CHAPTER 40: CHAPTER 40: INTO THE CRIMSON VERGE (9)

It pulled the floor out from under everything.

No fall. No wind. Just the sensation of being erased badly.Sound followed late, bent out of shape—drums running backward, metal sighing.Heat left, then came back angry.

[ Cataclysm Active — Veil of Black Iron ]

[ Visibility : None ]

[ Absolute Regeneration Suppressed ( 27 % ) ]

[ Advice : Survival Probability 5 % ]

Cool. Add it to the résumé.

The air didn’t go dark; it died.

One heartbeat ago, the forge had been a sun. Now it was the inside of a closed eye. Pressure filled the gap where color used to live.

The High Shaman’s first step shook the floor. Each one after that sounded closer even when it wasn’t.

A staff dragging on stone. Sparks that refused to glow. The scrape became a sermon.

"Elise?" My voice cracked, small.

"Here!"Blue sparks burst from nothing. Her hands traced frantic geometry in midair, desperate for a shape that light could still remember.

For a blink, I saw everything—the ribs of the forge, Varga planted like a fortress, Lucien kneeling in prayer-posture, ash boiling around us.

Then the dark swallowed it again.

"Stay on me!" Varga barked. Armor creaked. "Shields up!"Lucien’s tone stayed level, surgeon-calm. "Anchors set—don’t stray, Ethan!"

The Shaman exhaled. Air fled. Every pore on my skin screamed.

[ Lightning Step — Step 1 / 3 Active ]

[ Cooldown : 2 s ]

I blinked sideways—heat flash, steel ready.Fangpiercer found contact that wasn’t flesh; it was resistance, dense as smoke with bones. The hit sent a metallic ripple through the platform.The return swing missed my spine by inches. Stone cracked behind me like a thunderclap.

"Cross, right!" Elise’s voice, warped by static.

I turned—saw her spell ignite again, ash turning to blue diamonds spinning around her wrists. She shaped triangles, perfect, fragile, alive.For one heartbeat, she was the only light in hell.

Then the Shaman raised two fingers.

Reality bent. The fire reversed—blue to red, red to hunger.The flames inhaled.

"Elise!"

I sprinted into the glow. Heat hit like a wall, but it wasn’t heat; it was absence.The blast threw me backward, ribs grinding. Her scream tore through the dark—pure sound, no words—then broke halfway through.Silence followed, absolute. Even the forge seemed to listen.

[ Vital Sign — Elise Renard → Zero ]

[ Party Member Deceased ]

Ash drifted past my face, still glowing faintly, like the world scattering her remains.She used to say ash remembered heat. Guess it remembered her too.

Lucien’s hand locked around my shoulder. "Eyes on me! Focus!"

"Define focus, Doc!" My voice cracked. "Because we’re three ghosts short of a miracle!"

The Shaman’s staff hit again. The sound wasn’t thunder—it was finality.

Varga caught the blow with his shield. The impact cratered the floor around his boots. Lucien poured everything through him—runes spider-crawling his armor, light bleeding from every seam.

The shield held, shaking like it wanted to apologize.

"Pattern C!" Lucien shouted.

"No!" Varga’s snarl was half-human, half-metal. "Pattern A! Contain!"

Their spells overlapped—gold and white, prayer and physics. A dome flickered around us.The Shaman tapped his staff once. The dome split like wet paper.

Varga flew backward, carving trenches through obsidian. Sparks followed him like pity.

I ran. Reflex, not bravery.

"Get up! Come on!"

He did. Of course he did. Armor smoking, one knee down, still trying to stand taller than death.

Lucien’s hands flared again—sigils forming a sun between his palms. The next strike came fast; the light sphere caught it and bent it away, melting stone instead of bone.

"Cross! Step! Now!"

[ Lightning Step — Step 1 / 3 ]

[ Cooldown : 2 s ]

I blinked behind the Shaman, slicing for tendon. Fangpiercer met resistance, not skin. It slid through a shadow that wasn’t empty and came out cold.He moved like distance was optional. The staff spun a lazy arc—wind turned into weight, weight into death.

Lucien didn’t dodge. He couldn’t. He chose to block.

The blow shattered his wards, one by one—each sigil bursting like glass stars. Light raced up his arms, into his chest, through his eyes.

He looked at me and smiled—small, knowing. "Tell them I—"

He never finished.

He burst inward. Not burned—unmade. His outline crumbled into a drift of light motes. The darkness swallowed those, too.

[ Vital Sign — Lucien Iwasaki → Zero ]

[ Party Member Deceased ]

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t look away from where he’d been. The smell of ozone and copper filled my mouth.

And Varga—stupid, stubborn Varga—charged anyway.

He roared, the kind of sound that makes your heart flinch.Steel met staff. The shockwave knocked me flat, ears ringing.

For a second, he drove the Shaman back. The floor cracked under both of them. His shield blazed white.Then the staff pierced through it—and through him.

Shoulder to hip. A single clean line.

He stayed standing another breath, just to prove he could. Blood hissed on the ground like applause.

He half-laughed. "Told you... I’d hold—"

Then the shield slipped. His knees followed.

[ Vital Sign — Varga Keene → Zero ]

[ Party Leader Deceased ]

And that was it.Silence. Three people erased from the world while I was still trying to inhale.

Just me.

Ethan Cross.

F-rank trash. The guy who survives everything because he’s too scared to die on schedule.

