Chương 41: The Continent Awakens

The dead sentry had given us a way in. That was the polite way to describe what Nadia had done. The impolite version was that my newly returned daughter had bitten into a demon, stolen the useful pieces from its blood, and spat the rest onto the stone like a woman discovering a restaurant had personally insulted her. I approved of the efficiency. Nadia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her pink-violet eyes still faintly glowing as she sorted through the stolen memories.

"Right stair, then the inner shaft. Avoid the left descent because it's trapped, and the center stair has too many guards. There's an alarm crystal below the second landing, and the horned captain has the key brand for the lower seals." Adrian's expression sharpened as Nadia finished.

"Useful." Rowan glanced at him.

"Useful? She just mapped half the spire from one demon's memories, and that's what she gets?" Adrian turned his eyes toward him.

"Would you prefer a speech?" Rowan considered that for half a second.

"Actually, no. That sounds unsettling." Celeste leaned closer to Nadia with a sympathetic smile.

"Take the compliment. Adrian once told me I did well, and I spent the rest of the day wondering if someone had replaced him."

"I have complimented you more than once."

"Twice," Celeste replied immediately.

"One was during combat, and the other was when I fixed the casino accounts."

"Because you fixed them correctly." Celeste pressed a hand to her chest.

"See? Practically overflowing with affection." Adrian gave her a flat look.

"You're exhausting."

"And yet deeply appreciated." Nadia barely seemed to hear them. The faint glow in her eyes sharpened as another memory surfaced, and what little amusement had touched her expression disappeared.

"There are far more demons inside than usual," she warned.

"They reinforced this spire after the first one fell. Patrols have doubled, and several larger groups are holding the main stairways." That brought everyone's attention back to her. Malcolm frowned.

"Can we still reach the core?"

"Yes, but not by fighting our way there." Nadia pointed toward the entrance.

"The sentry knew the patrol routes. If we move at the right times, we can avoid most of them." I stepped past the others.

"Then we avoid them. We came to destroy the spire, not personally introduce ourselves to everyone inside it." Celeste followed.

"You make everything sound less fun."

"That's because your definition of fun is defective." We entered the second spire. The interior was exactly as pleasant as expected, which meant not at all. Dull red light pulsed through the walls, burned iron coated the air, and beneath our feet, the stone held the damp warmth of something pretending it was not alive. Almost immediately, one difference from the first spire stood out. This place was crowded.

Boots echoed from corridors above and below, while armor scraped against stone somewhere beyond the intersecting walls. Guttural voices drifted through passages that should have been nearly empty, overlapping often enough to make the sheer number of demons impossible to ignore. Destroying the first spire had frightened them, and their answer had been simple: pack the second one with bodies. Nadia proved that almost immediately when she stopped us before the first intersection and raised one hand.

Everyone froze as a large patrol marched across the corridor ahead, followed only moments later by another group close behind. Celeste watched the last demon disappear.

"That would have been inconvenient." Nadia motioned us forward.

"That was one of the smaller groups." Celeste immediately lost some of her enthusiasm. We crossed quickly. The left descent hummed with hidden runes, while the center stair had become a gathering point for reinforced patrols. We avoided both and took the right stair into the inner shaft. From there, Nadia controlled our pace.

She stopped us before patrols crossed our route, redirected us when groups lingered longer than the sentry remembered, and twice led us backward rather than risk walking into a crowded corridor. There were enough demons packed inside the spire to turn any direct assault into a drawn-out battle, which was what we tried to avoid.

Destroying the first spire had already announced our presence, and if the second became a battlefield before we reached the core, every force in the valley would know exactly where to converge. Our goal was straightforward: reach the heart, destroy it, and get out before the rest of the spire fully understood what had happened. For once, violence wasn't the fastest solution, which was a personal tragedy I was prepared to endure. That did not mean we could avoid every patrol.

Two demons had separated from a larger group and were heading toward the inner shaft at precisely the wrong time, leaving Adrian and Rowan to remove them before they could become a problem. Adrian moved first, his sword opening the nearest demon's throat in one clean strike. Before the second could react, Rowan stepped from the darkness behind it and drove a blade of shadow through its spine. Both demons hit the floor without making a sound. Rowan stared at his hand with quiet satisfaction.

"That was smoother than last time." Nadia glanced at him.

"Try not to look too proud. It makes your face worse."

"My face is excellent."

"It's confident. Those are different diseases." Celeste made a pleased sound.

"They're already siblings."

