The blizzard continued to rage outside, howling against the ruined city, as Taryenne and Rienne huddled inside the decaying building they'd taken refuge in.
They were trying to keep warm, but the cold had already begun to seep into their bones, their breath escaping in visible puffs of white.
The Tracking Rune on their palms was completely inactive, just like before. Taryenne stared at her hand, frustration and worry evident in her eyes.
"This isn't right."
"I know," Rienne replied, her expression tense. "I don't like this... something's wrong. The Rune should be responding by now. Vastarael should be here."
But no matter how they focused, the faint blue glow that had once connected them to Vastarael didn't flicker back to life. The cold was biting and every time they checked the Rune, it was the same.
Nothing.
Taryenne wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving behind streaks of frost.
"This blizzard's getting worse. We can't stay here much longer."
The sisters exchanged a look, both aware of the dangers. The blizzard outside was only growing more intense, and with the Heat Runes failing them, the temperature inside was dropping rapidly.
For some reason, their runes were getting weaker every second. And with their teeth clattering, speaking the runes would cause misspelling, which could kill them instantly.
Also, they were completely out of mana after summoning various Heat Runes that dissipated in a few minutes instead of staying intact for hours.
The building, an ancient stone structure, offered little shelter from the storm. The walls groaned as the wind pushed against them as snow drifted in through cracks in the stone.
Every few seconds, the cold would intensify, their body heat slowly dissipating, and they had no means of combating it. The Heat Runes they had activated earlier now only flickered weakly, their glow barely enough to stave off the cold.
"What do we do?" Rienne asked, her voice shaky from both the cold and the growing panic in her chest. "We can't just wait here. We need to find him."
Taryenne nodded, but there was a grim look on her face.
"We can't leave now. If we go out there in this storm, we'll freeze before we find him."
But the truth was sinking in. The Tracking Rune was not responding and every passing minute seemed to deepen the frost in the air. The Heat Runes were dying. Nothing they did seemed to work.
"Taryenne..." Rienne began, her voice strained, her eyes already beginning to glaze over with exhaustion. "We can't die here... something's happened to him..."
They had grown so close to Vastarael over the past days, their bond growing stronger with each passing moment. The thought of losing him was unbearable and yet, with each passing second in the freezing storm, it was becoming increasingly likely.
Taryenne's teeth began to chatter, the frost on her skin growing worse. She could feel her fingers numbing, her whole body stiffening with cold.
Rienne was in the same state, her breath shallow and erratic. Both sisters were slowly succumbing to the frost. Their faces, once warm with life, were now turning pale, lips turning blue as the chill dug into them, both their strength and their willpower slowly slipping away.
"I… can't…" Rienne gasped, falling to her knees, her breath coming out in quick, shallow pants. "It's too cold…"
Taryenne knelt beside her sister, her hands trembling as she tried to help her up.
"No, we can't give up now. We have to find him."
But she was feeling it too. The cold was crawling into her mind, dulling her senses, making everything blurry. The world outside the ruined building had become a frozen wasteland of nothingness, and their connection to Vastarael was lost.
"It's no use..." Rienne whispered, her eyes closing as she began to drift into unconsciousness. "We're too far from him. We'll never make it…"
Taryenne bit her lip, the ice in her veins spreading to her heart. She tried to speak a rune but the fear of misspelling it was too great.
"We can't..." She could barely form her words. "Not after... everything..."
But the weight of the cold pressed down on them like a physical force. They couldn't feel their fingers anymore. They couldn't hear each other over the storm. Every moment felt like an eternity as the Heat Runes flickered weakly, offering only a dim light in the endless dark of the blizzard.
As they collapsed onto the cold, stone floor, the thought of Vastarael was the only thing that kept them from completely succumbing to the cold. But even that connection was slipping away as the storm outside raged on, tearing away at their very souls.
"Please…" Taryenne whispered into the dark. "Come back and save us please, Vastarael..."
°°°°°
Vastarael slowly regained consciousness, his mind foggy, as though he had been submerged in deep water. He groaned, the cold concrete of the basement floor pressing into his back. The first sensation that hit him was the searing pain from his left hand.
His eyes shot open in shock. His left arm was bent at an unnatural angle, fingers contorted in ways they shouldn't have been. A sharp scream tore from his throat as he instinctively tried to move his arm, only to feel the horrifying pain surge through his body.
"Ugh... this hurts so much..." he gasped, clutching his hand close to his chest, the agony flooding his senses. His body ached in every muscle, but it was his arm that felt like it was on fire.
As his essence slowly began replenishing from the energy of his soul, he reached for his wounds, but it was no use. His hand remained immobilized. He couldn't heal it back to normal. The injury was too severe for his essence to fix instantly, not when his energy was in flux.
He clenched his teeth, trying to ignore the pain. His mind was already running, trying to assess his situation.
"Phaenora..." he whispered, his voice rough from the strain.
The familiar voice of the Omniscient echoed in his mind, sounding a bit more insistent than usual.
[You've been unconscious for over nine hours.]
Vastarael's breath hitched. "Nine hours?"
[Yes, and your invisibility will wear off in ten more hours. You should move fast if you want to stay undetected.]
He didn't need to be told twice. Despite the pain in his hand, Vastarael's determination kicked in. The lingering terror of the black souls and the monstrous statue still haunted him, but his mind was now focused on survival. He couldn't let his guard down, not with danger closing in.
Summoning his will, Vastarael reached out to his inventory and took out a luminescent sapphire shard in his good hand.
"Thank goodness I learned luminescence using my sapphires and placed them in inventories as a security measure. Huh..."
It flickered to life, glowing with a brilliant blue light that illuminated the surrounding darkness.
The faint light revealed a vast, ominous space that stretched into the depths of the cathedral's basement. The air was thick with a strange, chilling energy, and the walls were covered in intricate murals.
Again.
As the shard floated beside him, Vastarael's eyes fell upon the murals.
They were disturbing, much like the ones he had seen in the cathedral above, but there was something different about these. As his gaze locked on them, the scenes seemed to move, subtly shifting with every blink.
The first mural was strange, depicting an intricate, foreboding landscape. The towering spires of an ancient city stretched high into the sky, their architecture stark and otherworldly. The faces of long-forgotten beings were painted into the shadows of the towering walls, staring down at the viewer with hollow, haunted eyes. There was an unsettling quality to the mural, like it was trying to warn him.
Vastarael took a step forward, his good hand brushing against the cold stone wall. His fingers tingled slightly with the touch, but the feeling was soon overshadowed by the eerie sense of watching eyes.
His attention shifted to the next mural, which depicted a darkened sky swirling with ominous clouds. In the center, a massive entity, half-human, half-creature, was shackled by chains of shadow, its eyes glowing with the same dark light that had surrounded the statue earlier.
The mural twisted, as if it too was alive.
The next piece was even more horrifying.
It showed the destruction of the city, the sky ablaze with fire, and the streets filled with countless, writhing bodies. But what caught his attention most was the figure at the center.
A woman, her face obscured by a veil of darkness, was standing amidst the chaos. She was surrounded by chains, her eyes piercing through the veil, staring directly at him, as if the very fabric of reality was trying to speak to him.
He stared at the mural, the weight of its eerie message sinking in.
[I don't understand these murals at all. I can't even understand the story behind it.]
"The first mural are the souls in the city. The second is a... creature? And the third... it's the priestess. But..."
[But her expression in this one is... human. It's like she was imprisoned by something.]
Vastarael felt the murals shifting. To his shock, all the murals fused into one massive mural that was now moving slightly.
And this time, there were Xinoraci Runes on them. The murals were speaking