“Max!” Trish screamed.
My head snapped toward her like a striking serpent, my entire dragon form coiling, ready to strike. Then I saw him.
The scene was horrific.
The jagged stones jutting from the wall like the fingers of some grotesque hand were slick with blood.
“No…” The word escaped me, barely a whisper.
Max was still impaled against the wall. Mel and Trish stood frozen, staring at him in horror. Trish was already pouring every drop of magic she had left into him, desperate to heal.
But there was no healing this.
I leapt from where I stood, landing just feet away from them. I wanted to reach out. To hold him. To pull him from the wall that had claimed him.
But I was still in dragon form, too massive, too alien.
Mel moved forward gently. Carefully. She pulled his body from the wall, doing her best not to cause further damage… though one arm and a leg remained, torn away on impact. The stone had claimed them.
Blood sprayed from the wounds. Trish yelped in surprise but didn’t stop. Her hands, trembling, still glowing with light, kept healing until she collapsed. She fell beside him, unconscious, spent.
Her magic couldn’t reattach limbs. It couldn’t undo what had been done. But it stopped the bleeding.
A single chest sat untouched in the center of the room, glowing faintly beneath the timer's relentless countdown. Its surface shimmered like the night sky.
I turned toward it.
Maybe… maybe the reward inside…
I glanced at Trish. She wept, even in sleep.
I moved to the chest and tapped it with one claw. Please, I thought. Please… let there be something. Anything. The grief was suffocating. I couldn’t lose someone else. Not now. Not again.
I begged the chest. I begged Jaq’Kuah.
A radiant light burst from it, and warmth surged through me. A ring rose from the chest, spinning, faster and faster, until it locked onto the claw, I’d touched it with. It vanished in a blink.
A notification appeared; I didn’t even read it.
I turned back to Max.
The timer still hovered above us, its slow count feeling like an eternity. Trish lay on the cold stone floor, unconscious, but still sobbing. Tears slipped down her cheeks even in sleep.
Mel hadn’t moved. She stared blankly at Max’s body, her shoulders trembling. Whether it was from grief or rage, or both, I didn’t know.
I coiled my body around them, trying to shield them from the cold, to hold them in the only way I could. My massive form was alien, distant... but I could still give them warmth.
As my head curved around, I brought one large eye level with Mel. Our gazes locked.
That was her breaking point.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, barely audible. “We can’t, James…”
“I know.” My voice was low and hoarse, the deep rumble of my dragon form carrying more weariness than I’d expected. “The moment we’re booted from this place… we move. I’ll fly us to the nearest town as fast as I can.”
Moments of silence passed; each one dragged longer than the last.
I tried to ignore the timer ticking down above us, but it hovered like a curse, taunting me, reminding me that time didn’t care about grief.
Finally, the last second blinked out.
And in a flash, we were teleported outside.
Mel moved instantly, securing Trish’s unconscious form in her arms. Then she turned to Max, his body still twitching, his breath barely there, and gently lifted him as well.
I looked toward Nyxala and the others.
“Follow. We go. Now,” I said, my voice still deep, the air vibrating with each word.
They nodded. All but Drifter, who hesitated. Fear washed through his eyes before he turned to follow.
With a powerful thrust of my wings, I took to the sky. I aimed for the only town I could think of, where Brakor and Esmara would be. Maybe, just maybe, they’d know what to do.
Then it hit me.
A sudden force, like the hand of a god, slammed into me mid-flight.
Mel yelped in shock as I was thrown from the sky, crashing through the trees below. Branches snapped like bones. The ground erupted beneath my weight.
Mel landed beside me, still holding Trish, her movements as fluid as ever. I shook my head, dazed, and glanced up, just in time to see it.
Max’s body was still hovering.
And surrounding him, Myrida shimmered in blade form, no longer dormant. The twin daggers spun slowly around him like silent sentinels.
Then, in a blink, he vanished.
“What the… oh...” I breathed, realization dawning.
I didn’t move. I didn’t speak for a second.
Because I’d seen this before.
Mel turned to me, her voice sharp. “Oh? Oh what, James?!”