The Shaman turned toward me. Six meters tall. Cloak breathing like a living storm. Eyes—no, holes—where reality refused to shine.

[ HP : 17 / 180 ]

[ Absolute Regeneration : Offline ]

[ Mobility : 28 % ]

[ Advice : Run ]

"Yeah?" I whispered. "Run where?"

He raised the staff again. Each vertebra in it glowed with someone else’s heartbeat.

Something inside me cracked—the part that thought jokes were armor.The truth slid out: I’m terrified. I always was. Every dungeon. Every fight. The laughter was just a mask with bad stitching.

[ Lightning Step — Step 1 / 3 ]

I charged anyway.Three Steps. Three chances to matter.

The world turned into frames:

Here—cut.

There—cut again.

Above—stab down.

Fangpiercer scored lines across him like scratches on a god’s mirror. None bled. None stuck.

"Come on!" I screamed. "Just feel something!"

He did. Boredom. The staff tilted slightly, like swatting a bug he didn’t want to ruin the room with.

The hit missed my heart by luck and contempt. The shockwave still tossed me like a ragdoll. My body ricocheted off stone; everything hurt in languages I didn’t speak.

[ HP : 9 / 180 ]

[ Major Trauma : Multiple Fractures ]

[ Absolute Regeneration Locked ( Cooldown Pending ) ]

I coughed blood and laughed with it. It sounded wet and insane.

He started chanting. The words weren’t words—they were permissions. The forge answered like an obedient dog.

[ Cataclysm : Black Ascension — Charging ]

[ Impact In : 3 s ]

[ Defensive Options : None ]

Three seconds.

That’s a long time to regret things.

I thought of Mara. Her laugh when she caught me lying about being "fine." Her hand on my chest after fights when I was shaking too hard to hide it. I thought of Selene, all command and heat. I thought of my parents. Their last message unread. "Proud of you." I’d told myself I’d call once I was worth it.

Guess that memo’s late.

The staff’s glow filled the dark. The air itself started to pull toward it.

My body refused to stand. My legs were petitions stamped denied.I was done. Empty. A joke that ran too long.

"Guess this is the part," I said, voice shaking, "where I die boring."

The staff fell.

Time folded in half.

No sound. No heat. No pain. Just a presence in the marrow of everything—cold, absolute, curious.

[ System Override Detected ]

[ Protocol : Divine Interference — Source Unknown ]

[ Skill Upgrade : Lightning Step → Lightning Transit ( SSS ) ]

[ Effect : Instant Spatial Relocation 200 m Radius • Global Anchor × 2 / Day ]

[ Emergency Evacuation Authorized ]

Light bled through the dark like veins opening in the sky.

Every death replayed—Elise burning, Lucien dissolving, Varga skewered—each one frozen mid-moment, burned into me.Then the world folded.

I reached for something—anything—and the universe turned the page.

"Not again," I whispered, or thought, or dreamed.

Then the light ate me whole.

[ Lightning Transit — Emergency Activation (Automatic) ]

[ Target : User — Safe Anchor Detected ... Arcadia ]

[ Spatial Compression → Engage ]

The forge, the screams, the smell of blood—all of it imploded. My body stretched thin as thread; nerves fired out of order; heartbeat lagged a full second behind reality.White swallowed red, red bled to nothing.

Sound left first.

Then gravity.

Then pain.

For a breathless eternity I was falling between frames of light that didn’t belong to this world.

And then—

Arcadia.

I hit my apartment floor hard enough to break it. The air smelled of home—dust, oil, cheap ramen. Wrong kind of heat.

[ Quest Failed — Crimson Verge Main Objective Incomplete ]

[ Target: Ash Warden Hierophant — Status: Active ]

[ Dungeon Status — Containment Collapse 97 % ]

[ Result — System Emergency Override Triggered ]

[ User Evacuated (Partial Transfer) ]

My hands shook too much to hold Fangpiercer. It clattered across tile, still humming from a fight it didn’t win.

I crawled toward the couch. "Mara..."No answer."Selene." My voice cracked. "Anyone."

[ Absolute Regeneration Reactivated ]

[ Condition : Systemic Collapse ]

[ Recovery Protocol : Full Stasis ]

[ Breach Event : Imminent (Est. 02 h 59 m) ]

[ Warning : Unconsciousness Imminent ]

I made it halfway up the couch before the world tilted. The skyline outside my window was bleeding red—the gate glow pushing through the clouds.

[ Stasis Protocol : Engaged ]

[ Estimated Duration : 06 h 00 m ]

Then everything went black.

[ Alert : Dungeon Break — Crimson Verge S-0127 ]

[ Containment Failure : Confirmed ]

[ Casualties : Severe ]

[ Status : Unresolved ]

Six hours after my unexpected evacuation — I woke.

[ Time Elapsed : 06 h 03 m ]

[ Status : Recovery — Partial (43 %) ]

My lungs forgot air had weight. The floor was cracked, still warm. My window was a sheet of red light; the glow from the gate bled through half the skyline.

Six hours. That’s all it took for the world to prove I shouldn’t have lived.

Elise. Lucien. Varga.Gone.The city I’d tried to save—burning because I made it out.

[ Public Notice : Survivor Identified — Ethan Cross ]

[ Classification : Anomaly. Suspect. Falseborn. ]

Guess the system wasn’t done ruining my week.

I sat against the wall, watching Arcadia’s skyline pulse like a wound that wouldn’t close. Somewhere out there, the Shaman was still alive—and the whole world was paying for it.