The heat struck like a tidal wave.
It was the kind of heat that peeled flesh from bone, that clawed into lungs and turned breath into knives. Even standing at the top of the stairs, Nick could feel the dungeon’s final guardian pressing against the air like a storm front. Flames curled from the cracks in the stone. The very air shimmered with molten promise.
Ray took a step down, then another. Her foot slipped slightly on the scorched stone, but she didn’t stop.
Nick moved beside her.
The boss didn’t move.
The orc stood in the center of the platform, two hands resting on the hilt of a two-handed hammer taller than Ray. His skin was grey-black, burned into permanence, and the brands that lined his chest pulsed with molten light. Chains wrapped around his forearms as ornaments.
His eyes were closed.
Then he breathed.
A single, deep, heavy breath.
The flames in the room responded.
They danced to his rhythm as if they remembered him.
Nick clenched his jaw. “Ray, maybe you should sit this one out. You won’t die, but that aura is going to hurt.”
“I know.”
“You should stay back—”
“No.”
She walked into the aura without hesitation.
Skin cracked and blood steamed. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl as the heat tore at her nerves, her breath hitching like a gasp dragged across a whetstone. Her hair began to singe at the tips, her cheeks blistering.
But her steps didn’t falter.
The moment she entered the chamber proper, the boss opened his eyes.
They were silver, like poured moonlight in a furnace.
His gaze locked first on Ray, then slid to Nick.
And stopped.
The air trembled.
Nick raised a hand. Thirty-two fireballs sparked into existence behind him. The flames roared as they hovered, motionless and obedient.
The orc exhaled slowly. His lips parted.
And for the first time, he spoke.
“…Monarch.”
Nick blinked.
“What?”
The orc’s voice was a deep, thunderous rumble—ancient and heavy, like stone dragged across stone. “I know those flames.”
Ray stumbled, catching herself on her bat. Her lips were bleeding. “Nick…”
The boss took a step forward.
Nick didn’t move. His flames surged in answer, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The floor cracked beneath his boots, red veins of heat spiraling outward.
The boss looked down at them.
“You are not her,” he said. “But you bear her fire.”
“Who?” Nick asked.
He has a suspicion that he already knew the answer.
“The Keeper. The Monarch of Ages.”
Evelyn Raymond.
Nick’s breath caught. He didn’t expect to hear that name here.
Ray’s voice was weak, but defiant. “You gonna attack or keep talking?”
The boss looked at her, then nodded once.
He charged.
He didn’t sprint or leap, he simply moved so fast it was like the space between had folded in on itself. One moment he stood across the room, the next, his hammer was a blur of molten death, coming down like a meteor.
Ray swung her baseball bat upward in a godly arc, backed by the force of her monstrous strength multiplied fivefold. The collision was cataclysmic.
Stone exploded beneath her feet. Wind howled from the impact. The shockwave punched through the air like a collapsing sun.
Ray skidded backward, heels carving trenches into the floor.
The boss didn’t budge.
But for the first time—
He grinned.
Ray came to a stop, steam hissing from her skin. Her knuckles were raw, scorched where they gripped the bat. Blisters bloomed across her shoulders, already weeping blood. But she grinned through it, eyes bright with adrenaline.
The boss adjusted his stance, not with hostility, but something far rarer.
Respect.
His voice rumbled like distant thunder. “What is your name, little one?”
She paused, surprised. “Ray.”
He repeated it, slower this time. “Ray…” The name lingered on his tongue like an old word remembered. “A name like sunlight.”
She straightened, a little confused. “You got a name too, or do we just call you Sparky Sparky Boom Man?”
A low chuckle rumbled from deep in his chest.
“I am Mortag,” he said. “Last of the Ashbound.”
Nick, standing just behind her, glanced between the two.
“Now who’s the one talking?” he muttered.
Ray smirked. “I think he likes me.”
Nick sighed. “Everybody likes you for some reason. I don’t see it.”
Mortag raised his chin, gaze settling on Nick now. “And you. The fire answers you, but it is not your own. What do you call yourself, flamebearer?”
He hesitated before responding. “Nick.”
Mortag nodded, solemn. “Then let us finish what was started, Nick, Ray. Let flame test will and will give shape to flame.”
