Five Crowns — the short span that travelers of the Aether-realm count like minutes — had passed since they'd left the cave's entrance behind. At least, that's what they thought. In truth, it felt as if they'd been descending this endless corridor for half an eternity.
The passage sloped gently downward, as if it were leading straight into the heart of the world. The walls were coated in a blue, pulsing moss that glowed in soft waves. Its light was gentle, fluid, almost alive — a breath of color and Aether.
Only one of them truly understood what he was seeing.
An Aether remnant… perhaps even an old Sanitas formation, Raiiko thought calmly, never once altering his pace.
"Maaan… how much farther?" Alvios sighed, throwing his head back with theatrical despair. "How big is this cave? Are you sure it's only been five Crowns? It feels like we're hiking through the underworld!"
Sensing the mood nosediving, Viktoria resorted to drastic measures.
She tore a big handful of moss from the wall, smashed it over her face, and spun around.
"Tadaa! My prince, look! I'm a terrifying sea monster! Baaaargh!"
Alvios collapsed in laughter.
"Hahaha! Oh man—! More like a kappa. Definitely a kappa!"
Nouel, meanwhile, stopped, turning his head just a fraction — his gaze sharp as a knife.
"Could you… for once… be normal for five minutes?" he said in a deadly calm.
"Maybe the moss is poisonous. Maybe it'll eat you next. So stop acting like toddlers. We're on a mission."
"Sorry…" Alvios and Viktoria said in unison — not very convincingly, but perfectly synchronized.
Raiiko, for his part, wasn't distracted in the slightest.
His eyes were steady, focused, fixed on an invisible point ahead.
His steps were even, precise.
He was so concentrated he could probably have spotted a sapling in a roaring fire.
Then came the sounds.
A scraping.
A scratching.
A dull, clattering rattle, like bones knocking together.
The echo was everywhere — and nowhere.
Viktoria's ears twitched. "Guys… I'm not imagining this, am I? It's getting louder…"
"VIKTORIA, BEHIND YOU!" Alvios shouted.
Two skeletons burst from the shadow at her back, saber-blades raised to cut her down.
"Ventus Tempus!"
Nouel was already moving before the words had fully left his lips.
Ventus flooded his body, accelerating tendons, muscles, breath.
Fivefold speed — five times a normal man.
In a single fluid motion he yanked two arrows from his quiver, sprinted forward —
and drove both shafts through the skeletons' skulls before their strikes could land.
Bone crashed; the bodies crumpled.
Nouel exhaled as if it were nothing.
But right behind Alvios, more bony hands clawed up from the floor.
Fingers tore out of the rock, as if the cave itself were spitting out its dwellers. Two more skeletons wrenched free — jerky, distorted, as though someone had yanked them from their graves too soon.
"Jump, Alvios!" Nouel called.
Alvios didn't think — he moved.
He dropped his weight, flipped into a clean back handspring, and felt the cold bone-blades whisper past his stomach mid-air.
"Uff… that was close," he muttered as he landed.
Nouel drew and loosed in one breath.
A knife-keen twang cut the air — Ventus bore the motion, precise and clean.
Two arrows flashed forward, so fast they were only a gold-blue streak.
The skeletons barely reached neck-height before the shafts punched through their skulls and sent them back into the earth they'd come from.
"Thanks, Nouel!" Alvios called, brushing dust off his pants. "I owe you one! And not a second too soon!"
Nouel's shoulder twitched — nearly a shrug. "I'm merely doing what's logical," he said curtly.
Then Raiiko's voice — quiet, even, yet cutting through the corridor like a blade:
"Stay alert. That was only the beginning."
"What do you mean by—" Alvios started.
He fell silent.
Ahead, only a few dozen paces away, the shadow peeled back like a curtain in the wind —
and behind it, a whole horde.
Skeletons.
Dozens. Maybe more.
Smaller ones, hunched, in tattered armor.
Larger ones, broad as stone blocks, hefting heavy clubs.
Some bore spears, others crooked sabers, their blades oozing with the blue moss-light like venom.
It was as if the cave had mobilized its entire army.
Alvios blinked.
"…Oh. Oh no. That's, uh… definitely more than two."
Nouel slowly raised his bow.
"This will be… interesting."
Raiiko drew one long breath; his gaze didn't move.
The horde surged forward.
He stepped out, lifted one hand to the side — without looking away — a wordless sign: stay back.
Then he raised his hand high.
"Ignis Ardentis… da mihi vires," he murmured, now audible to all. „Flamma purga animam corruptam. Ignis fruom.
