From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 119: The Temple Without Doors

Leon stepped forward.

Not because he was ready.

Because there was no other path.

The corridor of light narrowed around him, pulsing faintly with every beat of the shard inside his chest. Unlike the memory realm before, this space had no floor, no ceiling—just a long bridge of woven light stretching into silence. A single figure stood at the end.

A woman, cloaked in red veils, her back turned, standing motionless beneath a tree with no roots.

The tree floated.

Its branches curled like antlers, made of gold and fire, suspended in midair. From its limbs hung tiny shards—each the size of a nail—glowing in faint, different hues. They chimed softly as if stirred by breathless wind.

Leon approached slowly.

The veiled woman turned, but not fully. Her face remained hidden.

"I was wondering," she said, voice soft as falling dust, "how long it would take before you found the second."

Leon kept a hand on his hilt. "Are you another memory?"

She laughed, but the sound wasn’t cruel.

"No. I am what waits between them."

He frowned. "The guardian?"

"No. The cost."

The shards on the tree began to drift outward—spinning gently, orbiting her like stars. Each one hummed as it passed Leon, and with each hum, something in his chest itched.

She took a step closer.

"The shard you carry is not inert," she said. "It remembers. It adapts. It hungers."

Leon’s grip tightened. "So everyone keeps saying. But I haven’t lost myself yet."

"Because you haven’t claimed another piece."

One of the floating shards broke orbit and stopped in front of him. It hovered at eye level. Pale blue. Flickering like candlelight.

"This one belonged to the Hollow King," she said. "He who spoke in echoes. He who walked with no shadow."

Leon stared at the shard.

It pulsed once.

The shard in his chest answered.

"What happens if I take it?" he asked.

"You gain more than power," she said. "You gain burden. His memories. His regrets. His mistakes. They will nest in you, like seeds waiting for flame."

Leon took a slow breath.

"And if I don’t?"

"You remain... incomplete."

Silence.

The shard hovered closer, brushing against his brow.

And suddenly—

Visions.

A field of bones whispering.

A citadel made of wind.

A voice, singing a lullaby to corpses.

Leon clenched his teeth. He reached up.

The moment he touched the shard—it dissolved.

Not into light.

Into thought.

It sank into him.

And everything went still.

The tree vanished.

So did the veiled woman.

And Leon stood again on stone—real stone—inside the mountain-temple.

Alone.

Except he wasn’t.

Because the new shard had nested inside the first.

And it was speaking already.

Not in words.

In urge.

He stumbled forward, chest burning, head pounding.

Then the temple doors—once missing—crashed open behind him.

Mira ran in first, blade drawn.

Tomas behind her, muttering a curse. "He’s alive. I told you!"

Kairis floated in last, her expression unreadable.

Leon collapsed to one knee, breathing hard.

Mira reached him first, grabbing his arm. "What happened?"

He didn’t look at her.

He was staring at his own hands.

The veins now glowed faint blue under his skin.

A second rhythm.

A second presence.

"I took another shard," he whispered.

Tomas groaned. "Great. Another upgrade. Another nightmare. Another step closer to glowing like a lighthouse in hell."

But Kairis didn’t mock.

She only said one word.

"...Two."

Leon looked up at her.

"How many more?"

Kairis’s eyes flicked to the northern sky.

Then down the valley.

"Three remain."

She turned to the shattered horizon.

"And none of them will be given freely."

Outside, the ash winds picked up again.

And far, far away—something howled. A tremor passed beneath their feet.

Subtle. Faint.

But it wasn’t natural.

Mira’s grip on Leon’s arm tightened. "That wasn’t wind."

Kairis moved to the temple’s broken threshold, her gaze sweeping the dark horizon beyond the forest. "No," she murmured. "It’s begun already. The second shard stirred more than memory."

Leon steadied himself, one hand braced against the wall. "What did I wake?"

Kairis didn’t answer right away. Her silence was the kind that made the air tighten in the chest.

