I ran toward the injured figure, my voice cutting sharply through the still air of the cave. "Hey, sir, are you al—"

  I froze mid-sentence.

  Two curved, jagged horns jutted from his head like blackened bone, faintly pulsing with a dim, almost sinister inner light. My stomach turned. And his eyes… those weren’t human eyes at all—swirling rings of gold and violet, shifting like storms trapped in a separate world. They glimmered with a strange intensity, and for a heartbeat, I felt like I was being peeled open, seen for everything I was.

  My boots scraped back across the jagged stone floor as I slid away, knees bent, hands raised instinctively. "You… you don’t seem human. Who are you? What are you?" My voice shook, more than I wanted it to.

  The man coughed—a dry, rattling cough that sprayed flecks of blood onto the rock beneath him. His voice was rough, gravely worn, yet oddly calm, as though the cave itself obeyed him. "I… am someone who does not belong to Those Brute and ruthless beings."

  Then he spoke again, words strung together in a cadence I’d never heard before. Language tangled with fragments of magic. It made no sense, yet carried weight—every syllable seemed to hum with something dangerous, something barely restrained.

  I tightened my guard, swallowing the lump rising in my throat. "What do you mean? What are you even barking about?"

  He tilted his head slowly, in a way that seemed almost alien. His gaze, sharp and piercing, never wavered from mine. "Don’t worry, human child… I have no ill intent toward you. Not in this condition, at least."

  I didn’t lower my guard, but my shoulders eased slightly. There was still something unplaceable about him. Demon? Cursed being? A remnant of something old and forbidden? His voice carried no immediate threat, but that didn’t mean I trusted him.

  He coughed again, more forcefully this time, and his tone shifted into something colder, older. "Each being," he began, his words slow, deliberate, weighted like stones, "is born with an arcane — a core, invisible to the naked eye, that draws the energy of stars into the soul. That energy becomes mana flow. But arcane is finite… it burns, it drains, it fades."

  He lifted a trembling hand, moving it as if grasping something invisible in the air. The shadows around his fingers seemed to pulse with his words. "Some… learn of the artifacts. Objects older than kingdoms, carved with runes no mortal tongue can speak. Eternal energy vessels — mana capacitance beyond life itself. They do not draw from the stars… but from wells buried in the void. Power without limit."

  His voice dropped even lower, almost a whisper, yet I could feel it reverberate across the cave walls. "But they come with risk. Some tear the soul apart. Some overwrite the user's arcane until they are no longer themselves. And some… are alive."

  I tilted my head unconsciously, confusion and awe twisting together. "Wait. What?"

  what nonsense is he even saying?

  "There is one," he said, each word dragging like weight through the thick air, "that does not store energy… it feeds it. It draws mana from realms outside existence — mana no living arcane could produce. To wield it is to reshape the world… or to unmake it entirely."

  I just stood there, blinking, my brain trying to untangle the torrent of knowledge he’d just dumped on me. My thoughts collided like storm clouds. “…what are yo—" I muttered, my tone flat. Either this guy was a psycho… or he had slammed his head against a cave wall too hard and now somehow bled forbidden knowledge.

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  Suddenly, he lurched forward. Before I could react, he vaulted onto my back with the speed of a predator.

  "Wha—?!"

  I twisted my head, instinct flaring, but his weight slammed me down onto the cold stone floor. Pain shot through my back and shoulders as I hit hard. My breath left me in a startled gasp.

  "Hey! What are yo—" My words cut off in a sharp grunt as his grip locked around my wrists like iron bands. I struggled, kicking and twisting, but his strength was terrifyingly inhuman—far beyond what his battered body should have allowed.

  With one fluid motion, he flipped me so my back pressed against the jagged rock, my head tilting backward toward the shadowed ceiling of the cave. Every stone edge pressed uncomfortably against my shoulders. I felt exposed, vulnerable, yet somehow trapped in a kind of gravity I couldn’t fight.

  "You said you wou—" I began, but my voice caught in shock as his hand emerged from the folds of his tattered cloak. He held a strange, fist-sized stone, pulsating with a sickly purple glow. Black veins crawled across its surface, writhing like dark veins under skin.

  Before I could shout, he shoved the stone toward my mouth. "What the—!?"

  It rammed against my teeth, forcing my jaw wide open. Pain lanced through the corners of my lips as the cold, jagged edges scraped across my skin. I tried to twist my head, tried to spit it out, but his hands pressed down harder, unrelenting. Coppery blood filled my mouth, hot and metallic, stinging my tongue and gums. The jagged stone seemed impossibly heavy. My teeth ground against it in a panic.

  Is he going to kill me? No, no, no—this can’t be happening! My thoughts scrambled in a frenzy. I shouldn’t have trusted him. I shouldn’t have stepped into this cursed cave. I should’ve walked away the moment I saw those horns!

  The stone pressed fully into my mouth, gagging me, forcing my throat to convulse. And then his palms pressed firmly against my jaw.

  A sudden surge of warmth spread through my face, searing yet comforting. A faint green light shimmered between his fingers, and the tearing, burning pain vanished instantly. My lips sealed themselves, and the blood vanished, as though it had never existed. My face tingled with the strange energy, skin humming with an unexplainable life.

  "My work here has completed, My Lady, I've followed your orders till the last"

  I scrambled backward, boots skidding across loose grit and pebbles, and leapt to my feet. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?! ANSWER ME!" I roared, my mana flaring instinctively. A fireball crackled into life in my palm, illuminating the cave walls with flickering amber light.

  He coughed—a deep, wet, ragged sound—and rasped out words that sounded fragile against the roar of my pulse. "Calm down, kid… cough— I didn’t kill you, did I?"

  His breath was shallow. Each word sounded frayed at the edges, weighted with fatigue and pain. "I can feel them, they are approaching to kill me... also currently my mana… fading. I won’t last much longer. I Lost… far too much blood."

  He staggered forward, trembling, and raised a hand toward the stone at my feet. The ground under it shimmered faintly. Lines of gold curled outward into intricate runes, glowing softly at first, then intensifying, spiraling into a tall, cylindrical veil around me. I felt its pressure, the hum of energy brushing against my skin like the still air before a lightning strike. It wasn’t restraining me—but it was powerful, overwhelming, and uncomfortably alive.

  I stepped back, glaring, fireball at the ready. "What is this? What the hell are you doing, you insane old man?!"

  "You’ll… figure it out soon." He coughed again, crimson flecks hitting the stone floor. "With what little mana I have left… I’ll use it to send you away from her—"

  Before I could demand what he meant, the world ripped apart around me.

  Light flared violently. My stomach lurched as the cave dissolved in a rush of gold energy, blinding, choking. The sound of my heartbeat thundering in my ears drowned everything else.

  Then—cold.

  My head slammed into wet earth. Mud and moss filled my nose and mouth. Rain spat down, dripping into my hair. I groaned, rolling onto my side, brushing gritty mud from my clothes. My mind spun, senses screaming.

  I pushed myself upright, kneeling in the soft, soaked ground. My chest heaved. My palms pressed into the wet soil as I tried to steady myself.

  I blinked and looked around. Everything was… foreign. The cave was gone. The stone floors vanished. The sharp scent of wet stone replaced by the rich smell of rain-soaked earth and green moss.

  Then I whispered, voice raw from shouting, panic, and exhaustion:

  "Where am I?"