NOVEL NEXT Chapter 113: Attacking the Sanctum...
"We leave in six hours. Rest, recover, gather the elites. This won't be a siege. It'll be swift, surgical. We're going to crack their heart open before they even feel the knife."
David nodded, a grim smile on his lips. "You'll have us at your back."
"Good," Ethan said, his eyes glinting. "Because I'm not just going to conquer them."
He turned toward the rising sun beyond the Sanctum walls.
"I'm going to show the Labyrinth what it means to defy fate."
The gates of Grosh'ka closed behind them with a low groan that echoed like a funeral bell.
Ethan stood at the front of the assembled strike force, cloaked in silence and shadow. Kaeryx slithered beside him through the air, its celestial body flickering in and out of visibility like a drifting constellation. Silent. Waiting.
Then, with a single subtle flare of its power, Kaeryx announced their departure.
A ripple of sovereign will expanded from its body like a second heartbeat. Not violent—primordial. A declaration. It washed over the twisted terrain of the Great Labyrinth and soaked into the bones of every creature nearby.
Predators stirred.
And then stilled.
Beasts paused their hunts and bowed their heads to the earth, instinct overriding appetite. Even the trees—gnarled things grown fat on blood and mana—shrank their leaves inward, hiding from the echo of Kaeryx's presence.
None dared cross the path of something older.
And yet, Ethan knew this protection would not last.
The path to the dragonkin Sanctum was long, winding, and seeded with enough death to bury a city.
The warband moved in tight formation, adapted now to one another's rhythms. David directed them with sharp signals. Nelda, the hulking minotaur, stomped only where runes allowed. Snirch, once a cruel goblin jailer, now scribbled terrain markers and tapped stone rhythms to warn of fluctuations in essence density.
Ethan led through instinct and perception—his mana sense flared outward in concentric waves, layering through rock, wind, and hidden spellwork. Where traps were hidden, he guided them around. Where monsters nested, they vanished without notice.
One such danger came on the second day.
"Stop," Ethan said abruptly, holding up two fingers.
The group froze, barely breathing.
Thirty paces ahead, where the terrain looked calm and ordinary—a crumbled ravine and weathered stone—they felt nothing. Not silence. Not presence. Nothing.
That was the problem.
Kaeryx's eyes narrowed, soul-light humming in its throat.
Ethan exhaled slowly.
"Fold back. Carefully. There's something wrong with the space."
David whispered, "What is it?"
Ethan didn't respond immediately. His voice came after a beat.
"I think it's a Hollow Mantle."
The name alone made several in the group pale.
It looked like a mound of glassy rock—cracked, covered in ash and thorny ivy. But its surface reflected not light, but people. Those who approached it found themselves mirrored on its curved shell—and then... disappeared.
Not torn apart.
Not consumed.
Just... gone.
"Anyone who sees their reflection on it," Miv muttered, "gets caught. Like an echo that never bounces back."
Some said the Hollow Mantle created soul prisons inside itself. Others believed it mimicked your reflection so well that it became you, leaving the real you trapped and forgotten.
Whatever the truth, Ethan led the warband in a slow, wide arc around it.
Even Kaeryx kept its distance.
"That thing shouldn't be this far north," David whispered when they were safe. "This is dragonkin territory."
Ethan didn't answer.
But his thoughts darkened.
The farther they pressed into the Great Labyrinth, the more the natural laws seemed... broken.
On the third day, they crossed through a region of levitating terrain, where entire chunks of ground hovered in the air like scattered puzzle pieces. Bridges of condensed light formed briefly between them, appearing at intervals Ethan timed with precise mana pulses.
One wrong step and they'd fall into an endless void between sky and stone.
They passed.
Barely.
By the fifth day, the silence had become unnerving. Not the peaceful quiet of nature, but the watchful hush of something unseen. Creatures no longer attacked, but watched. Magic hung thick in the air like invisible webs.
Once, a fog rolled in from the east—shimmering gold and rose—and when breathed in, made some begin to speak aloud to people who weren't there. Memories? Hallucinations?
Ethan created a temporary mana seal that contained the fog. They passed without incident, but several soldiers refused to speak for hours after.
On the sixth day, a beast of immense size passed overhead. Not flying—walking through the air, as if the very sky were solid beneath its claws. Its skin glowed with runes, and its eyes scanned without seeing. Kaeryx coiled tight beside Ethan, scales hidden, its essence flattened to near invisibility.
