CHAPTER 74: CHAPTER 74: A BLACK DOOR AT THE CENTER

The Shadowmere Swamps stretched out before them like a wound in the world itself. Where other regions they had visited possessed their own unique beauty despite the challenges they presented, this place seemed designed to reject beauty entirely. Dark water pooled between twisted trees whose branches reached toward the sky like grasping claws, and a perpetual mist hung in the air that seemed to absorb light rather than scatter it.

"This place feels wrong," Yulia said, her elven senses recoiling from the oppressive atmosphere. "Not just dangerous—actively malevolent."

"The magical signatures are completely scrambled," Veyra observed through their communication device back at the Nexus. "I’m reading conflicting energy patterns, as if the very space is trying to hide something."

Evon stood at the edge of the swamp, studying the barrier that had appeared when they’d tried to approach as a group. It wasn’t visible in the conventional sense, but it was definitely there—a wall of force that allowed him to pass through while preventing anyone else from entering.

"I don’t like this," Quendor said, his dragon senses picking up traces of old magic woven into the barrier. "Separating the group goes against every tactical principle we’ve established."

"The barrier isn’t aggressive," Seraphiel observed, extending her angelic senses toward the mystical obstruction. "It’s more like... a filter. As if something inside recognizes Evon specifically and will only allow him to pass."

Evon reached out to touch the barrier, and his hand passed through as if it weren’t there. But when Borin tried the same thing, his fingers met solid resistance.

"It’s definitely keyed to me personally," Evon confirmed. "The question is whether that’s because of who I am, or because of what I’m carrying."

Through his connection to the four goddesses, he felt their concern and curiosity. Unlike previous regions, where they could sense Yena’s fragment from a distance, here there was only... nothing. An absence that felt deliberate.

"We can sense something," Naia said in his mind. "But it’s heavily shielded. Whoever or whatever is protecting the fragment doesn’t want it found."

"Be careful," Lyria added. "This feels like a trap. Not necessarily for us, but... for someone."

"I’ll be fine," Evon said aloud, knowing his companions could hear him. "Keep the communication channel open as long as possible. If I don’t check in within twenty-four hours, contact the Arbiter."

"Make it twelve hours," Thorek said firmly. "This place has the feel of somewhere time moves differently."

The moment Evon stepped through the barrier, he felt the change. The air became thick and oppressive, carrying scents of decay and stagnant water that seemed to cling to his clothes and skin. But more concerning was the immediate dampening effect on his magical senses. His connection to the four goddesses remained strong, but his ability to sense his surroundings was significantly reduced.

"Can you still feel me?" he asked them silently.

"Yes, but it’s muted," Veyra replied. "This entire region seems to be wrapped in some kind of magical interference."

The path deeper into the swamp was treacherous from the start. What looked like solid ground often turned out to be deceptive pools of brackish water, while areas that appeared to be water sometimes held firm underfoot. Evon found himself relying more on his Eyes of Fate than his normal senses, letting precognition guide him along the safest routes.

The first attack came within the first hour.

He was navigating around a particularly large pool when the water itself seemed to rise up and take shape. The shadow spirit that emerged looked like a person made of living darkness, its features constantly shifting as if it couldn’t decide what form to take.

"Intruder," it whispered in a voice like wind through dead leaves. "You do not belong in the Shadowmere."

"I’m just passing through," Evon replied, drawing the Blade of Fate. The sword’s elemental energies seemed dimmed here, but still functional.

The shadow spirit didn’t respond with words. Instead, it lunged at him with claws made of solidified darkness that seemed to absorb light where they touched the air.

Fighting the shadow spirit was unlike battling any physical opponent. His sword passed through its form harmlessly at first, until he learned to channel Lyria’s fire along the blade’s edge. The flames gave the weapon substance against the creature’s incorporeal nature, but even then, each strike seemed to only partially damage it.

The spirit fought with a combination of physical attacks and psychological warfare. Its claws left real wounds when they connected, but it also projected waves of despair and hopelessness that tried to sap his will to fight. Only his connection to the four goddesses kept him grounded as the creature attempted to overwhelm him with visions of failure and loss.

"Focus on what’s real," Naia advised. "Don’t let it into your head."

The battle lasted nearly thirty minutes before Evon managed to land a decisive strike. By channeling all four elemental essences simultaneously, he created a blade of such intense purity that it disrupted the shadow spirit’s cohesion entirely. The creature dissolved with what might have been a sigh of relief.

But the victory was short-lived. As soon as the first spirit was destroyed, others began to emerge from the surrounding darkness. Not one or two, but dozens, all converging on his position with single-minded purpose.

What followed was the longest continuous battle of Evon’s life. For hours, shadow spirits emerged from every dark corner of the swamp, attacking individually and in groups, using tactics that ranged from straightforward assault to elaborate ambushes.

Some spirits were humanoid, like the first one he’d encountered. Others took the shapes of animals—wolves made of living shadow, birds with wings like torn cloth, serpents that moved through the air as easily as through water. All of them shared the same incorporeal nature that made them difficult to damage and the same psychological attacks that tried to wear down his mental defenses.

"This is coordinated," Sythara observed as Evon fought off a pack of shadow wolves while simultaneously deflecting attacks from aerial spirits shaped like ravens. "They’re not just random encounters. Something is directing them."