Fire gathered in his outstretched palm. Not a mere flame, but compact will — a pulsing Aether core of pure Ignis. Within a heartbeat, it grew into a massive fireball that filled almost the entire width of the corridor.
It thundered forward, roaring into the skeleton horde and devouring everything in its path. Bones glowed, blackened, then sifted into ash. Heat rolled down the passage in an invisible wave that made Alvios, Viktoria, and Nouel squint against it.
As they were about to breathe again, a new shape rose from the blaze.
A much larger skeleton hauled itself upright, its bones veined with dark fractures, its skull etched with burst runes. It shook sooty flames from itself as if they were dust.
Raiiko lifted his hand again. "Ignis Ardentis, da mihi vir—"
He stopped when a hand settled on his shoulder — gentle, but firm.
Alvios.
"Don't put us in your shadow, man," he said with a crooked smile. "We're comrades. I'm grateful you've got our backs — truly. But leave that oversized baby to us and take a breather, or you'll burn through all your Aether."
Raiiko paused. His fingers loosened; the forming spell melted back into the Flow. Slowly, he lowered his hand and slipped a step into the shadow behind Alvios — and for an instant, Alvios thought he saw something like peace touch Raiiko's face. An impossibly faint breath of relief.
Alvios, Nouel, and Viktoria now stood together, weapons drawn, a short distance from the giant skeleton.
"Let's run a combo," Alvios proposed.
"I'm rear guard and fire support," Nouel replied, already nocking an arrow.
Viktoria slid up beside Alvios, twirled her twin blades with playful grace, and finished the plan with lofty elegance:
"My prince and I rush him and fell him in one blow. Child's play."
The three settled into their stances, while Raiiko sank back into the dark as if the Flow itself were swallowing him — waiting, still and watchful, ready to strike at the exact heartbeat the Aether whispered to him.
The giant skeleton dipped its skull; empty eye sockets fixed on them — then it lunged. The ground trembled as it charged.
"Ventus Volantis!" Nouel cried.
Alvios and Viktoria burst into a sprint. In that instant the Ventus stream coursed through their bodies — light as breath, sharp as blades. Nouel had tied their motion to his own Aether. Their steps turned feather-light — and for a heartbeat the world seemed to lag behind them.
A wrongness thrummed through bone — a sound no living thing could make.
A warped, unnatural scream tore from the skeleton's maw. With it came an Aether pulse — more skeletons clawed from the earth everywhere, as if woken by its cry.
"Don't stop!" Nouel shouted from the rear.
His arrows flew. Strengthened with Terra and Cristallum, guided by the Wind's Flow, they punched through skulls. Some collapsed at once, bone shards pattering to the floor. But there were too many to halt them all. A handful reached Alvios and Viktoria.
One swung at Alvios — he parried on the run with Liberta. Viktoria slid past his flank like a shadow and beheaded the attacker in the same breath.
They drove on.
Two more rose behind Viktoria. Hearing the grind of bone, she half-turned and caught both strikes on her twin blades, rolling them aside so the weapons smashed into the floor.
Alvios seized the moment — leaping forward in a spinning vault, he used Viktoria's head as a springboard mid-flight and cut both skeletons down in one sweeping arc.
More fell to Nouel's arrows from afar, but their numbers kept swelling until the path to the giant was choked with lesser bones.
The giant skeleton slammed its feet down and stopped. Before it, from a circular rune, a green-glowing staff rose out of the rock.
It stretched a hand farther; knobby bones creaked — then gripped the staff.
Aether lines pulsed within it like poisonous veins.
"That's bad…" Nouel muttered. "We need to end this fast."
"On it," Alvios shot back — and in the same breath, a wicked spark lit his eyes. A brilliant plan took shape — at least in his opinion.
The skeletons surged in masses.
Alvios and Viktoria launched a joint sword strike. Their blades crossed; Aether flickered along the edges. A heartbeat later they snapped apart, and a shimmering cut ripped through the front ranks, as if their motion had split the air itself.
Not enough to finish the horde — but enough to open a gap.
"Right… Plan B!" Alvios grabbed Viktoria, wrapped an arm around her waist, and hoisted her up.
"My prince? W-wait— what are you—?!" Her ears shot bolt upright.
"Trust me. Just hold your blades crossed in front of you."
"Wait—!"
Alvios threw her.
Still buffed by Ventus boon Nouel had granted them, Viktoria rocketed toward the giant skeleton at staggering speed. Air screamed past; her blades crossed over her chest, eyes wide.
The skeleton — with no eyes to trust — tried to jerk the staff up to guard.
"Mother, stand by me!" she yelped.