He hefted his hammer once more, the haft cracking with the straight of restrained heat. The runes etched along its side flared brighter, burning from ember-red to molten white.
The floor beneath him fractured with a resonant crack, heat bleeding up from the very marrow of the stone.
Ray rolled her shoulders with a wince. “Right. Round two.”
Nick flexed his fingers, fire gathering like blood in the air around him. “This time, don’t catch the hammer with your face.”
She shot him a sideways grin. “No promises.”
Mortag waited for them to be ready.
His body was still, coiled like the moment before a volcano erupts. Even the fire around him seemed to pause, trembling midair, drawn inward by the gravity of what would come next.
Ray took a breath. Her lungs burned. Her skin screamed.
She ran.
The bat surged forward with her, her steps hammering the ground with seismic impact. As she closed the distance, Mortag moved at the last instance, his massive hammer coming up in a perfect vertical arc.
Bat met hammer like comet meeting mountain.
The shockwave cracked the walls.
Ray skidded back a full meter, but she didn’t fall. Their weapons locked, trembling from the force of the clash. Steam hissed from the floor beneath their feet.
Nick raised both hands. Eight fireballs spiraled out in twin helices, arcing side before folding back in. His heartbeat synced with the glow of each one.
The fireballs struck like blooming flares, detonating against him from both sides. Mortag grunted, his body rocked by the blasts.
He pushed, and Ray stumbled back, coughing, her boots digging furrows in the stone. Her arms spasmed.
Twelve balls of fire blinked from reality and reappeared point-blank around Mortag’s shoulders and ribs.
The fireballs detonated.
Mortag staggered back a single step.
Then he laughed.
It was a deep, slow chuckle, like boulders cracking beneath a glacier.
“A flame that will not yield,” he said, eyes fixed on Nick now. “And a child who does not break.”
He looked down at the flames licking his skin and did not brush them off.
Even if he tried, he knew he could not disperse the flames of a Keeper.
“Her fire danced like yours.”
Nick tilted his head. “You’ve seen it in person?”
“I have knelt before it,” Mortag rumbled. “Once. In another life.”
“…Then why are we fighting?”
Mortag turned, drawing himself to full height. His aura pulsed.
“To see if you’re worthy of carrying it.”
He raised the hammer again.
“In this place where fire wept, I will teach you what fire demands.”
Mortag surged forward again, but this time, there was no warning. No drawn breath. No shift in posture.
Instant motion.
A blur of heat and violence.
Ray barely got her bat up in time. The impact knocked her clean off her feet. She hit the ground with a grunt, sliding back hard enough to leave evaporating blood trails in her wake.
Mortag didn’t press the attack. He turned instead to Nick.
He swung the hammer toward the ground. The stone exploded upward in a geyser of molten rock. A wave of flame surged forward, racing like liquid lightning across the battlefield.
Nick stepped forward and extended both hands.
The fire answered.
It parted around him, veering off like water repelled by an invisible dam. His coat billowed, untouched, as the wave of fire broke in two behind him.
Nick didn’t reply with words.
He pulled a mana potion from his satchel and downed it in one gulp. Then another. Then one more, just for good measure.
He raised his hand.
And cast.
Once. Twice. Again. And Again.
Fireballs spiraled into the air like stars drawn from hell. First thirty-two. Then sixty-four. Then 128.
He tossed the third empty bottle aside and popped another cork. The potion burned like acid on the way down.
More fireballs flared to life.
More fireballs flared to life.
256. 320. 384.
448.
They swirled around him in a tightening vortex, heat and color blurring together like a sun being born in reverse.
The air screamed.
The ground cracked.
Ray just stared. “Are you… gonna stop at some point?”
Nick’s eyes glowed like twin furnaces.
“No.”
He raised his hand again.
“And neither is he.”
The chamber lit like the birth of a second sun.
Hundreds of fireballs spun in orbit around Nick, weaving threads of molten light into the air. The sheer force warped the battlefield, the heat trembling at the edges of vision like reality itself was flinching.
Ray shielded her face with one blistered forearm, blinking through the sweat and smoke.
Mortag raised his head.
And smiled.
He stepped forward.
Then charged.