"Testing us," Veyra agreed. "Each wave is slightly different, as if whatever’s controlling them is learning from our responses."

The spirits weren’t his only opponents. As he pushed deeper into the swamp, he encountered creatures that had once been plants but were now something else entirely. Vines that moved with predatory intelligence, reaching out to entangle his limbs while secreting acids that could eat through metal. Trees whose bark peeled back to reveal mouths filled with thorn-sharp teeth. Flowers that released clouds of spores designed to induce hallucinations and paralysis.

Fighting the living undead plants required completely different tactics from the shadow spirits. Physical attacks worked normally against them, but they were incredibly resilient and seemed to feel no pain. Cutting off a vine would cause two more to grow from the stump. Burning a tree would cause it to release even more toxic spores.

"Use ice," Naia suggested as Evon found himself surrounded by a grove of carnivorous trees. "Freeze their sap. It’ll slow their regeneration."

The technique worked, but it was exhausting. Each battle required him to adapt his fighting style, and the constant psychological pressure from the shadow spirits was taking its toll. By the time he had been fighting for twelve hours straight, his movements were becoming sluggish and his responses less precise.

"I need to rest," he said during a brief lull between attacks.

"Not here," Lyria warned. "This place doesn’t allow for rest. It feeds on exhaustion and despair."

She was right. Every time he tried to find a safe place to recover, more enemies would emerge to drive him onward. The swamp itself seemed designed to wear down intruders through attrition rather than overwhelming force.

It was after thirty-six hours of continuous fighting that Evon first noticed something was wrong. He had been pushing deeper into the swamp, following the faint traces of Yena’s presence that he could detect through his connection to her other fragments. But gradually, those traces had been getting weaker rather than stronger.

"Can you still sense her?" he asked the goddesses during a brief respite while shadow spirits regrouped in the distance.

"Barely," Naia replied, her voice troubled. "And it’s getting fainter."

"That’s not possible," Lyria said. "If we’re getting closer to the fragment, the connection should be getting stronger."

Veyra’s analytical nature kicked in. "Unless we’re not getting closer. Unless something is actively masking the fragment’s presence."

"Or moving it," Sythara added grimly.

The realization hit Evon like a physical blow. He activated his Eyes of Fate, pushing the ability harder than he ever had before, trying to see through whatever deception was being worked on him.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

The path he had been following wasn’t leading toward Yena’s fragment at all. It was leading him in a gradually widening spiral that would eventually bring him back to where he had started. The faint traces of her presence that he had been detecting were echoes, reflections bounced off the swamp’s magical interference to lead him astray.

"I’ve been going in circles," he said aloud, his voice carrying a note of frustration that made nearby shadow spirits pause in their approach.

"For how long?" Naia asked.

"Hours. Maybe since I started." Evon looked around at the landscape that seemed identical to what he had been seeing for the past day and a half. "This whole region is designed to confuse intruders, to make them wander until they’re too exhausted to continue."

"Then how do we find the real path?" Lyria asked.

Evon closed his eyes and pushed his enhanced senses to their absolute limit. Instead of trying to detect Yena’s presence directly, he focused on finding the one place in the swamp where her presence was completely absent—the eye of the storm, so to speak.

There. To the north-northeast, perhaps a kilometer away, there was a spot that felt like a void in his magical senses. Not empty, but actively negated, as if something was working very hard to hide what was there.

"Found it," he said, changing direction for the first time since entering the swamp.

The shadow spirits and undead plants seemed to realize what he was doing. Their attacks became more desperate, more coordinated. Entire trees uprooted themselves to block his path. Shadow spirits began working together to create barriers of living darkness. The swamp itself seemed to fight against his progress.

But Evon was no longer the uncertain young man who had first awakened to his powers. Thirty-six hours of continuous combat had pushed him past exhaustion into a state of pure determination. His blade sang with the combined power of four goddesses as he cut through every obstacle the swamp could throw at him.

The heart of the Shadowmere Swamps was nothing like what he had expected. Instead of another corrupted landscape or a creature guarding Yena’s fragment, he found himself standing before a structure that clearly didn’t belong in this reality.

A black door.

Not a doorway carved into a tree or a cave entrance, but an actual door—tall, rectangular, made from what looked like polished obsidian. It stood freely in the center of a small clearing, supported by nothing but its own presence. Behind it, Evon could see only more swampland, but the door itself radiated an aura of such profound otherness that it made his enhanced senses recoil.

The door was set into a frame of black obsidian rock that rose from the swamp floor like a natural formation, but its too-perfect angles and surfaces made it clear that it was anything but natural.

"What is that?" Veyra whispered in his mind.

"I don’t know," Evon replied, approaching the structure carefully. "But I can’t sense Yena at all anymore. Not even the faintest trace."

The door had no handle, no keyhole, no obvious way to open it. But as Evon drew closer, symbols began to appear on its surface—runes that hurt to look at directly and seemed to shift when he wasn’t focusing on them.

"This isn’t from our reality," Sythara said with certainty. "This is something from... elsewhere."

"The question is," Lyria added grimly, "what’s it doing here? And where is Yena?"

Evon reached out to touch the door’s surface, and the black obsidian felt cold under his fingers—not the cold of winter, but the cold of infinite empty space.

The runes flared brighter.

And from somewhere beyond the door, he heard something that made his heart stop.

A scream.

Yena’s scream.

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