A hand grabs my ankle.
I’m back.
The augments are still coming.
I twist, snap, kill.
But my mind is still with the monks.
Their chantin’.
The crystal drinking blood.
It’s wrong.
Spark hums, this soundgroans.
It pulses like a dying star, pullin’ instead of givin’, devouring instead of burnin’.
I step forward?—
And fall into the cave…
My feet touch the floor.Silent whispers, like I’m not even here. Just a shift, a slip, like reality openin’ itself to make room for me.
I am not in the arena.
I am not anywhere.
But I’m in this cave.
My head whips around, trying to understand. Wondering what the fuck is happening to me back in the cage. Am I dead?
I want to think about that. To understand it. But I can’t stop lookin’ around. I can’t stop takin’ it all in. The cave stretches wide before me, carved out of dark stone, slick with condensation, walls hummin’ with somethin’ unseen. The air is wrong. Thick with heat, with static. The scent of iron, wet stone, something burnt.
The monks are kneelin’ now. A perfect circle around the crystal. Their robes are deep red, stitched with gold, pooling at their feet like liquid. Their hands—pale, veined, and human—grip bone-carved knives, their movements ritualistic. Rhythmic.
One by one, they reach forward, until their hands are hovering over the giant crystal. Then they slice open their palms, letting the blood drip onto the megalith.
It lands with a sound that shouldn’t exist. Hiss. Sizzle. Like water hittin’ coals, like somethin’ breaking apart on a molecular level.
The thirsty crystal drinks deep.
It pulses.
Not like the sparkstone cave.
This isnotSpark.
It groans. A deep, reverberatin’ sound that pulls at somethin’ inside me. Not a song, not a hum—a hunger. The monks do not react. They do not waver. They keep chanting, their voices merging into a single resonance, a single frequency that shakes the marrow in my bones.
Rise a god!Rise a god!Rise a god!
It calls to somethin’.
I step closer, watchin’ the way the crystal feeds. The way the blood is gone before it touches the surface. The way the monks never hesitate, never falter, never pause to question.
I reach out.