"I'm aware." Footsteps echoed from the corridor behind us. Nadia's amusement disappeared.

"We need to move." We abandoned the bodies and continued downward. Below the second landing, the alarm crystal glowed above a narrow archway. A horned captain stood beside it with three guards, his branded forearm resting against his blade. Nadia stiffened.

"That's him." Adrian glanced toward the nearby corridors.

"How much time?"

"Not much. Another patrol will come through soon." Malcolm looked toward me.

"Alive?"

"For a moment." Celeste lifted one hand. Wind folded inward around the alarm crystal, smothering its sound while Vera's Vesper shattered into crimson birds and swept across the landing. Adrian moved with them, cutting into the formation before the guards could react. They died quickly, leaving only the captain alive for the moment. Malcolm pinned him against the wall with gravity before he could reach the alarm. Rowan's shadow wrapped around his branded arm and forced it outward. The captain hissed something ugly.

Celeste looked offended.

"I don't speak demon, but I feel insulted."

"You usually do," Adrian replied.

"That's because people are often insulting."

"Or breathing," I interjected. Nadia stepped closer to the captain. Her face had gone pale, but her hands remained steady. I watched her carefully.

"Can you read him?" She swallowed and nodded.

"Yes."

"Then do it." Nadia caught his branded arm and sank her fangs into it. The captain jerked hard enough to crack the stone behind him, but Malcolm held him in place. Nadia drank twice before her eyes flared brighter. She pulled away, breathing through the disgust.

"Lower shaft, then a bone door with three seals," Nadia explained, forcing the stolen memories into order.

"The brand opens the first. The second requires a phrase, and the third is connected to the veins running through the wall. Those have to be severed before the door is opened, or the entire base will be alerted." Adrian crouched beside her.

"What phrase?" Nadia's expression tightened with disgust.

"Ash returns below. Blood remembers the throne." Celeste slowly looked toward the captain.

"That is seriously your password?" The demon answered with a low snarl. Celeste stared at him for another moment.

"That is embarrassingly dramatic. I hope you know that." Nadia ignored her as more memories settled into place.

"There's a maintenance passage beyond the door. The captain used it to reach the core level without crossing the barracks." Malcolm nodded.

"That gets us around the reinforcements."

"Yes, but the other spires are reinforcing too," Nadia warned.

"They know one has already fallen. The third and fourth are increasing their guards, and one of them called something up from below." That changed everything. Destroying the first spire had made them suspicious, while the second had already become a fortress because of it. By the time we reached a third, they would not simply be reinforced. They would be waiting for us. Adrian met my eyes, and the look between us was enough. I gave him a small nod. Two spires would be enough for now. I turned toward the captain.

"You've been very helpful." He bared his teeth at me, but whatever he intended to say died with him when I tore out his heart. Before the body even hit the floor, footsteps echoed from farther up the corridor, reminding us that we had already lingered too long. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Nadia looked toward the noise.

"We need to go." Adrian quickly removed the branded section of the captain's arm, and we continued down the shaft before the approaching patrol could catch up to us. At the bottom, the bone door waited exactly where Nadia had described it. Adrian pressed the severed brand against the first seal, causing the door to shudder and grind halfway open. Behind it sat the second lock, shaped disturbingly like a lipless mouth. Celeste took one look at it and stopped dead.

"No." I looked at her.

"What?" She pointed at the lock.

"It's wet." I examined it. Unfortunately, she was correct.

"That's an acceptable objection, but not one we currently have time to respect." Nadia stepped forward.

"Ash returns below. Blood remembers the throne." The mouth curled into a wet smile before the second seal finally released, earning a collective look of disgust from everyone nearby. That left the final lock, a tangled knot of red veins pulsing beside the door. I gathered Primordial Ruin into a thin violet thread and began severing them one by one; careful not to trigger whatever alarm they were feeding. Behind us, the approaching footsteps grew steadily louder.

Celeste leaned toward Adrian while watching me work, amusement creeping into her voice.

"Look at her... so delicate and precise. She's practically a murderous seamstress." Without taking my attention off the pulsing veins, I replied, "I can hear you." Celeste's smile only widened.

"I meant it lovingly."

"That somehow feels worse." A moment later, the final vein parted beneath the thin thread of Primordial Ruin. Malcolm forced the door open with gravity, and we slipped through moments before the next patrol reached the corridor behind us. No alarm sounded. Nadia led us through the maintenance passage. The tunnel was narrow, hot, and unpleasantly organic. Thick veins pulsed behind translucent sections of wall while the sounds of demons moved around us.