“I don’t want to say until I’m sure,” I said slowly. But I looked at her, gave her the best hopeful glance I could manage in this massive form.
Max
Darkness.
Not the absence of light. The absence of everything.
There was no breath. No sound. No body.
Then, a pulse.
Not of a heart. Not of anything living. Just an echo. A deep, slow reverberation that moved through a place where existence no longer mattered.
Max didn’t float. He didn’t fall. He simply was.
Then, movement, not his own. A pull. A suggestion from something beyond perception.
All around him, stars burned… and died.
He drifted, or was drawn, through an expanse of cosmic death. Stars blinked out one by one, not fading but snuffed out. Their corpses hung in space, burned out and violated. Systems torn apart, planets shattered like brittle glass and left to drift like bones through the nebulae.
And then he saw them.
Black tendrils swimming across the void, sinuous and slow, coiling through the broken ruins of the stars. Voidborn horrors, bearing the stench of a queen not yet risen. Wherever they slithered, warmth died.
Max felt the chill pressing in.
And yet… he did not fear it.
The cold didn’t bite. It embraced. Not death, but peace. Like stepping alone into a frozen forest under a starlit sky, silent, endless, and full of a comfort no fire could give.
This is the shape of the void. It does not consume. It holds.
He passed the shattered remnants of what had once been a star system. A graveyard of light and warmth. And within the black winds of its collapse, something waited.
It was not a being. It was not even a voice.
It was a presence.
It felt like gravity, time, and sorrow, all woven into one. The oldest black hole in the realm. The last of its kind.
And it was dying.
Not from battle. Not from age.
By choice.
Myrida hovered beside him. She did not speak. But Max understood. This moment was not about power; it was about trust. The void did not make kings. It made keepers.
The black hole collapsed inward, unraveling itself. And Max was pulled in with it.
Then, silence.
His body reformed, not of flesh, but of shadow given shape. His missing arm and leg were restored, but not as they were. They were perfect, seamless. His limbs were dark mirrors speckled with the faint glimmers of dying stars.
Myrida dissolved, not destroyed but freed, black-gold threads of energy spinning through his soul. She didn’t vanish. She became a part of him.
Not bonded, merged.
The cold surged through him.
And it felt like home.
No burning. No fire. Just stillness.
You are not shadow.
You are the space between.
Max opened his eyes.
He was not reborn.
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He was claimed.
James
Hours passed. Still no sign of Max.
By now, I had shifted back into my humanoid form. Trish was pressed against my chest, holding on as if letting go would shatter her. Mel sat beside us, silent. My arm wrapped around her, grounding us all. Their hands rested, clasped over my lap; fingers woven tightly.
None of us spoke. We just stared upward at the empty sky, at the exact spot where Max had vanished, waiting.
Then the air changed.
Wind began to pull from every direction, twisting into a swirling storm. Not natural. Not elemental. A spiral of hunger. Trees bent and groaned toward a single point, their leaves and branches torn away, shredded into nothing.
A singularity had formed, a small, pulsing hole of nothingness in the sky. Everything that touched it twisted, infinitely warped and devoured.
Predators. Birds. Even small creatures we hadn’t noticed before, gone. Screeching and crying until there was nothing left. Not even echoes.
And yet… none of us were pulled. Not Trish. Not Mel. Not the Lepidomare. The void didn’t want us.
Just… everything else.
The temperature dropped suddenly. A deep cold settled across the clearing. Ice crystalized on stone and bark, crawling across unmoving surfaces in delicate, deadly webs.
Then, at the very center of it all, a figure appeared.
Floating.
Silent.
It had to be Max.
The moment he manifested, the singularity snapped shut. One breath it was there, pulling in the world, then gone. Like it had never existed.
The figure began to fall.
Unconscious, still. His body limp as gravity reclaimed him.
In a heartbeat, I flashed forward, starlight bursting beneath my feet. I caught him just before he hit the ground.
And as I held him, I realized…
It was Max. But it wasn’t.
