Giordano couldn't remember how long he'd been running.

  His lungs burned. His legs had become two pieces of wood moving by pure inertia, disconnected from the rest of his body. His brain had stopped sending precise commands about six hours ago. Now it simply functioned in automatic mode, an infinite loop of left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

  The KryoWatch vibrated weakly on his wrist. Eleven hours and forty-seven minutes since the start of the Path of Light. Which also meant eleven hours and forty-seven minutes of uninterrupted running.

  The tunnel stretched before them like an endless nightmare. Walls of opaque gray-white crystal, about ten meters wide, perfectly smooth and identical meter after meter. No reference points. No variation. Just the running, the pain, and the sound.

  Behind them was a gigantic boulder chasing them. Giordano didn't need to turn around to know it was still there. About twenty meters back, a perfect sphere of golden-brown luminous energy exactly as large as the tunnel pursued them with the relentless constancy of a scheduled execution. Ten kilometers per hour. Never faster. Never slower. It simply advanced.

  If they stopped, it would crush them. If they tripped, it would crush them. If they slowed down too much, it would crush them anyway.

  "How much longer?" Giordano asked.

  It was at least the fiftieth time he'd asked that question. Tommaso, on his right, didn't waste breath answering. He simply shook his head. Eleonora ran on his left. Her anthropomorphic fox form was surprisingly suited to prolonged running, but even she showed signs of the twelve hours.

  "If I see another one of those glowing things," Eleonora panted, "I swear I'll puke. And then I'll keep running and then puke again."

  As if summoned by her words, the tunnel walls rippled and humanoid stilized forms emerged from the damn walls. About a meter tall, with thin, elongated limbs ending in crystalline claws sharp as razors. Their bodies emanated a white-gold glow that left luminous trails when they moved, like miniature comets. And where eyes should have been, there were only black voids. They had called them the Luminants.

  Six emerged from the walls, then another four, then another ten.

  "Delta Formation!" Eleonora shouted.

  It was their mobile combat pattern, perfected through hours of forced practice. Tommaso slowed slightly, positioning himself as a mobile rearguard between the group and the Boulder. Eleonora accelerated, her daggers already drawn from her belts, dancing among the Luminants with the deadly precision of a born predator. Giordano stayed in the center, conserving energy for when it was truly needed.

  The first Luminant leaped toward Eleonora with a fluid, unnatural movement, claws extended like blades of solidified light. She dodged with a twist of her torso that defied anatomy, sank a dagger into its core located in the center of its chest, and the creature exploded in a shower of golden sparks.

  "Thirteen!" Eleonora counted.

  She had kept count for the first three hours. Then she'd stopped because it was depressing. Then she'd started again because it was even more depressing to have nothing to hold onto. She'd probably killed over two hundred by now, just herself.

  Two Luminants tried to flank the right side. Tommaso intercepted them before they could reach Giordano. A punch from his granite arm struck the first Luminant with the force of a wrecking ball, disintegrating it in an explosion of luminous particles. The other two pounced on him immediately, claws scraping his rocky surface with a screeching sound.

  "Don't slow down," Tommaso growled at him as he crushed another Luminant against the wall. "Keep moving."

  Giordano kept moving.

  One step. Another step. Another step.

  His thoughts had become a repetitive mantra, a hypnotic rhythm that kept the body moving when the mind just wanted to stop and cry. He no longer thought about why he was running. He no longer thought about Brando in the Path of Shadow. He no longer thought about what awaited them at the end of the tunnel. There was only the running, the pain, and the Boulder behind them.

  "Giordano." Tommaso's voice, hoarse as stones grinding together. "More incoming."

  A larger wave emerged from the walls. Twenty Luminants. Thirty. Too many for Eleonora to handle alone, even with all her speed and twenty years of experience.

  Giordano raised his right hand.

