From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 111: Beyond

They emerged back into the narrow shaft, but the air had changed. Heavier. Every breath scraped against their lungs, as if the chamber below had altered something more than memory. Leon took the lead, one hand brushing the wall for balance as they climbed the spiral.

Mira kept her wardstone close. Its surface flickered—not steady, but reactive. Tomas glanced behind every few steps, knife still in hand, jaw clenched. freēnovelkiss.com

"The light’s wrong," Mira muttered.

Leon didn’t answer.

At the top, the obsidian petals of the platform had sealed shut once more. No sign of the descent. No trace of the man. Just stone, flat and cold.

They crossed it in silence, stepping back into the crater. The mist had thinned. The wind had not returned. And the creature that once watched from the broken tower was gone.

Tomas broke the stillness. "Where do we go now?"

Leon pointed east. A new path had revealed itself—the far archway no longer crumbled, but intact, stone swept clean by something recent.

As they crossed through it, a low vibration ran beneath their feet.

Mira whispered, "The mountain’s not just watching anymore. It’s listening."

Beyond the arch was a long stone corridor, unnatural in its symmetry. Black walls, etched with the same sigils from the chamber. Not glowing now. Sleeping.

They walked for what felt like an hour.

The tunnel opened into a vast underground hall, larger than anything they’d seen before. Dozens of stone slabs, each carved with different symbols, lined the sides. At the centre stood a statue.

Of Leon.

Not as he was.

As he had been in the vision—crowned, seated, blade in hand. Eyes closed, face expressionless.

Tomas stopped first. "What in all hells...?"

Leon stepped forward. Every footfall echoed too loud. He stared up at the statue.

"This is what he saw," he said. "What he locked away. The future."

Mira circled slowly. "Why here? Why would anyone build a hall like this?"

Leon turned toward the far end.

A set of double doors loomed. Not stone. Not metal. Wood. Ancient, splintered at the edges, bound with rusted iron. No handle. No lock. Only a sigil at the centre—the same spiral that had pulsed in the chamber.

Leon placed his hand against it.

It opened without sound.

Beyond it was darkness.

Not absence of light.

A space that swallowed light whole.

He stepped through.

Mira followed. Then Tomas.

The door closed behind them.

Inside was a cavern.

It wasn’t wide. Nor high.

It was endless.

And in the centre—a tree.

Dead.

But standing.

Its branches were chains.

Its roots, blades.

And beneath it—

A second crown.

The roots whispered.

Not with sound, but with pressure—faint tremors along the soles of their boots, like echoes of something that had once moved and remembered how. Leon stared at the tree. It didn’t grow. It didn’t sway. But it breathed. Not air—presence. As if it held something down.

Mira’s wardstone dimmed. Then flared. Then dimmed again. She moved closer to Leon, her voice barely a whisper. "That’s not just another crown, is it?"

"No," Leon said.

Tomas looked between them, his tone sharp. "Is it like the first?"

Leon shook his head. "Worse."

The second crown didn’t hover. It didn’t gleam. It was buried in the roots, half-swallowed by iron and bark. Darker than the other. And older. Where the first had been forged to seal knowledge, this one looked... feral. Not crafted—but grown.

"It’s not a crown," Leon said, more to himself than them. "It’s a leash."

Mira stepped carefully toward the edge of the tree’s base. "What did they leash?"

Leon didn’t answer.

Because he didn’t know.

But the memory left behind in his chest—the one the ancestor had given him—burned every time his eyes met the second crown.

He crouched beside the roots, inspecting the pattern. Blades like thorns protruded in symmetrical circles. Some broken. Some still wet with... not blood, but something close.

Tomas exhaled. "We shouldn’t be here."

Leon reached toward the crown.

Tomas grabbed his arm. "Don’t."

Leon didn’t pull away. "I’m not taking it. I just... I need to understand."

He rested his fingers on the nearest root. The bark cracked, old and brittle—but what leaked from within wasn’t sap.

It was light.

Black light.

It curled around his hand, then retreated like smoke into the root. Leon’s eyes widened.

"They used this to bind something inside the mountain," he said quietly. "Not guard it. Not trap it. Bind it."

"To what?" Mira asked.

Leon stood slowly, eyes trailing the tree’s twisted spine. "To blood."

He looked over his shoulder.

"To people like me."

The weight of that settled over them like ash. Thick. Heavy. Tomas muttered a curse under his breath and turned from the crown. "We need to destroy it."

Mira frowned. "And let whatever it’s holding loose?"

"I’m saying we should leave," Tomas snapped. "We’ve come too far, seen too much. Whatever this is—whatever he’s becoming—it’s not something we can control."

Leon stepped back from the roots. "You think I want this?"

Tomas didn’t speak.

Leon’s jaw tightened. "I didn’t ask for a crown. Or a bloodline. Or to walk into a tomb and find a prophecy with my face already carved into the wall."

He pointed toward the crown.

"But I don’t think we’re the first to find this. I think we’re the last."

Mira watched him carefully. "Then what do we do?"

Leon turned toward the tree. The air felt thinner now. Warmer. Like the forge-heat again, but coming from beneath the stone.

"We seal it again," he said.

Tomas raised an eyebrow. "How?"

Leon didn’t answer right away. His gaze trailed back to the black veins in the roots, the flickering thorns, the buried leash.

He stepped forward and knelt. His fingers brushed one of the exposed blades—not enough to cut. Just enough to feel the hum.

"They didn’t use magic," he said. "They used sacrifice."

Mira’s breath caught.

Tomas’s face hardened.

Leon stood. "Not death. Legacy. Lineage. The Woundbearer gave up more than power when he sealed the first crown. He gave up time. Generations of his blood woven into a prison. That’s why it answered me. Why this place opened."