His Drow features were gone, erased clean. The pointed ears, the sharp edges, the traditional lines of his race were no longer there. His skin was deep, void-dark, subtly speckled with what looked like… stars. Like the night sky itself had merged with him.
But his face…
His face still carried that same familiarity. That crooked tilt of his mouth. The furrow between his brows.
It was him, different, changed. But still Max.
I looked down at him cradled in my arms, the cold of his body not from death, but from something else entirely.
His skin… it wasn’t flesh anymore. Not like before. It was void-dark, black so pure it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. But it wasn’t empty. Beneath the surface, tiny glints shimmered, distant, faint, like stars struggling to be seen in the depths of space. Not constellations like Myrida once showed… but fragments of forgotten galaxies. Dead suns. A graveyard’s echo.
His face still looked like him. Familiar. Enough that my heart twisted. The same line of his jaw. The same faint scar near his temple. But the color, the softness, the elven sharpness, it was all gone. Replaced by something smoother. Still. Untouchable.
But it was his arm and leg that truly stopped me.
His right arm, the one he’d lost, was now sculpted from solid shadow. Not smoke. Not an illusion. It looked like obsidian carved from the core of a dying star. Sleek, elegant, alien. The veins in it pulsed faintly, not with blood, but with something colder. Something older.
Every movement of that limb felt like it bent reality slightly, like space itself respected its form.
And his leg, his left, was even stranger.
From the thigh down, the surface shimmered with a thin layer of refracted distortion. Not transparency, but a warped reflection of the world around it. As if the limb refused to be fully observed. It flickered in and out of sight at the edges, phasing between being there and being somewhere else entirely. Like the void hadn’t fully let it go.
I reached out, brushing my hand along the back of his arm. It was cold. Not lifeless. Just… quiet. The kind of cold you felt in your bones, and somehow, didn’t want to leave.
He didn’t stir.
But gods, even asleep, I could feel it, the pressure he carried now. Not overwhelming. Not radiant like mine.
Just… inevitable.
The quiet weight of the stars that no longer burned.
His eyes fluttered open.
At first, there was nothing behind them. No recognition. Just deep pools of starlit void, like the last remnants of the night sky left untouched by creation.
Then… a blink. Slow. Measured.
His gaze found mine.
Not sharp. Not dazed. Just… still.
“James?” His voice was soft, but there was something beneath it. A resonance that didn’t used to be there. Like the void was speaking with him, not through him, but with him.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice catching slightly. “I’ve got you.”
He didn’t respond right away. His eyes drifted upward toward the sky, though there was nothing left to see. The trees above had been torn away, the stars blotted out by the singularity’s wake. But it didn’t matter. They were already in his eyes. He didn’t respond right away.
“Feels… different,” he murmured.
“I’d say that’s an understatement.” I smiled, though it didn’t reach my eyes. “One second you were there… then poof. Gone. Not your weirdest exit, but definitely your most dramatic.”
He blinked again, slower this time, his focus shifting inward.
Then he moved.
The arm, that arm, curled naturally as he sat up, as though it had always been part of him. But when his fingers flexed, shadows curled with them. Not as projections. Not as tricks of light. They obeyed him.
His leg shifted next. The distortion it carried bent the grass beneath it, warping it slightly before settling. It didn’t thud when it landed. It made no sound at all.
Trish and Mel quietly approached, and didn’t hesitate. They wrapped Max in a hug before he even had time to fully adjust to his new reality.
He didn’t resist.
A single tear slipped down his cheek as the warmth of their embrace reached him. He didn’t say anything at first. Just let the moment anchor him. But then he opened one eye and looked straight at me.
“Myrida gave her life to bond with me,” he said softly. “To fuse with me. Tell Virellia I’m sorry. I…”
He didn’t get the chance to finish.
“Max.” Virellia’s voice echoed gently in my mind, calm and full of grace. “I would not hesitate to do the same for James, if need be. She still exists within you, I can feel her presence, her love. For that, I am grateful. Just as I am grateful… for your return.”
I gave a small nod of understanding and stood.
“She’s not the only one…” Max began.