The group held their breath until it passed, the sky warping slightly in its wake.
Only then did they continue.
The bond between them had changed. Former orcish raiders marched alongside human warriors. Minotaurs joked with goblins over dry rations. Every step they survived together deepened something unspoken.
Respect, maybe.
Or the realization that death didn't care what banner you once wore.
By the seventh day, the terrain turned harder—obsidian stone with veins of magma glowing just beneath the surface. The air grew hotter, thinner. And at last... it appeared.
David spotted it first.
"There," he said, crouching low. He gestured with two fingers and crept forward.
Ethan joined him, crouching behind a ridged rock formation blackened by ash.
Below them lay a massive basin, carved into the earth like a wound that never healed. At its center, nestled among jagged spires and colossal bones, stood a structure that didn't look built—but grown.
The dragonkin Sanctum.
Its walls were forged from overlapping scales the size of shields—obsidian-black and gleaming with runic fire. Towering statues of winged dragonlords ringed its perimeter, eyes glowing, claws extended in judgment.
Wards shimmered faintly in the air: heat runes, flame-touched illusions, detection sigils. Shadowy figures paced the walls—tall, humanoid, with long tails and curved blades strapped to their backs.
Kaeryx stirred beside Ethan.
> They do not deserve what they were gifted. The blood in their veins is ancient—but their souls have decayed into arrogance.
Ethan's jaw tensed.
"I can smell it too," he whispered.
His eyes narrowed as he watched the Sanctum breathe like a living beast.
"We take it by dawn."
It was time.
The shadows over the jagged ridge had begun to stretch, casting long, spear-like silhouettes across the blackened stone. The air was heavy, almost trembling, as if the very ground sensed the coming clash.
Ethan stood with his cloak rustling softly behind him, a hand resting lightly on the rock. His eyes didn't blink as he surveyed the Sanctum again—he could feel its defenses pulsing, layered in ancient wards and living essence. He waited until the wind shifted, carrying the scent of sulfur and scale.
Then he turned.
The group gathered around him, grim and ready. Minotaurs, humans, and beastkin—all hardened by the journey, all watching Ethan with cautious respect.
"I'll make this quick," he said. His voice was calm, low, but sharp enough to cut through the tension. "Kaeryx and the rest of you will launch the assault from the front. Loud. Direct. Shake them."
A few exchanged glances.
Ethan continued.
"While they're distracted, I'll move alone. Flanking around the northern ridge, I'll go straight for the heart—the Labyrinth Rune Stone. If I get there and bind it before their high guard can respond, the entire Sanctum falls under my control instantly."
The idea struck like lightning.
Nelda blinked. "You're going in alone?"
Ethan nodded. "That's the point. Alone, I'm fast. Harder to detect. And with Kaeryx's pressure flooding the Sanctum, their attention will be shattered."
He turned slightly, his eyes narrowing toward the obsidian walls below.
"I've seen it before. Dragonkin think they're gods because they remember their ancestors were. But Kaeryx isn't memory. Kaeryx is real. His aura is enough to send their instincts into chaos."
His gaze flicked across the group again. "Still... if things go wrong—if they manage to resist—I'll need you all to push in. Break them. Keep them from getting to the Rune Stone."
There were no arguments.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!
A deep, ancient horn wailed from the Sanctum below. It was a sound like thunder through metal, a raw, soul-shaking bellow that rolled across the mountain basin.
Ethan's eyes flicked upward.
"They've seen us."
The Sanctum erupted.
Massive drums pounded. Fires roared to life atop the watchtowers. Dozens of drakekin—humanoid beings with scaled skin, horned brows, and flickering flames around their limbs—rushed across the walls and balconies.
At the center spire, a new figure emerged: towering, plated in crimson and silver scale armor, wielding a jagged spear crackling with soulfire.
The Warlord.
His voice rang out in the ancient tongue of their kin, commanding all units to the front.
And then—
Kaeryx moved.
Not with sound. Not with roar. Not with rage.
With presence.
A silent burst of pressure flowed out of the celestial dragon like a tidal wave made of light and gravity. In an instant, it lunged forward, slithering through the air like a phantom serpent, and with a single lash of its massive tail—
CRACKKKK!!!
The obsidian gates of the Sanctum exploded.