The young man reached deep into the shadowed folds of his cloak and retrieved a mana potion. The vial was remarkably, almost precariously small—its delicate glass frame no larger than a slender finger—containing only a few highly concentrated droplets of herbal mana extract that shimmered with an ethereal, inner luminescence.

  Yet, those few, precious drops possessed a potency sufficient to fully replenish a magis's mageia power and mana to its very threshold. Had it been the Seraph of old—the man he had once been before the fall—he would not have even required the entire draught to feel restored to his former splendour.

  The mana potion trembling in his hand was a parting gift from Marina. Since his last arduous stay at the infirmary hall, he had not found it necessary to return for formal treatment, yet the young man visited the ward frequently—often by the healer's persistent and kindly invitation—to receive his consistent supply of these alchemical necessities.

  Within the lightless depths of his cloak lay a fair number of both mana and healing potions. Naturally, those issued as standard by the Sanctus Sanctum were merely common draughts; potions of a truly superior quality had to be commissioned from the Apothecary Guild or elusive, independent alchemists—professional services that were far from free and, in truth, exceedingly costly.

  At this particular echelon of his journey, Seraph needed but a single vial to replenish the vast mana sea that surged within his soul. Yet, he was acutely aware that should he continue to ascend and evolve his mageia power, such a meagre, solitary dose would likely fail to meet his ever-growing demands. That, however, was a heavy concern for a future that had yet to fully unfold.

  "Flamus Sphera!" Seraph intoned, his voice cutting through the damp air.

  [Whoosh!]

  A globe of dancing flame, roughly a foot in diameter, manifested in the void before him. Its intense heat radiated a sudden, welcome warmth, dispelling the bone-chilling shiver that had seized his frame since his descent. With a sharp, focused thought, the young man commanded the orb to drift slowly above his head, acting as a burning beacon to drive back the devouring shadows of the gorge.

  The Sphera was a remarkably versatile spell, utilized with equal efficacy for both offence and support. However, because such spheres were often ponderous and sluggish in flight—despite their dense, humming energia cores—magis rarely favoured them for the split-second demands of direct combat.

  As the fireball ascended toward the rocky ceiling, it cast a brilliant, flickering radiance across the gorge, forcing the ancient shadows into a cowardly retreat and unveiling his immediate surroundings in stark, jagged detail.

  Seraph found himself standing at the very lip of a crystalline lake, its surface as dark as polished obsidian. A short distance away rose the sheer, unforgiving cliff face, and as he peered upward into the gloom, he saw only the heavy, suffocating mist sealing the sky like a grey shroud. The summit remained utterly hidden from view, lost in the clouds.

  The first sight to greet the young man was a set of sturdily constructed timber stairs leading upward into the mist. Nearby, rusted mining carts and jagged iron rails stretched like the skeletal remains of a beast into the dark maw of the mine. Piles of raw ore and discarded mining tools lay scattered in disarray about the entrance—silent, rusted witnesses to a place that had once thrummed with the frantic heartbeat of industry. It had been shuttered by a sudden, blood-soaked catastrophe—driven into a hollow silence by the relentless onslaught of the undead.

  As the young man began to scout the perimeter with calculated steps, he discovered a smaller, emergency staircase tucked away roughly a hundred metres from the primary mine stairs, accompanied by a series of rusted winches and ore elevators that hung like gallows in the dark.

  "There were stairs here all along?" Seraph mused, his voice sounding flat and hollow with a bitter, biting disbelief. "Void's Echo... I nearly broke every goddamn bone in my body just for a 'scenic view' of the abyss, and the front door was wide open the entire time."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He kicked a piece of rusted iron with a heavy boot, watching it clatter and ring into the darkness. "The stars must be laughing their cold hearts out right now. This isn't just a stroke of bad luck; it's a goddamn personal insult from the universe itself."

  The truth of Desden Cave was a tragedy written in arterial spray and forgotten sorrow. Once the primary mining hub for the great city of Balyon, it had fallen in a single, chaotic day when a lone miner spontaneously turned—becoming an undead monstrosity whose very bite carried a virulent curse that transmuted the living into its own foul kind. In a matter of mere hours, the entire workforce had been consumed, their numbers swelling into a mindless, ravenous horde.

