OP Absorption

His trembling hand touched the cold, runed steel.

A jolt, colder than ice, more potent than any electrical shock, shot up Fin's arm, slamming into his chest. The Mark of Dominance flared, an agonized, searing supernova of red-black energy. His vision whited out. He heard a distant roaring, like a storm trapped inside his own skull, and the distinct, horrifying sensation of his domain tearing.

'No… stop… it's too much…' a part of his mind screamed.

But another, colder, more resolute part, fueled by guilt and a desperate, stubborn refusal to fail Mara, pushed back. He gritted his teeth, blood trickling from his bitten lip, and pulled. Not with his physical strength, but with the very essence of his will, his dominion, his fractured power.

He poured everything he had left into the Mark, into the connection with the Abyssal Lock.

The runes on the door blazed with an impossible, hungry light, shifting from sickly purple to a deep, void-like black. The air in the tunnel crackled, ozone mixing with the stench of blood and burned metal, creating a nauseating perfume of death and decay.

Scarlet cried out, a choked sound of pain and alarm, as stray tendrils of Abyssal energy lashed out from the door, narrowly missing her. Arachne threw herself in front of Scarlet, a shield of shadows briefly flaring around her before dissipating, leaving her gasping, a fresh trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth.

"My Lord, stop!" Arachne choked out. "You'll destroy yourself! The domain—"

But Fin couldn't stop. He was locked in a battle of wills with something ancient, something vast, something that felt like the crushing weight of a dead universe. The door groaned, a sound of tortured metal and protesting wards. Slowly, agonizingly, a hairline crack of pure darkness appeared along its edge.

Darkness. Not the absence of light, but an active, consuming void that seemed to drink the very air around it.

With a final, guttural roar that tore from his own throat, Fin wrenched his will against the Lock. The crack widened. The door shuddered, then scraped inwards, just enough for a person to slip through.

The backlash was instantaneous.

Fin was hurled backwards, as if struck by an invisible battering ram. He slammed into the opposite wall of the tunnel with bone-jarring force, stars exploding behind his eyes. He slid to the grating, his limbs numb, his chest a solid mass of agony. The Mark was a dull, throbbing ember now, almost extinguished. His domain felt like a shattered mirror, its connections frayed, its power bleeding away into nothingness.

He couldn't move. He could barely breathe.

"Boss!" Scarlet's voice, raw with panic, cut through the ringing in his ears. He felt her good hand, rough and calloused, shaking his shoulder. "Fin! Get up! Damn it, get up!"

Arachne was already at the narrow opening of the Abyssal Lock, peering into the suffocating darkness beyond. "Mara!" she called, her voice tight. "Can you hear me?"

Silence. Only the faint, unsettling hum of the Lock itself answered.

"She's in there," Fin rasped, forcing the words past his bruised ribs. "Gotta… get her." He tried to push himself up, but his arms wouldn't obey.

"You're not going anywhere, you idiot," Scarlet snapped, her voice surprisingly fierce. She looked at Arachne. "Can you…?"

Arachne nodded grimly. "I will retrieve her." She took a deep breath, then, without a moment's hesitation, slipped through the narrow, dark opening into the Abyssal Lock.

The seconds stretched into an eternity. Fin lay there, helpless, listening to Scarlet's harsh breathing beside him, the distant, angry hum of the Lock, and the terrifying silence from within. His vision was blurring. He was losing consciousness, the strain finally overwhelming him.

'No… not yet…'

Then, a movement at the opening. Arachne reappeared, half-dragging, half-carrying a limp form.

Mara.

She was unconscious, her face pale as death, smudged with grime. Her clothes were torn, and there was a dark, ugly bruise spreading across her temple. But she was breathing. Shallow, ragged, but breathing.

Arachne stumbled, her own strength clearly failing, as she pulled Mara clear of the doorway. "She was… just inside," Arachne panted, leaning heavily against the tunnel wall. "Lying on the floor. Unresponsive. But… alive." She looked back at the dark opening, her eyes wide with a lingering dread. "The… the entity within… it did not seem to notice her. Or it… dismissed her as insignificant."

Scarlet rushed forward, checking Mara's pulse with her good hand. "Faint, but it's there. We need to get her out of here, Boss. Now." She looked at Fin, her eyes filled with a desperate urgency. "And you too. You look like death warmed over."

Fin forced his eyes to focus. Mara was alive. That was all that mattered. The rest… the rest could wait. He pushed himself up, ignoring the screaming protest of every nerve in his body. The world tilted precariously.