At one point, Nadia stopped and pointed toward the wall beside us.

"A large group is on the other side." Rowan glanced toward the pulsing surface.

"How large?"

"Large enough that you should be grateful for the wall." He immediately edged a little farther away from the wall, and we continued through the passage until it finally opened behind a row of thick pipes overlooking the core chamber. I crouched beside Nadia and peered down through the gaps, only to find the chamber far more heavily guarded than the first.

Several groups of demons were stationed around the machine itself, while others rotated through the entrances in steady patrols, making it clear that reaching the core would require more than simply dropping in and fighting our way through. Adrian studied them.

"We cannot fight all of that quietly."

"We don't have to." Nadia pointed toward the eastern passage.

"The guards rotate. Half of them leave when the next patrol arrives." Malcolm glanced at her.

"When?"

"Soon." So we waited. I disliked waiting. There was an entire chamber full of demons beneath me, and every natural instinct suggested that dropping into the middle of them would resolve the situation much faster. It was also better to be safe than sorry. Unfortunately, Nadia had been right to make us wait. A horned officer barked an order below, and the formation immediately shifted as nearly half the guards filed out through one passage while another group approached from the opposite side.

For a brief window, the number of demons around the core dropped enough to give us exactly the opening we needed. Nadia whispered, "Now." We moved the moment Nadia gave us the opening. Vesper descended first, scattering into crimson birds that tore through the demons nearest the passage before they could react. Adrian followed close behind, cutting into the formation while Rowan disappeared into shadow and reappeared deeper inside the chamber.

Malcolm slammed two guards against the wall with a sudden surge of gravity before either could make a sound. At the same time, Celeste raised both hands and folded the wind around the chamber, trapping every clash of steel, every impact, and every dying cry inside it. The patrols moving through the corridors outside continued on without so much as slowing, completely unaware that anything had gone wrong. The remaining guards recovered quickly, but surprise had already stripped away most of their advantage.

They had prepared for an assault through the corridors, not for seven intruders to emerge from a maintenance passage in the middle of a patrol rotation. Beyond them, the machine hung over a deep pit, chained to the ceiling while a massive red spike plunged into the floor beneath it. Each pulse sent another surge of power down through the earth, feeding the sleeping thing buried beneath the Demon Continent. Nadia inhaled sharply as another memory surfaced.

"Three shield anchors. The left chain, the right chain, and the one above the pit. Destroy those before touching the core." Nobody questioned her. That alone showed me how quickly Nadia had proven herself useful, but more importantly, how quickly the others had begun to trust her. How quickly she had become one of ours. I looked around the chamber.

"Adrian, left. Malcolm, right. Rowan, take the pit chain. Vera, cover him. Celeste, keep the chamber silent. Nadia, watch the entrances." Celeste smiled.

"My favorite kind of music." The chamber erupted into coordinated motion. Adrian reached the left anchor first and split it cleanly at the joint, while Malcolm crushed the right one inward beneath a focused surge of gravity. Near the pit, Rowan vanished into shadow and reappeared beside the lowest chain with his blade already swinging as Vesper swarmed around him in a storm of crimson birds, tearing into anything that tried to interfere.

Throughout it all, Celeste kept every dying scream trapped inside the chamber, preventing even the smallest sound from reaching the patrols beyond the walls. One demon still managed to slip through the chaos and lunge for Nadia. I caught it by the face before it reached her.

"Rude." Then I used its skull to crack the floor. Nadia stared at me. I looked from the demon to the broken stone.

"What?" Her gaze moved between them before returning to me.

"Nothing." Celeste called from across the chamber, "She's learning family standards."

"There are no standards," Adrian replied.

"Exactly. That's the standard." The final anchor snapped, causing the shield around the core to shatter. Its heart lay exposed, red and swollen, beating with frantic urgency as though it had finally realized that death had entered the room wearing black and violet. I stepped forward, and Celeste moved into place at my side with lightning crawling over her fingers. Adrian took position to my left, while Malcolm and Vera remained just behind us.

Nadia and Rowan joined them a moment later, both stained with demon blood but still standing firm. For one brief moment, I felt all six threads behind my ribs, each bond clear and unmistakable. My family was here. It was such a weird sensation, even though I've gotten use to it over the years. Then the core pulsed, and something deep beneath the chamber answered. Whatever slept below had not awakened yet, but its anger was strong enough to make the entire room tremble.

