The descent grew colder.
Not in temperature, but in presence. The deeper Ian moved into the Maw, the less real the world seed.
It was like walking through the spine of a mory discarded by ti. His boots scraped along stone that drank sound, drank breath, drank him.
The path narrowed, then widened again without warning, opening into a massive antechamber.
Here, the stone had changed. What once was jagged and volcanic had beco smooth, sculpted—intentional.
A circle of faded writings surrounded a single colossal door, wrought entirely of slate-gray stone, seamless and unyielding.
The scroll in Ian's hand beat again.
"Where light once fell upon the mirrorless gate, now only hunger resides."
"The vault opens only to the one who leaves part of themselves behind."
Ian exhaled slowly.
The door towered over him like a giant's tombstone.
Carvings wrapped its surface in unreadable script—language older than any mortal tongue. There were no handles, no chanisms.
Only that phrase, repeating itself in the back of his mind.
"Leave part of yourself behind."
He reached out, running his fingers along the cold surface. It felt more like bone than stone. His skin prickled.
Behind him, the tunnel trembled.
A sound—a breath that wasn't his—rippled through the shadows.
He turned sharply. Nothing followed.
Yet.
The Maw was watching.
Ian stepped back from the gate, unrolled the scroll again, studying the runes glowing faintly.
The symbols shifted before his eyes, forming a new line of text:
"Only truth may pass through the gate. Blood and illusion cannot force it."
A bitter smirk tugged at Ian's lips. "Of course," he muttered. "Nothing's ever easy."
He sheathed Vowbreaker and crouched near the circular ring of runes etched around the door.
These weren't just decorative—they were ritual marks, possibly a ward or a seal. He recognized fragnts of languages he had beco automatic fluent in since transmigirating: fragnts of Voidspeech, Glyphic, and sothing he never knew the na of.
He stood again and looked inward.
Leave part of yourself behind.
He didn't think it ant flesh.
It ant truth. Sothing rooted. Sothing real.
Sothing internal.
A confession, perhaps.
Ian approached the door again and placed both palms against its center. Cold pierced into his arms imdiately, flooding up his veins like liquid frost.
He shut his eyes and let the Corruption stir within.
Images rose unbidden.
The pit.
The Chains.
The Arena.
The first soul he ever bound since he left Esgard—the Sanctum boy who'd begged for his life.
The voice of corruption whispering:
"Bind him. Claim him. Power cos from silence."
He had not hesitated.
And after that… he'd stopped seeing them as people.
Not entirely.
The hunger for strength had consud his empathy in incrents.
A face flickered behind his eyes—Velrosa. Her silver hair falling like a crown of moonlight. Her voice—haughty, regal, sharp.
"Rember, never pretend you're innocent, Ian. It's important that we monsters wear our sins like armor."
Leave part of yourself behind.
He took a breath.
"I killed them," he whispered aloud, pressing harder against the stone. "I killed hundreds. For survival. For strength. And so… for nothing."
The runes glowed.
"I don't regret it. But I rember. Every one."
The sigils flared.
A groan vibrated through the stone as a narrow vertical seam appeared in the center of the gate.
It had heard him. It had judged him.
But it did not open.
A heartbeat passed.
Then another.
"Huh?" Ian muttered
Quite embarrassingly, he had confessed what remnants of guilt he had left, and it was not enough?
The scroll burned in his hand.
He looked down.
A final line appeared.
"The Mirrorless Gate does not ask for guilt. It asks for sacrifice."
Before Ian could react, the stone beneath him shifted.
Runes blazed around his feet—and the circle flared with a blinding red light.
His legs buckled.
Pain—sharp, searing—ripped through his left arm. He cried out and staggered back as black fire licked across his skin, devouring not flesh—but power.
"No—!"
He fell to one knee, clutching his chest.
He felt sothing—his bond to Ashvaleth—flickered.
For a terrifying mont, it weakened.
Not fully. Not erased.
But diminished.
"Not again" Ian muttered.
A part of his necromancy—so inner reserve—had been taken.
By the Gate.
The runes dimd.
The air trembled.
And then, with a rumble that shook the chamber, the colossal door began to split open.
Stone scraped against stone. Dust fell like snow. Beyond the widening threshold was not another tunnel, nor another chamber.
But darkness.
Pure.
Moving.
Alive.
Ian stood, breathing hard.
The cost had been steep.
He didn't yet know what he had lost. But he felt it. An emptiness in his foundation, a piece of what he once had—gone.
However he could not comprehend the magnitude of what he'd get in return.
The darkness beyond the door beat once.
Then again.
And sothing smiled back.
Not with teeth.
Or with sound.
But with awareness.
A pressure like gravity curled around the edge of the entrance.
A voice—unspoken—spilled into Ian's mind.
"You've opened the gate. Now step inside, little sovereign."
He did not hesitate.
Ian crossed the threshold.
And the door slamd shut behind him.
Total blackness.
No torch could burn here. No fla survived.
Yet, before him, in the void…
Sothing shifted.
At first, it looked like a figure seated on a throne.
Then the throne beca a cage.
Then the cage beca a mirror.
But no reflection stared back.
Just a shape.
Vaguely human.
It moved with the weight of an old storm.
And it spoke.
Not aloud.
But through every bone in Ian's body.
"At last… my vessel finds ."
Ian's eyes widened.
He recognized the voice.
From the whispers of corruption.
The whispers he'd heard since the mont he entered the Prophet of death state.
The void figure stepped forward—and Ian saw the remnants of a face. Half-ford. A skull wreathed in smoke. Eyes like collapsed stars.
"Who are you?" Ian demanded.
The thing smiled.
"The question isn't who I am. It's what you're about to beco."
And then—
The figure lunged.
Straight for him.
Darkness folded inward.
He scread.
For the first ti in many many months—
Ian scread.
And then—
Nothing.
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