He glanced down at his palm.

"Because I’m still carrying it."

Mira stared at the second crown, her voice low. "So what happens if someone else takes it?"

Leon’s silence was answer enough.

Tomas stepped away from the tree. "We’re not alone down here. We never were."

Leon turned slowly.

The darkness behind them had changed.

Something moved at the edge.

Not approaching.

Circling.

Watching.

"The seal’s weakening," Leon said. "And if we leave it like this..."

He didn’t finish the thought.

He didn’t have to.

Mira nodded. "Then we stay. We stop whatever’s waking."

Leon’s voice was steady. "Or we die here making sure it never rises."

Leon stepped back from the roots. The tremor underfoot grew sharper—less a whisper now, more a murmur on the verge of becoming a voice. Somewhere in the far shadows, something shifted again. Metal scraped stone. Then silence.

He looked to Mira and Tomas.

"I need time," he said.

Mira hesitated. "For what?"

"To find the boundary," he replied. "There has to be a limit to this... cavern. The seal’s anchored somewhere. If I can trace it—"

Tomas cut in. "Then what? You draw a line in the dirt and hope it listens?"

"No," Leon said. "I make sure it remembers me."

He reached into the satchel at his side, drawing out the small shard of the wardstone Mira had given him days ago—fractured, dulled, but still humming faintly with stored energy. He placed it beside the base of the tree.

"What are you doing?" Mira asked.

"Leaving a tether," Leon said. "If the crown stirs again, if something breaks free... this will react. Maybe even warn the surface, if anyone’s listening."

"And if no one is?" Tomas muttered.

Leon looked up. "Then at least we tried."

Mira stepped closer to the second crown, her eyes narrowing. "It’s not just bound, is it? It’s waiting."

Leon nodded. "And the tree isn’t dead. It’s dormant."

They began to circle the base, studying the placement of the roots. Each blade-like protrusion formed a pattern—radial, deliberate. As if the tree itself was a part of a larger sigil, not a living thing but a rune grown into being.

Mira traced one with her finger. "This whole chamber might be the real seal. The others were just locks along the way."

Leon glanced back the way they came. "Which means someone tried to break it before."

"And failed," Tomas added grimly.

Leon slowed at the northern arc of the chamber. The ground dipped there, forming a shallow basin. Inside it, bones. Ancient. Scattered. Some still clad in rusted fragments of armour. Others stripped bare.

He knelt again.

"They tried to cut the roots," he said. "Failed."

Mira frowned. "And died trying?"

"No," Leon said. "They were already dying. This wasn’t an attack."

He pointed to the patterns etched into the floor beside the corpses.

"This was a ritual."

Tomas scoffed. "Another sacrifice?"

"No," Mira said quietly. "A reinforcement."

Leon nodded. "They weren’t trying to free the crown. They were sealing it again. Rebinding the leash."

Mira crouched beside him, reading the spiral grooves worn into the stone. "They must’ve known it was waking even then."

"And tried to stop it with what little they had left."

The tremors pulsed again.

Deeper now.

Leon rose. "We’ll need their ritual. Or something close."

"Do you even know how to perform it?" Tomas asked.

"No," Leon said.

But his gaze turned toward the memory still burning in his chest.

"I know someone who did."

Leon stood over the spiral carving, his boot brushing dust from one of the faded lines. The corpses near it had not decayed into nothing. The bones still held form—fingers clutching broken blades, arms wrapped around each other, as if they’d died holding on. One wore a band across the forearm—black metal, etched with a faded crest. A wolf, surrounded by fire.

Leon reached down, touching it gently. "They were warriors," he said. "Not priests. Not mages. Fighters."

"Like you," Mira said softly.

He looked up at her. "Maybe that’s why I understand some of it."

The spiral beneath them vibrated faintly again, syncing with the deep pulses in the stone. But something else moved—closer now. The circling presence wasn’t a ghost or a thought anymore. It had form. Steps. Breath.

Leon rose slowly. "Whatever’s waking... it’s reacting to us being here."

Tomas scanned the dark, dagger raised. "Then maybe we shouldn’t be here."

Leon didn’t move. "We’re already part of it."

From the far end of the chamber, a shadow peeled away from the black. At first, it looked like mist—a trick of the fading light. Then it grew limbs. A face. Or the echo of one. Grey skin, hollow eyes, something long buried that hadn’t forgotten how to stand.

Mira’s breath hitched. "That’s not human."

"No," Leon whispered. "It’s what was leashed."

The figure didn’t advance. It watched. Its form flickered between solid and smoke. A guardian, perhaps. Or a remnant.

Leon stepped toward it.

Tomas hissed, "Don’t."

But the thing didn’t move. Didn’t strike. It only turned its head slightly as Leon approached, slow and deliberate.

Leon stopped a few steps away.

Its mouth didn’t open. But Leon heard it—words, not in sound, but in memory.

"Last blood. Final tether. Speak the names."

Leon flinched. "What names?"

Silence.

Then, again—"Speak the names. Seal the leash."

Leon turned back to the others. "It’s not asking for magic."

Mira frowned. "Then what?"

He faced the spirals again. "It’s asking for ancestry."

He pressed his palm to the ground, the spiral fitting beneath it.

"I need the names of those who bled to seal this once. The ancestors. The line."

The tree responded.

A faint glow pulsed under the roots—small sigils lighting one by one around the perimeter of the cavern.

Names. Written in ancient script. Dozens of them. Flickering like dying embers, but still there.

Leon’s jaw clenched.

"They’re almost gone," he said.

"Then speak them while they remain," Mira urged.

Leon lowered his head.

And began to read.