I know, my friend. I know all too well. Don’t say what… or who. You’ll receive the same warning I did. But know this… I understand what you carry, brother.
“You two better not be doing that damn mind-talking thing again,” Mel muttered, rolling her eyes, but her voice cracked slightly. She chuckled and hugged Max again, tighter this time.
Trish moved to me next, slipping into my arms. “Thank God… and Jaq’Kuah… for bringing him back to us,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I could’ve handled another loss. Not this soon.”
“I don’t think any of us could’ve,” I said quietly, holding her close. “But if it had come… we’d have faced it together.”
I raised my voice for everyone to hear. “Let’s move deeper into the forest. Set up a camp. Everyone should get some rest. I’ll take first watch… maybe the only watch.”
“James…” Trish started, concern in her voice.
I held up a hand. “Jaerys.” The name left my lips easily. Not forced. Not uncertain. Just… true.
Eyebrows rose around the group.
They didn’t question it. Not out loud, not at first. But I saw the look pass between them.
While we waited for Max’s return, I’d had a lot of time to think. The name had come to me not in a dream, not in some blinding revelation, but like a whisper on the breeze. A thought so soft it could’ve been forgotten… but wasn’t.
It hit me during the battle with the Abhorrent. When my soul stood naked before its hate. When the stars within me burned against the tide.
Jaerys. Not James the human. Not Solphyras the ancient. But both fused in fire and starlight. Celestial-born. Soul-bound. Flame-tempered.
A truth that had always been there. Unspoken. Waiting.
“Jaerys?” they echoed, all at once.
I nodded. “Yes.” Then softer, “Now let’s set up camp for the night. You all need rest.”
After setting up camp, Mel and Max lay down and drifted almost instantly into a much-needed sleep. Neither of them stirred.
Trish, though, didn’t follow.
She just… stared at me.
“Yes, love?” I asked gently, curiosity lacing my voice.
“You do realize how long you’ve been James to me?” she asked, her tone soft, but steady.
I chuckled and gave a small nod. “I suppose you could just stick to calling me ‘babe’ then, huh?”
She smiled, eyes glinting. “But only I get to call you that,” she said, mock serious but completely sincere.
I wrapped her in my arms. “I know it’s strange, love… but James just doesn’t feel right anymore. I’m not just me. Not who I was when we first landed in this realm.”
“I know,” she murmured, staring into my red eyes. “Now you’re part star-being… and part dragon.” Her fingers rested lightly on my chest. “But you’re still the same here.”
Right over my heart.
We sat in silence for a moment before she crawled into her bedroll, still facing me.
I watched them all, Mel, Max, Trish. My eyes lingered on Max last.
Seems we’re all losing pieces of ourselves in this war, I thought. And we’re not even halfway to facing the wretched goddess behind it all.
Virellia didn’t speak at first.
But her warmth washed through me, comforting, familiar, like the light of a thousand stars rising after a long, dark night.
Who will we be by the end of this… I wondered. If we make it that far?
“We will become who we must,” Virellia whispered, her voice like music, like the echo of a thousand ancient tongues. “To survive. To win this battle. Or die trying.”
I patted the hilt at my side, a quiet thank you.
And then I returned to the silence of the forest, eyes open, heart heavy, watching over the ones I could not afford to lose.
I looked down, and there it was. Resting on the pointer finger of my right hand.
The ring.
I hadn’t even noticed it until now. I had completely forgotten about the chest at the end of the dungeon. No reward screen. No system jingle. Just silence, grief, and Max’s return.
Now, in the quiet, it pulsed with pressure, not heat, but something far heavier.
It looked almost weightless at first glance, a silver band with a subtle inner glow, but the longer I stared, the more I realized it wasn’t glowing. It was gravitational lensing. Light itself was bending around it.
The band shimmered like collapsed starlight, compacted into something impossibly small yet infinitely heavy. Tiny rings of energy spun within it, like slow orbitals, faint, shifting pulses of blue-white and gold that spiraled inward but never touched the surface.
The space around it… warped.
And I could feel it, not in my hand, but in my chest. As if it was compressing the very concept of failure into something that dared me to hold on tighter.
