P49 - Ascension Beneath The Stone

Darkness poured like a curtain over the shattered cavern. The glow of cracked crystal-veins pulsed weakly under broken boulders and fallen pillars. A void of silence hung thick in the air--only the breaths of four remained.

Eden, her eyes stung with tears and dust, leaned against a collapsed wall, panting. Around her, the remains of their 20-person expedition lay in mangled silence. The dungeon had not been what they expected.

Braska, his gauntlets cracked and bloodied, sat with his back to the crystal wall, staring forward in shock. Zein stood motionless, his broadsword starting to fall out of the clutch of his loosened hand. Juno, covered in glowing cuts, pulls herself forward and tells the rest to continue onward, with their shard constructs still flickering around their shoulders.

None of them spoke for a while. Then Eden fell to her knees, gripping a small crystal pendant from her satchel--the same one her brother, Elias, had left behind before his mining accident.

She whispered, "Why does it always end like this?"

Her voice cracked, and for a moment, she thought no one heard. But Braska growled through clenched teeth, "We lived. That has to count for something."

Zein turned slowly toward them. "We lived because we were meant to."

Juno raised their brow. "You saying this was fate?"

Zein didn't answer.

"Okay mister Edge" Juno responded with a small smirk.

As they tried to make their way through the dungeon's collapsed tunnels, they found themselves pulled deeper by a strange pulse. The path changed unnaturally, and crystal shards along the walls began to glow in resonance with their presence.

Eden touched the glowing stone instinctively--and everything around her turned white.

When her vision returned, she stood alone in a vast chamber with floating islands of crystal and a horizon that shimmered like liquid-sky.

"You have mourned. You have carried. Now, will you ascend, as you have been accepted.?"

A voice echoed inside her.

From the crystal beneath her feet rose a towering statue of a woman made of stone and bloom--Thavara, the Stonemother--her face bearing Eden's features carved in patience.

"You are the Echoheart. The heart that remembers, the soul that anchors, and the will that carries. Accept my gift."

The statue reached toward her. Eden stepped forward, and the moment she touched its finger, a radiant light poured into her chest. Her body lifted into the air--hair rising, eyes glowing in crystalline blue--and a halo of bloomstone circled above her.

She awoke in the cavern again, eyes shimmering and a rune carved into her left eye, the rune that belongs to Thavara.

Elsewhere in the tunnel, Braska found himself alone in a chamber of fire and iron. Voices screamed in his head--battlefields, victories, losses. A molten titan of ash and metal stood before him.

Volkar, the Fire-Fist Titan.

"You fight because there is no other choice. Let that be your fuel."

Chains exploded from the ground and wrapped around Braska's arms. His gauntlets melted and reforged in flame. He roared as heat burst from his skin, and flames wrapped around his heart like armor.

"I am now a part of you, and you are a part of me." The Titan yelled, as his flames turned into an essence that engraved itself into the gauntlets.

He became the Flamebound Juggernaut.

Zein wandered a corridor of shadows where reflections whispered false memories. From behind a cracked mirror emerged a cloaked entity made of obsidian smoke.

Nyrok, the Veiled Obsidian.

"You hide from your truth, child. But this time, you can hide in me."

Zein stood his ground. "I don't hide it, I control it."

Nyrok smiled, and a mask floated to Zein's face, latching on. Pain exploded through him--then vanished. He was standing again in the real cavern. His body bore black veins of power. He was now the Wraith of the Abyssal Spire.

Juno woke in a room without corners. Time looped around them as floating shards suspended in quantum pause.

"Quarex," they muttered. "The Mind-Sculptor."

The entity appeared--not as a person, but as a cube spinning infinitely, shards of time and logic orbiting it.

"Accept the architect's burden."

The moment she reached toward it, thousands of constructs activated around her. Her own shards shifted into new patterns, orbiting her like satellites.

She became Touched by Quarex.

The four regrouped at the end of the dungeon, each now glowing with divine power.

Nothing was said.

They looked toward the distant light filtering in from the tunnel exit.

Eden took the first step.

Braska followed.

Juno hovered, constructs ready.

Zein walked in silence, his mask unmoving.

Together, the gods of Petra were born in stone, flame, shadow, and logic.

And the world would come to know them... at the 781st Arena Games.