  The Ring of the Frozen Vortex pulsed on his finger, cold and familiar like an old friend. He had used it dozens of times in the past hours: small, targeted tornadoes to sweep away groups of enemies, gusts of icy wind to create space. Each use cost energy, and each tornado drained a little more from his already exhausted Cold Veins, but there was no alternative.

  He visualized the vortex. The cold responded immediately, rising from the depths of his body like water from a spring. The Ring worked perfectly now. Gaetano's sacrifice had changed something. The energy flowed with almost natural ease.

  A three-meter-wide ice tornado materialized in front of the group.

  The vortex roared through the wave of Luminants like a scythe through wheat, sweeping them away with crystalline violence. Bodies of light shattered, scattered, exploded into fountains of golden sparks that illuminated the tunnel like fireworks.

  The KryoWatch vibrated.

  【Evolution Points: +15】

  【Evolution Points: +15】

  【Evolution Points: +15】

  【Evolution Points: +15】

  【Evolution Points: +15】

  The notifications flashed briefly on the screen as the creatures disintegrated. Giordano ignored them. Numbers had stopped meaning anything hours ago.

  "Thanks," Eleonora panted, returning to formation at his side. There was blood—or something that looked like blood—on her fox muzzle. Not hers. "I was about to be overwhelmed."

  Giordano didn't respond. He had no breath to spare.

  One step. Another step. Another step.

  The tunnel continued. The Boulder continued. The running continued.

  It was Tommaso who noticed it first.

  "The Boulder," he said, his stone voice echoing in the tunnel with a deep resonance. "It's growing."

  Giordano turned briefly. Just a glance, enough to confirm without losing the rhythm of his run.

  Shit.

  The Boulder had been the size of a car at the start. Now it was the size of a van. Its light was more intense, almost blinding, and the perfectly spherical surface seemed to pulse with an energy that hadn't been there before.

  "Shit," he repeated out loud this time. "How much?"

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  "Five percent every hour," Tommaso calculated. The granite colossus had spent twenty years observing patterns and memorizing details in the simulation. "Maybe more. The growth seems to be accelerating."

  Giordano did the math mentally. It was difficult—every cell in his brain was screaming to stop and surrender—but somewhere in his exhausted skull, the numbers aligned.

  If the Boulder kept growing at that rate, sooner or later it would become too large for the tunnel. It would crush them against the walls like insects against a windshield.

  "We need to run faster," he said.

  "We can't." Tommaso's response was immediate. Definitive. "I can't. Not for long."

  It was the first admission of weakness Giordano had ever heard from the granite colossus. He looked at the uncle he had never known—this mountain-man who had spent twenty years trapped in a simulation, who had fought hundreds of battles, who seemed as indestructible as the rock he was made of—and saw the cracks.

  Not just on the surface. Deep cracks that had formed in his stone legs, dark lines that pulsed faintly with each step. Fragments that kept breaking off, leaving a trail of crumbled granite behind them.

  Tommaso was giving out.

  Something tightened in Giordano's chest. It wasn't the pain of running.

  Eleonora killed another Luminant.

  The movement was automatic: dagger sinking in, core exploding, creature disintegrating. She had done it hundreds of times in the past hours. But this time, instead of immediately returning to position, she paused.

  Not completely. She kept running. But her attention was elsewhere.

  "Wait," she said, her voice suddenly sharp. "Did you see that?"

  "What?" Giordano hadn't seen anything. He was too focused on putting one foot in front of the other, too exhausted to notice anything that wasn't directly in front of his face.

  "The sparks. When they die. They're going toward the Boulder."

  Giordano blinked. "What?"

  "The sparks!" Eleonora pointed behind them with a bloodied dagger. "When I kill the Luminants, the sparks from their death don't scatter normally. They get sucked in. Toward the Boulder."

  Tommaso confirmed with a low grunt. "I noticed it too. About two hours ago."

  "And you didn't say anything?!" Eleonora's voice rose an octave, disbelief bordering on hysteria. "Two hours and you didn't think it was important?!"

  "I didn't know what it meant."