Then the system caught up, the notifications finally blinking into place.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have defeated a LEGENDARY dungeon!
A 1-time 4x Bonus experience has been rewarded for your first LEGENDARY dungeon!
CONGRATULATIONS! You have earned a legendary ring as your reward!
[Oathbound Ring of the Starchain]
Your vow has been heard. This is a reminder of that vow. The moment you stray from it; this ring will shatter.
“To the end.”
EFFECTS – Reduces the cooldown/duration lockout of Jaerys’s Dragon Form by 50%. Deepens the existing Soulbond with Virellia.
I stared at it, feeling the pressure not from the ring, but from the meaning behind it.
This wasn’t an artifact of power. It was a promise, forged in the moment I thought I might lose everything.
“To the end,” I murmured.
Virellia pulsed gently at my side, a warmth behind her whisper. “And beyond, if we must.”
I looked over Virellia’s updated stats and couldn’t help but grin. I was now getting an extra forty percent from her bond bonuses. That was huge.
With that thought in mind, I immediately opened my own stats menu to check out the new gains.
STATS
LEVEL – 181, Adventurer
STRENGTH – 716
DEXTERITY – 567
INTELLECT – 513
WISDOM – 149
LUCK – 73
ARMOR – 82 (Physical damage reduction: 47%)
RACIAL PASSIVES:
- INNATE ARMOR BONUS – 10% of maximum armor added
- INNATE FIRE BONUS TO MELEE ATTACKS – 10% increased fire damage on melee attacks
Unspent Stat Points: 234
My eyes widened when I saw the jump in my level, one hundred and eighty-one. We were gaining fast. Almost too fast.
It felt a little like cheating, if I was being honest. But after everything we’d just faced… maybe it wasn’t cheating. Maybe it was just the world balancing the scale in our favor.
That faint sense of guilt faded the moment I realized how close I was to another ascension. The thought alone sent a surge of energy through me. I didn’t hesitate. I spent the unallocated points immediately.
I dropped one hundred straight into Strength, reinforcing the raw force behind every blow I landed. Then seventy-five into Dexterity, sharpening my speed and precision. And finally, the remaining fifty-nine into Intellect, ensuring my connection to celestial magic remained just as strong.
It was a clean distribution. Intentional. Balanced.
I watched as the values shifted, each one rising with finality, and I couldn’t help but smile.
STATS
LEVEL – 181, Adventurer
STRENGTH – 856
DEXTERITY – 672
INTELLECT – 595
WISDOM – 149
LUCK – 73
ARMOR – 82 (Physical damage reduction: 47%)
RACIAL PASSIVES:
- INNATE ARMOR BONUS – 10% of maximum armor added
- INNATE FIRE BONUS TO MELEE ATTACKS – 10% increased fire damage on melee attacks
After reviewing my new stats and changes, I pulled out the map to see where our next challenge lay. To my surprise, a dungeon marker glowed just an hour’s walk from where we were, close. Almost too close.
I stared at it for a while, my mind drifting.
What would come after ascension? After we left this world and stepped into the next? Would there still be dungeons waiting for us? Would the systems we’d come to rely on still exist?
In every game I’d ever played, ascension usually meant the start of raids, larger battles, deeper mechanics, higher stakes. But here… in this place… it was all just theory. We wouldn’t know until we got there.
Then it hit me.
The labyrinths.
We’d have to start turning our focus toward them again, those interwoven horrors that connect worlds. The ones that never played fair.
I shuddered as the memories surfaced, the battle with the Warden, the pain, the fear, the crushing sense of helplessness.
But I didn’t let it settle this time. I took a long, steady breath and let it go.
I wouldn’t repeat my mistakes. I wouldn’t charge in blind again. I had a team. A damn good one. And we’d face whatever came next together.
The moment we ascend, we need to find Brakor and honor our promise, to begin wiping those things out before they spread further. Before they consumed more worlds.
I closed the map, a weight settled on my shoulders, but it didn’t drag me down.
It just reminded me that the path forward wouldn’t wait for us.