The climb to the volcano's rim was a stairway to hell, each step steeped in sulfur and despair.
The air grew thicker, heavier with every yard they gained. The stench of sulfur was so strong it felt solid, scorching their nostrils and throats, turning each breath into a ragged, painful gasp. The ground underfoot had lost all solidity, buried under a deep, fine powder of volcanic ash that felt like walking through the dust of bones. Every step sank them to the ankles, kicking up plumes of grey-black dust, and they could feel the deep, subterranean booms growing more frequent, more violent—a low, gut-churning vibration that spoke of the land's final, furious death throes.
The sky was gone, swallowed by the thick, choking column of ash and toxic gas erupting from the volcano, plunging the world into a murky twilight. Only the massive caldera itself remained, a hellish maw at the island's center, vomiting an ever-intensifying, sickening pulse of dark red light. This was no warm dawn glow, but a deathly radiance born of molten rock and some deeper, malevolent energy, painting the jagged rocks, the twisted skeletons of trees, and even the swirling ash in the air with the color of clotted blood.
The heat was climbing at a terrifying rate. Even encased in his Boiling One armor, Liam felt the invasive waves of heat searing his skin through the metal joints. The armor's cooling system screamed a continuous, overloading whine. Puffs of steam it vented vanished with a sharp hiss the instant they met the superheated air, leaving nothing behind.
Elara was faring worse. Without full armor, she relied on the tough constitution granted by her Silver Wolf Spirit and her sweat-soaked, ash-caked leathers to resist the oven-like blast. Her signature silver hair was plastered to her skin, lank and dull. Each breath was a short, painful rasp, her lungs burning as if filled with hot coals. Yet her silver eyes, against the hellish red backdrop, burned with fierce determination, locked onto Liam's back as she forced herself onward.
"The energy... it's chaos!" Elara gasped, fighting through the physical misery to sense the frenzied energy around them. "It's not just the heat! The Rust-Corruption energy here... it's insanely active, impossibly dense! They're tangled together, feeding each other, boiling over... like some ancient, evil brew that can eat away your very soul!"
Liam just nodded grimly, his own experience far more direct and horrifying. The Rust-Corruption inside him wasn't just restless; it was rejoicing. A terrible, chilling sense of homecoming and savage glee.
A burning, prickling agony flared in his left arm, as if a thousand tiny, red-hot gears were being forged and spun madly inside his flesh and bone, desperate to break free and merge with this nightmarish landscape. It didn't feel like power; it felt like his humanity was being stripped away with every step, accelerating his slide into an abyss.
"Look!" Elara hissed, pointing to a flatter area of black obsidian ahead, its surface gleaming coldly in the bloody light.
In the center stood several grotesquely twisted metal husks, almost fused with the rock—ancient, heavily rusted humanoid mechs. Their design was archaic and strange, unlike anything made today. They were frozen in their final moments: one raising a weapon to the sky, another clawing at the ground, a third curled in a defensive ball. Eons in this place had turned them into grim warnings.
"Explorers? Martyrs?" Elara's voice was a dry croak.
"Or fools who reached for power and were consumed by it," Liam said, his gaze sharp as a hawk's as it scanned the silent wrecks, his every sense screaming danger. At the platform's edge lay the only way in: a massive, natural-looking fissure. It was a vicious, unhealed wound in the volcano's side, spewing not just smoke, but a near-liquid, blood-dark torrent of churning energy. Within it, deeper rust patterns writhed like living things, coiling and twisting, radiating an aura of absolute decay.
Just approaching the fissure, the pressure of the mixed energies was a physical weight, an invisible hand crushing their lungs. The insane heat made the air waver and dance, distorting everything, trapping them in a shimmering, unstable nightmare.
"We can't go in there!" Elara grabbed his arm, her grip desperate. "The energy density inside... it's a hundred times worse! It's not a place for matter! It's a graveyard for reality! Your armor will be torn to atoms!"