  "You didn't know—" Eleonora cut herself off, too exhausted to keep yelling. "Men. Even the stone ones are useless."

  Another Luminant emerged from the wall ahead of them. Giordano watched it form—the crystalline surface rippling, the light condensing into a humanoid shape, the empty eyes opening like black wounds.

  Eleonora took it down with a precise throw of her dagger. The blade struck the core with surgical precision. The creature exploded.

  And Giordano saw.

  The golden sparks of death scattered in the air for a fraction of a second. Then they changed direction. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, like water flowing toward a drain, the luminous particles were sucked toward the Boulder.

  "It's feeding," Giordano realized. The words came out slowly as his exhausted brain processed the implications. "Every enemy we kill makes it stronger."

  The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of their footsteps on crystal and the constant rumble of the rolling Boulder.

  Louder than before. Giordano only realized it now—the sound had changed. Deeper and more powerful.

  "That's why it's growing," Tommaso said. "It's not time. It's us."

  "So we can't kill the enemies." Eleonora's voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. "And we can't stop running. And we can't run forever."

  "Correct," Tommaso said.

  "Fantastic." Eleonora laughed. It wasn't a real laugh—it was the sound of someone who had passed the limit of despair and come out the other side into unknown territory. "Any other positive news? Maybe the tunnel is also full of death traps we haven't triggered yet?"

  Another wave of Luminants emerged from the walls. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty creatures of pure light sliding toward them with claws extended.

  This time, the group didn't attack.

  Eleonora dodged the first Luminant with yet another absurd twist of her body, deflected the second one's claws with the flat of her dagger, rolled under the third. She didn't kill. She evaded.

  Tommaso used his massive arms as shields, blocking attacks without counterattacking. The claws scraped his rocky surface, leaving deep marks, but he didn't respond.

  Giordano ran. Dodged. Deflected.

  It was harder. Much harder. It required more energy, more concentration, more of everything they no longer had. But at least the Boulder wasn't growing.

  "We can't keep this up," Giordano panted after narrowly avoiding a claw aimed at his throat. "Sooner or later we'll make a mistake. Sooner or later one of us—"

  "So what do you suggest, genius?" Eleonora was at her limit. Her usual wit, the sarcasm she used as armor, had become pure rage. "Got any brilliant ideas? Any hidden plan up your sleeve? Because I'm out of options and patience!"

  Giordano thought.

  It was hard. So damn hard. Every cell in his body screamed to stop, to surrender, to accept the inevitable. His brain was a mass of wet cotton that refused to process anything more complex than left foot, right foot.

  But somewhere, in a corner of his mind that hadn't yet given up, an idea began to form.

  "The Boulder feeds on light," he said slowly. The words came out with difficulty, as if he had to extract them one by one from a deep well. "The Luminants are made of light. When they die, their light goes to the Boulder."

  "Yes, we established that," Eleonora said with venomous sarcasm. "Want to also remind me that water is wet?"

  Giordano ignored her. The idea was taking shape, becoming clearer.

  "But what if we gave it something else? Something that isn't light?"

  Tommaso understood before Eleonora. The granite colossus turned toward him, amber eyes gleaming with something that resembled hope. "You want to freeze the Boulder."

  "Not freeze it." Giordano looked at the Ring of the Frozen Vortex pulsing on his finger. The familiar, comforting cold. The opposite of light. "I want to destroy it."

  Eleonora stopped running for a fraction of a second—enough to nearly lose her balance, enough to let the Boulder draw dangerously close. She resumed immediately, but her eyes were fixed on Giordano.

  "If the Boulder feeds on light and grows," Giordano continued, "what happens if I force it to swallow absolute cold? The opposite of what it feeds on?"

  "We don't know," Tommaso said.

  "No. We don't know."

  Eleonora laughed again.

  "After twelve hours of running, the plan is 'let's try and see'?" she said. "I like it. I'm in."

  The plan was simple in its madness.