Nadia suddenly looked toward the eastern entrance.

"The patrol is coming back."

"Destroy it," I exclaimed. Celeste's lightning struck first. Adrian's blade cut through the casing while Malcolm locked the machine in place with gravity. Vera's Vesper formed a crimson spear and punched through the exposed heart. Rowan wrapped his shadows around the lower gears and wrenched them to a halt as Nadia spotted a fracture spreading across the exposed core.

"There!" I drove Primordial Ruin straight into the weakened seam. Violet light consumed the red glow in an instant, splitting the core open and sending a violent tremor through the entire spire. Its heart collapsed inward, the massive spike beneath it shattered, and the pulse feeding power into the earth was severed completely. The resulting shockwave tore through the chamber with enough force to bring stone raining down around us.

Celeste immediately raised a barrier of compressed wind while Malcolm forced the worst of the blast toward the floor. Vera spread her crimson wings around Nadia and Rowan as red mist, shattered debris, and pieces of the ruined machine filled the air. Before the dust could even begin to settle, the eastern doors burst open and demons flooded into the chamber. Adrian looked toward them.

"Time to leave."

"I had noticed." We broke into a run as the spire began collapsing around us. The careful route we had taken on the way down was no longer an option, especially now that every patrol Nadia had helped us avoid was converging on the destroyed core.

"Nadia!" Adrian called.

"Not the main stair!" she shouted.

"Too many!" We turned down a side corridor instead. A moment later, demons flooded the stairway we had avoided. Nadia continued directing us through the collapsing structure, relying on the stolen patrol routes whenever they remained useful and adjusting whenever falling stone changed them. At the next intersection, Nadia pointed left, and we followed without hesitation. Seconds later, another group of demons thundered through the passage behind us, missing us by only moments. Rowan looked toward her while running.

"You can still track all of them?"

"Enough of them."

"That answer is less comforting than I wanted."

"It's the answer you have." Ahead, Celeste blasted three demons off a landing with a violent gust of wind and watched them disappear into the shaft.

"Do those count as kills?" Malcolm glanced over the edge.

"Eventually."

"Delayed kills, elegant."

"Morbid," Vera corrected.

"Elegant and morbid." Another section of corridor collapsed in front of us. I swept Primordial Ruin through the obstruction and opened a path.

"Move," I commanded. We climbed another level before Nadia stopped near the outer platform.

"There are more than thirty demons between us and the exit." Celeste grimaced.

"That seems excessive." I looked toward the outer wall.

"We're not using the exit." Nadia followed my gaze.

"There's no other passage."

"There is now." Primordial Ruin swept through the wall. Violet light consumed black stone and opened the side of the spire directly to the night. Wind rushed into the corridor. Celeste stared at the opening I had carved through the outer wall.

"You know, most people use doors."

"Most people waste time."

"That does explain a lot about you."

"Keep moving." We burst into the night just as the second spire split beneath us. Aura was already waiting in dragon form, golden-white scales glowing against the red haze. Several dead demons lay scattered around her claws. She lowered her head proudly.

"No one escaped upward."

"Well done." Her tail swayed. Celeste climbed onto her back.

"Extraction, dragon, succeeds." Aura's violet eyes brightened.

"Extraction dragon?" Adrian answered immediately.

"No."

"Yes," Aura decided. I climbed on behind Celeste.

"No title." Aura puffed smoke from her nostrils.

"Too late." The platform cracked beneath us. Everyone scrambled onto Aura's back as she launched into the sky. Demons flooded onto the platform behind us just as her wings snapped open, scattering ash, stone, and several of them into the collapsing structure. Below us, the second spire finally collapsed its red glow fading vein by vein until the oppressive pressure hanging over the valley began to weaken with it. Before we could enjoy the victory, the valley answered.

At first, I mistook the distant rumbling for thunder, but the heavy, rhythmic impacts rolling through the ridges quickly proved otherwise. Red lights began appearing across the darkness, spreading one after another until the truth became impossible to ignore. They were torches, and what began as hundreds rapidly became thousands. A horde poured through the valley toward the ruined spire, demons on foot with larger shapes moving behind them and winged creatures circling overhead. Nadia went pale.

"They were closer than the memories showed."

"Reinforcements," Adrian replied. Malcolm looked over Aura's side.

"A lot of them." Aura drove her wings harder, carrying us higher as the ground trembled beneath the horde. Then the valley shook again. This time, the source was impossible to mistake. Something enormous began rising beyond the distant ridge, slowly enough that for a moment my mind struggled to judge its scale. Bone trees that had seemed massive from the air barely reached its legs, while long arms dragged across the black stone behind it.