"Portal," he grunted, shoving away Scarlet's attempt to help him. "My domain. Now."

He reached for the power, for the connection to his castle. It was faint, thready, like trying to grasp smoke. But it was there. Just barely.

With a monumental effort of will, he tore open another gateway. It was small, unstable, flickering violently, the view through it wavering like a heat haze. It looked less like a doorway and more like a dying star.

"That ain't gonna last," Scarlet said grimly. She scooped Mara up surprisingly gently in her good arm, wincing as the movement jarred her broken one. "Arachne, you first. Then me and the package. Boss, you bring up the rear and try not to pass out until we're through."

Arachne nodded, her face set in a grim mask of pain and exhaustion. She didn't argue. She slipped through the wavering portal.

Scarlet followed, cradling Mara carefully. She paused at the threshold, looking back at Fin. "Come on, Boss," she urged, her voice softer now. "Let's go home."

Fin stumbled towards the portal. Each step was an agony. The darkness was closing in again. He could feel the Abyssal Lock behind him, a cold, hungry presence, and he knew, with chilling certainty, that the narrow opening he'd torn in its door wouldn't stay open for long. And it wouldn't forget this second violation.

He reached the portal, his legs buckling. He fell through it, into the blessed, familiar cool of his own domain, just as the gateway behind him collapsed with a sound like shattering glass and a final, despairing shriek from the depths of the Valerius Spire.

The silence of the main hall was broken by ragged gasps and the soft thud of Fin's unconscious body hitting the stone.

Meg, who had been pacing anxiously near the archway, rushed forward, her face a mask of terror and relief. "Fin! Oh, gods, Fin!"

Scarlet, still holding Mara, stumbled a few steps away from the now-empty space where the portal had been, her breath coming in harsh pants. She looked down at Fin's still form, then at Arachne, who was leaning heavily against a nearby pillar, her eyes closed, her chest heaving.

"Well," Scarlet rasped, a grimace twisting her lips as pain lanced through her broken arm. "That was… monumentally stupid. And probably fatal for his pretty little pocket dimension." She looked around the vast hall, a new unease in her eyes. The familiar hum of the castle's ambient energy felt… weaker. Dissonant. Like a badly tuned instrument.

"The domain is… unstable," Arachne confirmed, her voice barely a whisper. She pushed herself away from the pillar, swaying. "His connection… it was severely damaged by the repeated forced portals, and the… the Lock." Her gaze, when it met Scarlet's, was filled with a deep, almost primal fear. "We need to stabilize him. Quickly. If his core fails completely, the domain will collapse. And us with it."

Meg was already kneeling beside Fin, her hands hovering over him, tears streaming down her face. "What do we do? He's barely breathing! And he's so cold!"

Scarlet gritted her teeth against the throbbing agony in her arm. "Arachne, you're the magic expert here. What's the play?"

Arachne walked unsteadily towards Fin, her eyes scanning his inert form. The Mark of Dominance on his chest was a dull, angry red, pulsing erratically, like a dying ember. "His mana reserves are depleted. His core is… fractured. Overloaded by the Abyssal energies and the strain of maintaining the portals." She knelt beside him, opposite Meg. "We need to feed him mana. Directly. But…" She hesitated, her gaze flickering to the Mark. "His absorption ability… it might be too erratic now. It could backlash. Overload us instead."

"Got a better idea?" Scarlet snapped, her patience, already frayed, wearing thin. She gently laid Mara down on the cold stone floor, a few feet away from Fin. Mara was still unconscious, but her breathing seemed a little steadier now that she was out of the Spire's toxic atmosphere.

Arachne shook her head. "It is the only way. But we must be careful. Balanced. We synchronize our own cores, create a stable flow. Meg," she looked at the younger girl, "your core is new, pure. It will be less… tainted by external energies. You will be the primary conduit. Scarlet, your energy is volatile, but potent. You will supplement, but Arachne's hand went to her own chest, where her power resided. "I will attempt to regulate the flow, filter it through my own connection to him, try to prevent his fractured core from… shattering completely."

Meg nodded, wiping her eyes, her expression hardening with a desperate resolve. "Okay. Tell me what to do."

"Place your hands on his chest," Arachne instructed, her voice regaining some of its usual calm command. "Over the Mark. Focus your energy. Not a flood, Meg. A gentle stream. Imagine… pouring water into a cracked vessel. Too much, too fast, and it breaks."