He moved like a landslide with a soul, a meteor in motion. The hammer trailed behind him like the tail of a comet, glowing white-hot with anticipation. Flames surged in his wake, too slow to keep up.
Nick began his assault.
The first wave detonated against Mortag’s chest, shoulders, and legs.
He didn’t flinch.
The second wave came from above, cascading like a fiery hailstorm.
Mortag roared and sped up.
The third wave blinked out of existence, reappearing at point-blank range directly on Mortag’s path. They detonated mid-charge, blinding, thunderous, loud enough to rattle the stone beneath their feet.
Yet still he came.
Through the light, through the flame, through the pain—
Because fire demands persistence.
Ray moved.
She met him halfway, sprinting into the inferno. Her bat rose like a battering ram wrapped in her own boiling blood.
Mortag’s hammer came down.
She swung up.
CLANG!
The impact rang like a temple bell. The ground cracked, her feet tearing furrows in the stone again, knees bending under the pressure. Blood boiled from her arms, spraying in bursts where her skin could no longer contain it.
Mortag’s hammer hovered in place, caught by her defiant stand.
She screamed. “I. AM. NOT. A. HEALER!”
Mortag’s brow furrowed.
And for the first time—
He stepped back.
Nick’s voice cut through the haze.
“Ray!”
She moved sideways—barely more than a stagger—but it was enough.
Every remaining fireball surged forward.
Dozens.
Hundreds
Too many to count.
They converged on Mortag in a burning storm. Each impact exploded like artillery. Fire gouged the stone. Fire scorched the sky. Fire became the world.
Nick raised his arm, shielding his eyes from his own spell. The flames howled as if trying to outrun themselves.
Ray fell to one knee, panting. Her skin was blackened. Her fingers trembled around the bat.
Silence fell.
Steam hissed from the crater.
The smoke parted—
And Mortag was still standing.
His armor hung in ribbons. One eye was swollen shut. The runes on his hammer flickered, struggling to hold shape. His body was cracked and scorched and bleeding fire from a dozen places.
But he stood.
He laughed.
“A flame that will not yield,” he said again, this time looking at Ray.
“And a flame that devours its limits,” he added, eyes meeting Nick’s.
He took a single step forward, staggered, then dropped to one knee.
The ground hissed where he landed.
“You who follows the path of fire.”
Nick stared, breathing hard.
“Do you know what fire demands?”
Nick nodded. “Everything.”
Mortag placed the hammer down before him with both hands.
“Everything. And everyone. It spares no part of you. It takes all that you are. That is why it must be wielded with purpose.”
Nick didn’t speak.
He couldn’t.
Because he already knew.
Ray stood slowly, using the bat like a crutch. “Is this… the end?”
Mortag raised his head. A thin stream of blood ran down his temple—but he smiled.
“No. This is recognition.”
He turned his gaze back to Nick, his voice now quiet but firm—reverent.
“You carry her fire. You walk with her legacy. But this world does not need another Monarch.”
Nick tilted his head. “I don’t follow.”
Mortag’s silver eyes gleamed.
“A new flame.”
He stood again, slowly, placing a hand to his branded chest. Fire pulsed outward from the brands, softer now. No longer aggressive, but welcoming.
A window appeared in front of both Nick and Ray:
=New Skill Unlocked: Oath of Ash=
=Oath of Ash=
-Semi-Passive Skill-
->Mana: N/A
->Rank: 1/100
->Description: While active, nearby enemies suffer growing fire damage over time. Nearby allies gain increased resistance to fear, fire, and despair.
When fire mourns, it weeps in ash.
Ray stared as the notification scrolled across her vision.
Nick swallowed.
He didn’t feel like a new flame.
He felt like a man trying not to burn alive.
But he already knew:
That’s how every fire starts.
Mortag exhaled one final time.
The fire around him dimmed.
His body began to turn to ash. The flames devouring him now were calm, deliberate. Peaceful.
He was not slain.
He was passing on the fire.
“Burn well,” he said.
And then—
He was gone.
Ash drifted to the floor, settling like snow.
The chamber grew quiet once more.
Nick let out a long breath and looked at Ray.
“Now that,” he said, “was a dungeon boss.”
Project Knightfall 