The muscular man stared at the green creatures, his temper simmering. In the next heartbeat he lunged. One clean swing of his broad sword and a creature's head spun through the air.
"And here I was thinking they'd be a challenge." He exhaled, glad they weren't stronger.
"If that's the case, then let's finish this quickly." Mira flashed forward. Even without her aether, her speed outclassed most Resonants. The other two men joined in as well. The Channeler crushed skulls with his bare hands while the Guardian slammed bodies against the cave walls, turning them to pulp under the weight of his shield.
"They weren't bad after all," Micheal said.
"Yh." Axel stepped beside him, guarding Miranda as a few creatures slipped around the others.
He muttered to himself, "There's some kind of monstrous energy here… but I don't know how to absorb it."
Minutes later, the last of the green creatures fell. The group sagged to the ground, exhausted and barely able to lift their arms.
Then another wave of the creatures crawled out.
"Their timing is perfect. They waited for us to get worn down." Mira was tired too, but she still stepped forward. Giving up meant dying.
The others followed. After a long, grinding battle, the second wave finally dropped. No one could stand. They sat slumped, chests rising and falling like bellows.
An hour passed. No more creatures came. It felt over.
Doooom.
A crushing pressure slammed down on them. It wasn't aether. It had a different flavor, sharp and monstrous. Axel recognized it as the same energy he'd sensed earlier, only far more refined. None of them could move. The pressure alone forced them toward the floor.
"We're… going to die… if this keeps up…" Micheal choked out.
"Just hold on. We'll make it." Axel tried to sound steady, but he was barely breathing.
"Make it out? Are you sure? Because I don't intend to leave anyone alive today."
A voice slithered behind him.
A humanoid beast stood there grinning from ear to ear. About 6'2, with a single horn jutting from its skull like a blade. Ominous black energy bled from its body, the clear source of the pressure.
For the first time, Axel felt naked fear crawl up his spine. No one needed to be told the truth. The beast was the one crushing them.
It was a devil wearing flesh.
"Aaaaaargh!" Axel screamed as his left leg was torn off with a casual swipe.
"No!" Micheal cried out.
Axel writhed, barely conscious. When he saw the beast turn toward Micheal, something inside him snapped.
"My only friend isn't suffering like I am," he thought.
"No! Hurt me instead! Only me!" Axel pleaded.
"No! Take me instead!" Micheal shouted at the beast.
"I'll grant both your wishes." The beast chuckled, dragging the two closer.
"The rest of you can wait. You'll be my final entertainment."
"Hey! You bastard! Who do you think you—"
The muscular man's head rolled before the sentence finished. Mira and Miranda gagged, vomiting from the shock.
Tears streamed down Miranda's face. It was her first real death inside a rift. She couldn't stop trembling.
Mira shut her eyes. She felt the gap. No matter how fast she was, she'd never outrun this thing.
"You think you can talk to me?" the Channeler spat, and instantly became another headless corpse.
"Now behave," the beast said. Mira, Miranda and the Guardian nodded silently, paralyzed by fear.
"Were you trying to run?" The beast eyed Micheal, who was dragging Axel inch by inch under the crushing force.
"I'll take one of your legs too."
Micheal's scream tore through the cave.
"Please! Don't hurt him anymore!" Axel begged.
Another scream followed—Axel's—as the beast tore off his arm and slowly licked the blood from its fingers.
"I can't… take this anymore…" Axel whispered.
He tried absorbing the monstrous energy again, but his body rejected it.
Just as he was ready to die for Micheal, the world around him shifted.
A figure appeared. Massive, humanoid, and wrapped in a cosmos. Its body shimmered like a living night sky, with stars drifting around it like a gentle constellation tide.
A soothing force washed over Axel, knitting bone and flesh back together. Beneath that calm energy, he felt the same monstrous power as the beast… but deeper, more ancient, more chaotic.
"Do you want power?" The being spoke like distant thunder. "Do you wish to be stronger?"
Axel hesitated, stunned.
Then a sheathed katana drifted down from the starry figure. The energy inside it pulsed with the same soothing and chaotic duality as the being itself.
"I am Asterion, Overseer of the Stellar Dimension," the being said.
Axel froze. The name alone eased the terror in his chest.
"If you truly seek power, then grasp that sword. The strength of the stars will be yours."
Axel reached out. His hand trembled, partly from fear, partly from the raw weight of the energy radiating from the katana's sheath. The moment his fingers touched the hilt, the entire scene split apart.
Light rushed in, a flood of constellations swirling around him. He felt every star in the universe hum in the back of his mind, each one whispering a truth he had never known. The soothing energy wrapped around his broken spirit, and the chaotic one burned through every nerve like a trial by fire, testing him, trying to crush him from the inside.
He wanted to scream, but the sound couldn't leave his throat.
His body was rebuilding itself at a furious pace, bones knitting, muscles reforming, nerves reweaving as if his flesh were being drawn by invisible hands. His severed arm and leg regrew in streaks of starlight until he felt whole again.
The crushing pressure from reality suddenly shattered.
Axel's eyes snapped open. The cave returned. He was still on the ground, but the beast looming over Micheal froze, its grin slipping away.
The pressure the beast exerted began to crumble around Axel like dust falling off a long-forgotten statue.
"What… what are you?" the beast whispered. Even its voice trembled.
But before Axel could even think about his next move, the space above them split open like glass struck by a hammer.
A crack rang through the cave.
Then another.
Then a fist punched straight through the fractured air, shattering the opening wide.
"You filthy creature."
The voice thundered through the rift before the owner even stepped through.
"You dare lay a finger on my family!"
Two gleaming battle axes dropped out of the broken space first, spinning as if eager to taste blood. A moment later, Akira stepped out after them, his arrival shaking the entire cavern. His cloak whipped behind him as if the air itself bowed.
The beast's pupils shrank.
Its entire body flinched back instinctively.
Akira landed between Axel and the beast, grabbing his axes mid-fall without even looking at them. The pressure that had been smothering everyone vanished completely, replaced by a heavier, older force radiating from Akira like a silent storm.
Micheal's voice wavered. "Master…Akira?"
Akira didn't answer. He fixed his eyes on the beast with the kind of fury that could peel continents from maps.
The beast tried to speak but its voice caught.
"Y-you… you weren't supposed to return this soon."
Akira's grip tightened on his axes.
"You hurt my sons."
The cave itself seemed to buckle at those words.
And for the first time, the beast took a step back not in fear of the stars… but in fear of the man who had just walked out of the broken sky.