The descent into Tartarus was not a fall, it was an erosion.
My obsidian claws dug into the viscous wall of the pit, tearing off shards of solidified darkness that fell into the void without ever making the slightest sound of impact. The silence here was so heavy that it became physical; it weighed on my stone shoulders, trying to pull me away from the wall and offer me up to the pull of the bottom.
As I sank deeper, the temperature dropped illogically. It wasn't the cold of ice, but the cold of lifelessness. My mineral structure cracked under the thermal contractions, producing sounds of breaking glass that echoed inside my skull.
Suddenly, a few dozen meters below me, I saw a rocky ledge, a natural platform that seemed to have been spared by the corruption of the pit. And on that platform, a figure sat motionless, like a statue forgotten by a mad sculptor.
I let go and dropped the last few meters. The impact of my obsidian feet shook the ledge.
The man did not flinch. He did not even raise his head.
He was clad in armor that must once have been glorious, but was now nothing more than a collection of rusted plates, corroded by the acid of the Styx and the passage of time. His skin was the color of burnt parchment, and his white hair fell in dirty strands over his shoulders. At his side, planted in the rock, was a massive sword, broken halfway down its blade, but whose metal still gave off a faint bluish glow.
"Another ambitious one," he murmured without looking at me.
His voice was like the rustling of dead leaves, but it carried an authority that made my new nature vibrate.
"Or perhaps a new monster forged by the river. You reek of mercury and crime, Anomaly."
I stood up straight, towering over him with my black stone stature. The red lycoris in my mind was beating wildly. This man was no ordinary shadow. There was a density about him, a residual power that refused to fade away.
"Who are you?" I asked, my stone voice grating in the icy air.
The man laughed bitterly, a sound like a death rattle. He finally looked up at me. His pupils were steel blue, piercing, intact in the middle of his ravaged face.
"Men called me Siegfried. The dragon slayer. The favorite of songs and legends. But here... here, I am only the guardian of my own downfall. I am the one who believed that the blood of a monster would make him immortal, only to discover that immortality is just a prison cell stronger than the others."
He placed his hand on the hilt of his broken sword.
"You're walking toward the call, aren't you? You feel that golden pulse at the bottom of the abyss. You believe it will give you back what you've lost. But look at me, the obsidian. I had everything, and Tartarus took it all. What calls to you down there is not a treasure. It is a mirror."
Siegfried rose slowly. Despite his tattered armor, his presence radiated a warrior's strength that even death could not break. He was the obstacle, or perhaps the first test.
"To go further down, you'll have to do more than jump," he continued, drawing his sword stump. Tartarus only accepts heavyweights. Show me if your crime is heavy enough to carry you to the fragment of Chronos... or if you're just another stone to be broken under my blade.