  Following the initial outbreak, and before anyone in the upper world could comprehend the magnitude of the threat, the undead miners had begun scaling those very stairs to assault Balyon. Fortunately, Balyon was a grand city fortified with numerous lofty sentry towers; the watchers had detected the shambling rot before the demons could infiltrate the gates and slaughter the burghers within.

  The soldiers of Balyon had succeeded in slaying the initial wave of the damned, yet the creatures continued to surge from the depths of the gorge without pause. In a desperate, final move to quarantine the encroaching threat, the military had demolished the main stairs and the emergency passages alike. The twisted remnants of iron and timber piled at the base of the ascent were the jagged, pathetic ruins of that final destruction.

  Had Seraph first sought out an audience with the Lord of Balyon, he would have been briefed on this bloody history. He would have been provided with specialized, reinforced long ropes designed specifically to reach the intact sections of the mine stairs.

  But because the young man had bypassed the city in his reckless, singular haste, he had remained ignorant. He hadn't even known the stairs existed, transforming his descent into a lethal, unnecessary gamble with death—a gamble he'd almost lost for absolutely no reason at all.

  "No matter," Seraph muttered, his mask of icy, professional indifference returning to his features. "My task remains the same. Scout the perimeter, purge the rot, and annihilate the source."

  He followed the rusted iron rails, his footsteps echoing like a death knell as he marched toward the dark, yawning maw of the cave.

  The valley floor was not expansive; it was cramped and claustrophobic, dominated by open ground strewn with dozens of looming mounds of black ore. In the distance lay the lake and a network of fragmented, icy streams.

  Some streams vanished into the subterranean dark of the earth.

  Some streams flowed out beyond the jagged walls of the gorge.

  Some streams wound their way into narrow, branching caverns that whispered with the wind.

  The cliff face and the entrance to Desden Cave stood in close proximity, visible to one another across the dark. Thus, there was no chance of becoming lost within this hollow, yet the air felt oppressively heavy.

  At the cave's gaping maw, discarded human mining tools and heavy pickaxes lay in a state of utter disarray. Old lamps and extinguished torches hung from the exterior cave walls and heavy support pillars, yet there was no sign of man or undead to be found.

  'Empty dark... not a single corpse,' Seraph mused, his sharp eyes scanning the debris for any sign of life. 'They didn't just die; they were harvested. This place has a stench worse than a dead nebula. It's the smell of a home that's forgotten it ever had a heart.'

  He could sense it now—the sinister, oily black haze of Demonic Miasma swirling thickly within the cave's yawning throat.

  "This stifling, haunting atmosphere... Demonic Miasma!" Seraph exclaimed instinctively, the realization hitting him like a physical blow to the chest.

  His fists clenched until his knuckles turned white, his eyes brimming with a cold, sharp resentment as his muscles tensed with a predatory edge. His mageia power shuddered, radiating outward with a hatred so profound it felt utterly bottomless. The air around him began to distort as if scorched by the fires of a cosmic grudge; even the fragments of the human soul merged within him could not drown out the acidic bitterness of the past.

  "Undead... demons... the Demon Legion..." Seraph's voice began as a low, guttural whisper, then suddenly ascended into a shattering roar that thundered through the gorge. "I'll burn every last one of you to ash!"

  His vow echoed relentlessly against the high, unyielding canyon walls. He had encountered this particular brand of filth once before—eleven long years ago. On the day his world was razed to the ground. On the day his parents were slaughtered like animals for sport. They had hidden him in a cramped, secret cellar beneath the floorboards, staying above as human decoys to protect their only son until their very last, agonizing breaths.

  The wooden panel beneath the floorboards had a small, jagged crevice to peek through, and from it, the boy had witnessed the entirety of the horror. The memory remained vivid, bleeding and raw; the screams of his kin and the metallic, cloying scent of his parents' blood were etched into the very marrow of his mind. Some nights, Seraph still awoke screaming, his throat raw from the unending nightmare of a past that refused to die.