Layers of dark armor or shell covered its body, split by glowing red fractures that pulsed like molten wounds beneath the surface. Its face remained obscured by smoke and distance. I did not need to see it clearly. Whatever had answered the destruction of the second spire wasn't another patrol, or even another commander. It was something they had sent to stop us. The creature lifted one massive arm and swung. At that distance, the motion should have meant nothing. Instead, the air screamed.

A black-red wave of force tore across the valley toward us with terrifying speed, ripping through the space between us before anyone had time to react. Aura twisted violently, folding one wing and dropping sideways as everyone scrambled for the nearest spine, scale, or person they could hold onto. Celeste was the only one who failed to grab anything in time. For one perfectly stupid heartbeat, she was thrown clear of Aura and left suspended in open air. The terror in her eyes appeared instantly.

I caught her wrist before the wind could take her. The force nearly tore her from my hand. I dug the claws of my other hand between Aura's scales and hauled Celeste back before the wind carried her away. She landed half across my lap, her silver-blonde hair in complete disarray while the last traces of terror still shone in her eyes. For a heartbeat, she simply stared at me. Then her expression changed.

Instead of panicking, Celeste broke into a radiant smile, looking absurdly pleased with herself despite having nearly been thrown into open air moments earlier, like an idiot admiring the curtains while the theater burned around her.

"I knew you loved me." I stared at her. Below us, the horde roared. The enormous creature lifted its arm again. Aura banked sharply, and I tightened my grip around Celeste's coat.

"Occasionally." Her smile became radiant.

"I will treasure that forever."

"Treasure it silently."

"No."

"Then I may reconsider." Adrian gripped one of Aura's spines and looked backward.

"Aura, faster."

"I'm going faster!" Rowan had one arm around Nadia and the other locked around a ridge of dragon scales.

"We need faster than fast."

"That's not a speed!" Aura retorted.

"It needs to become one!" Another shockwave ripped past us, close enough to throw sparks from Aura's scales. Aura roared in pure offense and dove toward the sea. The sudden drop stole the air from everyone except me, which was unfortunate because Celeste used it as an excuse to cling harder. The cliffs rushed beneath us. Then the ocean opened ahead. Aura crossed the coastline as another strike smashed into the cliff behind us, throwing burning stone into the sea.

Only when the Demon Continent began shrinking behind us did the enormous creature stop pursuing. It stood at the edge of the ridge, half-hidden by ash and red glow, watching us leave while the horde gathered around it. Nobody spoke for several breaths. Vera finally broke the silence.

"A third spire would have been a mistake." Adrian nodded.

"A fatal one." Nadia kept her eyes fixed on the distant shore.

"Their defenses are awake, their commanders are mobilizing, and now they've unleashed whatever that monstrosity was." Rowan released a shaky breath.

"So two was our limit."

"Not true." Everyone looked toward me. I kept my eyes on the burning shore.

"Two was our victory." Instead of allowing whatever slept beneath the Demon Continent to continue feeding through six spires, only four remained. That was enough to make this trip worthwhile. We had entered a fortress already swollen with reinforcements, slipped through patrols that could have buried us beneath sheer numbers, destroyed the heart of the second spire, and escaped before the forces gathering around us could close their grip. Killing every demon inside had never been necessary.

The real victory was leaving behind a wound they could neither ignore nor easily recover from. The second spire was collapsing behind us, while the first had already been reduced to ash. The remaining four would be different now. They would be guarded more heavily, reinforced more quickly, and watched by an enemy that finally understood someone was deliberately tearing apart whatever system fed the thing beneath their continent. Let them rage for the next hundred years if that's what they need.

More important was the uncertainty we had left behind: an unknown enemy had crossed into their territory, slipped past an army, destroyed two of their spires, and vanished before they could answer in kind. For tonight, that was victory enough. Celeste, still clinging to me far more tightly than necessary, finally tilted her head and looked up.

"Mother?" I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Whatever you are about to say, no." Her brows lifted.

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"You were going to make the moment uncomfortable." Celeste adopted an expression of suspicious innocence.

"I was only going to say that I love you too."

"That's exactly what I meant." Her laughter came out warm and breathless as she settled more comfortably against me. I could've pushed her away, but I did not… at least, not immediately. Aura carried us farther across the dark ocean and toward home while, behind us, the second spire continued burning itself into history.