Viktoria collided with her blades straight into the skeleton's skull. Bone burst; the massive body reeled and crashed to the ground. The impact made the whole corridor shudder.
But the giant's fight wasn't done. It twitched, struggling to rise.
Alvios carved a path through the remaining bones — wild but purposeful — while Nouel covered him, picking off anything that tried to flank him.
"You… little wretch."
The skeleton's voice rasped through the space, deep and grating. It didn't come from its skull, but from the Aether itself.
Viktoria froze a second, still half-crouched.
"It talks…"
"Ikramantis Solis Sanitaras Aluminata…"
None of them could make sense of the words, but the staff flared even brighter. A pulsing core throbbed at its center like a heart.
Roots burst from the staff, snaking over the ground, lancing up from the stone like spears.
Viktoria leapt forward, dashed into a curved, unpredictable path, and charged toward the skeleton.
With precise cuts she shredded the roots into splinters. New ones sprouted and shot from the ground like spears, but she dodged them without losing even a hint of speed.
Her blades danced through the air, slicing apart anything that dared to come near her.
She was barely a yard from the skeleton when it grabbed for her with its remaining hand. She landed on its wrist, set her stance, and sliced the hand off in a single clean stroke.
The skeleton jerked as if in pain — disturbingly human.
Alvios had hacked through the horde and reached the giant as well.
Nouel loosed a Terra-hardened arrow straight at the staff; it drilled into the core — a searing crack split the artifact, and a breath later it exploded in a spray of shards.
Viktoria turned, seized the opening, and delivered a twin cut to the already-damaged head. At the same time, Alvios raised his sword and drove a linear strike into the torso.
Both blows landed.
The skeleton was hewn in half; its skull shattered completely. A final howl bled into the cave — and the remaining skeletons around them collapsed as if someone had snipped the strings that held them.
Silence.
"Ha! That's how a real team fights! Nouel, Viktoria — hands in!" Alvios crowed, arms thrust out triumphantly.
Nouel pointedly ignored him and started collecting his arrows. Viktoria meant to clap, but had to steady herself first, woozy from all the spinning, one hand to her brow.
"Clean coordination," came a calm voice from the shadows. "You're coming together faster than I expected."
Raiiko slipped out of the darkness as if he'd simply taken one step sideways. His presence was quiet, unintrusive — no sound betrayed how long he'd been there.
He dipped his head slightly toward Alvios, a wordless nod of respect. Alvios raised a palm for a high-five; Raiiko answered with a brief tap to the back of his hand — respectful, without mirroring their easy exuberance.
He had analyzed the fight from a distance, watched the streams, studied their choices.
Alvios' expression twisted. In a skeptical tone, he said, "Could you please stop sneaking up like that? It's… creepy."
Viktoria planted her hands on her hips. "My prince, please never do that again," she said, clearly meaning the throw.
Nouel only smirked faintly and kept collecting his spent arrows.
"We need to move," he said at last, with a slightly arrogant edge. "If no one's hurt — then let's go."
"Since when are you the leader, Nouel?" Alvios shot back.
"My prince… I think I twisted my ankle. Could you carry me?" Viktoria clutched her leg in exaggerated drama — a bald-faced lie, just to get a little closer to Alvios.
But Raiiko's voice came first, clipped and matter-of-fact: "Don't worry, Viktoria. I can store you in my shadow and take you along. You can rest."
His words were calm and precise, as one expected of Raiiko — cool, composed, with perhaps a shade of dry humor in his eyes.
Viktoria straightened at once and waved him off. "No, no… it's fine. I'm good. Takes more than that to put me down."
Raiiko and Alvios looked at her, puzzled for a heartbeat, then Raiiko only raised an eyebrow and turned forward again.
"As you wish."
He took the lead, this time side by side with Alvios.
Thirty Crowns — about half an hour by Aeridor's reckoning — passed as they walked on through the hushed corridor without encountering another skeleton.
Only their footsteps accompanied them, muffled by the soft floor, while their breathing echoed faintly from the stone.
The cave had fallen silent — too silent, as if granting them a breath before something larger.
When the passage finally opened, they found themselves in a vast chamber.
Four more paths branched away, each in a different direction, like the arteries of a living thing.
At the edges of the room, flowers of countless colors grew; their leaves glowed with a gentle, almost sacred light.
Between them, roots arched up from the ground — fine, bowed, as if the rock itself were breathing and listening to them.
A moment of calm.
A heartbeat of silence.
The sense that the Aether's Flow was leaving a choice in their hands.
Thus their path ended —
and, with the very next breath, a new one began.