Liam had to stop. Warning lights flared red across his Boiling One armor; internal alarms shrieked in his ears. He could hear the metal groaning under the stress. One more step, and it would fail.
Despair washed over him—but in that very moment, the Pact of Wolf and Hammer insignia on his chest, and the raging Rust-Corruption inside him, erupted in a shocking, simultaneous transformation!
The insignia burned hotter than ever, a tiny sun on his chest, blazing with a fierce, pure, silvery-white light! It wasn't just protection now; it was a clarion call, a desperate summons.
And the Rust-Corruption within him, like a hound hearing its master's voice, surged with unprecedented ferocity, savagely battering against his will and the last restraints of his body!
"Guh—!" Liam grunted, a soul-deep tearing pain driving him to one knee. His armored fist slammed into the hot ground. Dark rust patterns crawled like living vines over his neck and face, spreading faster than ever. A series of awful noises—grinding metal, shrieking gears—erupted from his left arm. The limb felt like it was trying to tear itself free and become its own monstrous entity.
"Liam!" Elara cried, rushing to support his shaking form, her eyes wide with fear.
But then, the impossible happened.
The torrent of dark red energy gushing from the fissure—that mix of ultimate heat and destructive rust—seemed to react to the unstable, contradictory field around Liam, formed by the Pact's silver light and his rampaging curse. It actively roiled and parted, peeling back to either side! Against all logic, it carved out a narrow, precarious "path" through the zone of absolute death, a channel where the energy was slightly less turbulent.
The path flickered, unstable. On either side, the boiling, annihilation-radiating walls of energy churned. It was like walking a fraying rope bridge over an abyss.
"It's... your curse!" Elara realized, her voice trembling. "It shares the core's origin! It's... it's being called, and it's being recognized! It's making a path for you!" The discovery brought no relief, only a bone-deep chill. Liam was being acknowledged by this terrible place, binding him to the source of destruction in a way that felt irreversible.
Liam looked up. Through his cracked visor, his eyes held a mix of agony, understanding, and the resolve of a man with no way back.
"Stay close!" he growled, forcing his battered body upright and taking the first step onto the treacherous path.
Inside, his senses were overwhelmed. The deafening roar of energy was the only sound. His world was nothing but flowing, living dark red. The heat was a billion needles stabbing through his armor. Inside, the Pact's silver light and the Rust-Corruption's dark red waged a furious war, the pain tearing at his very soul. He could only cling to the sinister link between his curse and the core, and to the unwavering sense of Elara's will from the insignia, trudging forward, step by agonizing step, across this burning tightrope.
Each step eroded a little more of his "self." Each step took him deeper into the monstrous.
After an eternity of struggle, the space ahead opened into another dimension of terror.
They stood in a colossal underground chamber, vast as a titan's heart. The ceiling was lost in darkness and turbulent energy. The walls weren't rock, but slow-flowing waterfalls of glowing, dark red magma. And at the very center, defying reason, was not a lava lake, but a huge, suspended vortex of pure, raw, savage energy!
At its heart was the Eternal Ember. It defied description, hovering between solid metal and liquid fire, a pulsing manifestation of power and law itself.
It beat. A living, self-aware, colossal heart, contracting and expanding with a slow, mighty rhythm. Each pulse released a tidal wave of energy that swept the chamber—energy containing both the searing heat of creation and the ultimate chill of rust-corrosion that could end worlds.
Countless tiny, intricate, ancient dark golden runes, like living chains, coiled around it, flickering. They seemed to be both desperately restraining the apocalyptic power and carefully guiding it, maintaining a fragile, impossible balance.
The legend was true. And it was alive.
The sheer, near-divine pressure of it wiped their minds blank, leaving only primal awe.
And the guardians of this miracle attacked.
Sensing the intrusion—especially the kindred yet willful Rust-Corruption on Liam—the Eternal Ember shuddered violently, as if profaned! The runic chains blazed, spinning wildly, shrieking like breaking metal!
"ROARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR------------------------!!!"
A roar that bypassed their ears and shook their very souls erupted from the Ember's core!
Guardian serpents, woven from pure rust-energy and molten essence, shot from the vortex! More menacing than any snake, their bodies half-energy, half-substance, flowed with destructive dark red and rust-brown light. Where they passed, space itself scarred, leaving behind lingering rust-colored fissures! They lunged with absolute, annihilating intent.
"Look out!" Elara screamed, pouring every last bit of her Silver Wolf Spirit power into a solid, mirror-bright silver shield before them, its surface etched with the image of a howling wolf.
"BOOM------!!!"
The largest serpent smashed into the shield like a battering ram! A shockwave blasted out, pulverizing the ground. The shield screeched, trembling, webbed with cracks. Elara staggered, blood spraying from her lips. She was at her absolute limit.
Liam's eyes flooded with bloody fury. All hesitation vanished.
"Hold them!" he roared. He channeled everything—the armor's last dregs of power, his own will, even the hated Rust-Corruption he'd always fought—into his legs' piston drives in a suicidal, unrestrained surge!
"KABOOM------!!!"
The leg pistons detonated, firing his body forward not like an arrow, but like a red-gold meteor, trailing steam and rust, streaking recklessly straight for the pulsing Ember!
More serpents converged. Heat and corrosive energy ate at his armor. It hissed and crackled, vast sections losing their sheen, rusting over instantly, flaking away to nothing. His left arm armor was a dead, rust-encased weight.
He didn't care. All he saw was the Ember. Salvation and damnation.
Then, one massive, cunning serpent twisted away from Liam and lunged with terrifying speed at the exhausted Elara—the easier target, the weakness.
"Elara!" Liam looked back, his heart freezing in his chest.
Elara saw the serpent descending, saw Liam's horrified look. Time stretched. She remembered his resilience, his clumsy protection, their soul-deep Pact, his refusal to let her give up... All fear and hesitation melted away, replaced by a profound, eternal calm.
She let her failing shield dissolve.
She turned, facing Liam's charge, ignoring the death behind her. In the final instant before the dark red tide swallowed her, she poured the last of her soul, all her attachment, her blessings, her love, into a cry that rang directly in Liam's mind:
"LIAM! LIVE---!!!"
Then she took the dissolving energy, the final dregs of her spirit, and shaped it into a pure, brilliant silver lance. Not aimed at her own attacker, but at the serpent closest to Liam's heels.
"NOOOOO------------------------!!!!!!!!!!"
Liam's scream was lost in the roar. He watched, helpless, as the silver light that had been his guide in this dark world was utterly extinguished, swallowed by the churning red...
Boundless grief, incinerating rage, and soul-deep despair detonated within him. Reason shattered. He stopped fighting the curse. He opened himself completely, embracing the call of the Ember, letting it fuse with the boiling corruption inside him in a final, insane union!
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH------------------------------!!!"
His roar was no longer human. His rust-choked left hand, driven by the last shred of "Liam" and a power born of utter despair, thrust forward—hard—into the savage outer edge of the Eternal Ember's vortex!
Silence.
An energy beyond comprehension—vast, ancient, savage—flooded up his arm like a bursting galaxy, ruthlessly inundating his broken body. It overwhelmed everything—his armor's circuits, his enhanced body, the Rust-Corruption itself—all crumbling to nothing before this fraction of cosmic origin.
"CRUNCH... KABOOM!"
The Boiling One armor vaporized into dust. He felt his own body being torn apart, remade, his consciousness drowning in light, heat, and the endless rust-whispers...
In the final moment before the dark took him, he thought he saw a flicker of familiar silver light in the raging red, stubborn to the last, guiding him down...
And as that tiny fragment was taken, the Eternal Ember's timeless pulse hitched, just for an imperceptible instant. Its light dimmed, faintly.
The whole volcano, like a wounded god, roared its final, world-ending fury.