The morning that dawned over the Labyrinth was not a release from the night's dread, but merely a shift to a sterile, unforgiving white light. Alista Tudor and Artemis broke camp, the silence surrounding them heavier than the colossal slabs of ruin they navigated. Alista felt a primal, gnawing anxiety the closer they drew to the Soul Devouring Tree. The entity was an obscene sentinel of the Labyrinth, capable of leeching the very essence from any creature that lingered too close.
Alista had no choice but to push forward; a detour meant days of exposure to unpredictable Nightmare Creatures. After a few hushed, tense moments of discussion with Artemis, they agreed to a cold, pragmatic calculus: they would skirt the edge of the tree's influence, minimizing their exposure to the soul-leeching aura.
Their path soon led them into the Ashen Barrow. The name was fitting—it was a place where life went to die and be interred. This area, contrary to the scattered, chaotic life elsewhere in the Labyrinth, was unnervingly sterile. There were no luminous corals, no skittering insects, no ground cover whatsoever. It was a vast, desolate field of cracked, grey soil, punctuated only by one monolithic structure: the Soul Tree.
"This entire area is utterly devoid of living things, save for that monstrosity," Artemis whispered, her voice tight with instinctive revulsion.
Alista's eyes were fixed on the tree, a massive, unholy beacon of red and black. "We still don't know what the hell that tree is, exactly. Call it instinct, but every fiber of my being screams that its very existence is an abomination that must be purged."
Artemis tightened her grip on her spear. "Well, first, we climb it. We need to see what's on the other side of this island. No risk, no reward."
They advanced toward the base of the Soul Tree, and the oppression grew. The ground beneath their feet was scored with visible evidence of a past, desperate struggle. Massive chunks of earth were seared black, and the air still held the faint, metallic stench of scorched flesh and volatile oils.
Artemis knelt, examining a particular patch of blackened earth where the ground seemed vitrified. "Some kind of desperate battle took place here. Whoever fought used fire-based abilities, combined with something oily and highly flammable—like the secreted fluids of those giant centipedes. It was a kill-or-be-killed scenario."
Alista nodded grimly, already linking the evidence to the whispers of the Immortal Flame cohort who had recently passed through. "It might be." A cold realization struck him: 'Wow, she guessed the method of conflict just from the environmental scars. If I ever go against her, I might have serious trouble. Her observation skills are terrifyingly precise.'
The tree itself was a cyclopean entity, its massive, dark bark scarred and resilient, its dense canopy choked with enormous, blood-red leaves that rustled without wind.
Alista stopped at the base, looking at Artemis with an intensity that brooked no argument. "Listen to me. Never do anything unnecessary. Especially not anything impulsive around this thing."
Artemis rolled her eyes, attempting to dismiss the heavy warning with forced nonchalance. "Jeez, what are you, my parent?"
Despite his gut feeling, Alista left her, reluctantly trusting her professionalism. He began his ascent, driven by a deep, innate urge to kill the Soul Tree that threatened to consume his consciousness. It wasn't just a physical enemy; it was a conceptual flaw in the world's fabric.
He soon found the shattered remains of the nest, the grotesque cradle where Sunny had acquired the Blood Weave.
Alista grimaced, kicking a piece of the shell. "They came here. If we had arrived even a few days earlier, I might have taken the chance to acquire that thing." He was consumed by the hunger for power, a hunger his Aspect fueled relentlessly. He quickly left the nest and continued his climb to the highest point, eager to survey the geography.
Beyond the western edge of the Ashen Barrow, the slope of the island was much steeper. Alista finally reached a ridge, and what he saw stole the breath from his lungs and clarity from his mind.
Where the island should have simply met the flat wasteland of the Forgotten Shore, the ground continued to slope downward at a vast, deceptively sharp angle. It stretched far into the distance, revealing that the whole island was perched precariously on the rim of a colossal depression in the earth.
It resembled a giant, gaping crater left behind by an impact so unimaginable that it defied mortal comprehension. The scale was dizzying. The crater's diameter could only be calculated in hundreds of kilometers. The roots of the Soul Tree, which could be seen protruding from the soil far below, seemed like tiny, insignificant blades of grass in comparison to the sheer size of the abyssal chasm's wall. It was the face of the Forgotten Shore itself—a wound on the world.
Alista frowned, the horror of the realization settling deep in his bones. "No way. I am not traversing that on foot or horse." He immediately planned to drag Artemis back up to witness this existential nightmare, to make her understand the madness of their current situation.
As he started to climb back down to fetch her, he stopped, struck by a strange wave of disorientation. "Huh, why should I drag her here?" He forgot something and trusted his Instincts,which made him Survive in Outskirts
He quickly descended and found Artemis at the base of the tree. To his rising horror, he saw her casually eating a fruit plucked from the lower branches of the Soul Tree.
Alista felt a surge of cold fury, all rational thought replaced by panic. "Why are you eating that fruit?! It's from a soul-devouring tree!"
Artemis looked at him, unfazed, a faint, contented smile on her lips. "I was hungry. And look." She held up her Status Runes. "I'm getting Fragments. It tastes metallic and cold, but it's pure essence."
Alista didn't hesitate. He grabbed her arm and dragged her back upward, his strength overwhelming her momentary confusion. He didn't know why he was so furious; he just knew the fruit was a violation, an internal contamination. His instincts were screaming, a terrible, wordless alarm.
When they reached the edge of the rim again, Alista pointed into the massive abyss. "See? What are we going to do with that?"
Artemis, slightly dazed by the fruit's subtle psychic high, remained oddly pragmatic. "Let's go down. We can find a path."
They began their climb down the steep, outer slope of the island. As they descended, Artemis plucked some more of the indigo fruits, handing one to Alista. "Hey, eat this fruit. I'm getting Fragments, and it makes my focus clearer."
Alista frowned, the sight of the fruit filling him with an overwhelming sense of loss, as if he had missed something critically important just moments before. His instincts were a cacophony of warnings, muffled but relentless. He felt a sudden, massive urge—an instinct that swelled like a tidal wave of pure, battle-hungry rage. He had never felt a bloodlust so overwhelming, so absolute. It was the primal, dark core of his Aspect taking over.
He stopped, digging his heels into the gravel. "Artemis!" he bellowed, his voice distorted by the emergent power. "Cover your eyes! Now!".
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