  First: stop running. Let the Boulder catch up.

  Second: the moment the Boulder is close enough, Giordano creates the biggest and coldest tornado he's ever generated. Not in front of them to sweep away enemies, but behind. Directly into the Boulder.

  Third: hope it works.

  "If it doesn't work, we die," Eleonora observed as they continued running, mentally preparing.

  "If we don't try, we die anyway," Giordano replied.

  It wasn't optimism. It was math. The Boulder kept growing. Their energy kept dropping. Sooner or later the equation would solve itself, and the solution wouldn't be in their favor.

  Tommaso nodded, fragments of granite falling from his shoulders. "I'll be the shield. You two stay behind me."

  "Tommaso—"

  "Don't argue." The colossus's voice was as firm as the rock he was made of. "If something goes wrong, you'll need time to escape. I can give you that time."

  Giordano wanted to protest. He wanted to say it didn't make sense, that they were a team, that no one had to sacrifice themselves. But the words died in his throat when he met Tommaso's gaze.

  Those amber eyes had seen twenty years of horrors. They had seen friends die. They had seen hope born and die more times than Giordano could imagine. And right now, those eyes said: Let me do this. Let me protect someone for once.

  "All right," Giordano said.

  They stopped.

  The sound of their footsteps ceased for the first time in twelve hours. The sudden silence was almost more shocking than the constant noise of running—a void that pressed against the ears, that made the world seem unreal.

  Giordano felt his own heartbeat. Deafening. Frantic. Blood pulsing in his temples, in his ears, in every part of his body.

  The Boulder continued to advance.

  Twenty meters.

  Tommaso positioned himself in front of them, granite arms spread wide like a living wall. The cracks in his skin glowed faintly in the darkness of the tunnel.

  Eleonora gripped her daggers. Just to have something to hold onto.

  The heat of the Boulder reached Giordano like a wave. Giordano closed his eyes.

  The Ring of the Frozen Vortex pulsed on his finger like a second heart. The cold was there, waiting. Ready.

  In the past hours he had created dozens of tornadoes. Small. Controlled. Targeted. Enough to sweep away groups of enemies, to create space, to survive another minute.

  This had to be different. This had to be everything.

  He visualized the vortex. Not a normal tornado—a maelstrom. An ice storm that would make everything he had created before look like a breath of wind.

  The cold responded.

  It rose from his Cold Veins like a river in flood. It coursed through his arm, converging in the Ring with a force that took his breath away. The air around him plummeted in temperature. Ice crystals formed spontaneously on his skin, on his clothes, on the tunnel's surface.

  Four meters.

  The Boulder was so close that Giordano could feel its heat on his face, could see the shades of light dancing on its perfect surface.

  Three meters.

  "NOW!" Tommaso roared.

  Giordano released everything.

  The tornado exploded from the Ring like a titan awakening.

  It was deep blue, almost black in the densest spots, with streaks of ice that gleamed like veins of pure cryogenic power. The cold was so intense that the air itself seemed to solidify, crystals forming and shattering in a chaotic dance. The vortex expanded, spinning at impossible speeds, and hurled itself against the Boulder like a starving predator.

  The impact was apocalyptic.

  Light and ice collided with a silent detonation—there was no sound, but Giordano felt the impact in his bones, in his teeth, in every fiber of his being. The Boulder, this perfect sphere of luminous energy that had pursued them for twelve hours, trembled.

  For the first time, it trembled.

  Dark cracks appeared on its surface. The cold was penetrating, devouring the light from within, replacing it with the void of absolute frost.

  The Boulder screamed.

  The cracks multiplied. They widened. The Boulder's light wavered, went out, flickered back weaker. Giordano pushed. More cold. More power. Everything he had.

  The Ring of the Frozen Vortex burned on his finger. His Cold Veins screamed as they pumped energy beyond any reasonable limit.

  The tornado devoured everything it could devour. The Boulder fractured and then exploded.