. Commander Urko, a pair of soldiers, and Gorka caught jagged outcroppings halfway down, boots dangling over the pit. “Up here! Guardians!” Urko shouted, knuckles white against the ledge. Between the jagged spurs, hunched shapes untangled from the gloom. They were forged of compacted cinders, plates sliding over plates, with jagged needle claws and dull amethyst slits for eyes. These were the guardians of the Core, mutated by its prolonged suffering. A bulkier brute, quills bristling down its spine, snapped its talons into an armored leg. Adamantine plate buckled like dried bark, drawing a ragged cry. Iker drifted downward, ignoring the skirmish overhead. He studied the stone walls, tracing luminous, gangrenous seams pulsing through the bedrock. He frowned. “It’s even worse than I thought. This whole place is a parasitic growth.” Iker landed on the packed dust. Several cinder beasts skittered toward him, mineral talons grating against stone. The nearest reared back, jaws unhinging. Iker didn’t even glance at it. He simply kept walking, towards the deepest part of the cavern, following the unseen pull. The ash-beast collided with an invisible barrier around him, not with a crash, but with a silent, instantaneous disintegration. Its body popped into a puff of cold grit, scattering across his boots. Another beast, then another, charged, only to meet the same fate, turning to nothingness the moment they touched his aura. From his precarious perch, Gorka shrieked, dangling by one hand from a narrow, jagged shelf of rock. “Zabal! Help! These… these fiends are tearing us apart! You demon! Unhand me!” He flailed, nearly losing his grip. “Do something!” Iker paused, his head cocked slightly. “Be careful where you put your feet, then. And stop yelling, you’ll wake Nerea.” He stepped over the drifts of spent soot, paying no mind to the shouting men above. Reaching out, he ran a thumb along an infected seam in the rock. It felt cold, but not dead. Just… sick. He walked further into the trench, the air pressing heavy and bruised. Nerea pointed toward the center. Bihotz clicked his tongue. Rooted in the hollow rested the World Core—a knot of petrified, bleeding resin thrumming like an exhausted ventricle. And Hodei was already there, his ash-like hands buried deep within its writhing mass.

The Descent