Tomas unsheathed one of his shorter blades and pointed it downward, listening to the vibrations through the metal. "There’s movement in the stone. Deep. Maybe tunnels?"

"Not tunnels," Kairis said softly. "Roots."

Mira blinked. "Like the rootfire?"

"No," Kairis said. "Worse."

She turned back to them, and for the first time, something flickered behind her eyes—something like fear. "The Hollow King wasn’t just a memory. He left behind guardians. Wards. They were meant to keep his mind from fragmenting after death. But with his shard rejoined, the bindings have thinned."

Leon felt the second pulse rise inside him.

It didn’t hurt. It called him.

A direction. A pull.

West.

He caught Kairis’s eye. "You said there were three shards left. Do they pull too?"

She nodded. "But each one will try to convince you it’s the only one that matters."

Tomas kicked a loose stone. "Lovely. So now the magical cancer in your chest has opinions."

Leon forced a dry breath. "Better than silence."

But Mira wasn’t smiling.

She stepped forward and placed her palm over his sternum. "The first shard tried to drown you in flame. The second one whispers like ghosts. If there’s a third... what’s left? Madness?"

Leon looked down at her hand. "Maybe."

Then gently removed it.

"But if we stop now, all of this—" he gestured to the temple, the broken forest beyond it, the blackened sky, "—becomes permanent."

Tomas rubbed the back of his neck. "Then I vote we start moving before more memories show up."

Kairis turned back to the edge of the platform, where stone steps wound down toward a path none of them had seen on the way in.

The wind shifted again.

Not warm.

But charged.

Leon felt it too. A presence in the current. Watching.

Mira stepped beside him. "West, right?"

He nodded.

"That’s ruin country," Tomas muttered. "Nothing but dust cities and old siege grounds. Even the guilds don’t cross through there anymore."

"They will now," Kairis said. "The Ashbound will follow the shard’s echo. So will the Reclaimers."

Leon’s face tightened. "And Arden?"

Kairis’s answer came slowly. "He will wait. He has his own path. But when he returns... it will not be alone."

Leon clenched a fist.

He didn’t trust fate. But he trusted what burned behind his ribs. The shards weren’t finished. And neither was he.

He turned to Mira and Tomas.

"Two shards down," he said. "We follow the pull. We stop whatever’s coming." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"And if it breaks you?" Mira asked quietly.

Leon didn’t look away. "Then stop me before I stop the world."

They descended into the ruins.

The temple behind them began to collapse—not violently, but like a body exhaling for the last time. Roots withdrew from the stone. Branches shrank. What had once been ancient and divine became nothing more than dust.

Kairis didn’t turn back.

Neither did Leon.

Because ahead, just over the next ridge, a trail of blue light shimmered across the barren hills—faint, but clear. Like footsteps left by something not of this world.

And as they followed, the winds whispered again.

This time, the voice was not ancient.

It was new.

A child’s voice. Singing.

A lullaby.

The same one Leon had heard in the Hollow King’s memory.

Only this time... the voice knew his name.

The trail led them west into dead valleys.

Ridges once shaped by siege engines now stood hollow, ridged with black iron spikes, twisted by time. Trees withered to bone stuck out of the ground like ribs. The air thickened, not with smoke or magic, but with pressure—like the land itself was holding its breath.

The lullaby never stopped.

Faint. Always just out of reach. A child’s voice, echoing across canyons and through jagged crevices, sometimes humming, sometimes whispering actual lyrics in a tongue Leon didn’t know... but somehow understood.

He didn’t say a word about it.

Neither did Mira. But the way she glanced at him—quick, worried, and frequent—told him she heard it too.

Hours passed. Maybe more. The sun remained a dull smear behind clouds of soot.

Kairis moved ahead of them now, gliding rather than walking, her body taut. Even she, so far untouched by fatigue or concern, watched the horizon like it might bite.

They stopped at a broken stone archway, half-buried under a landslide of rusted spears.

Kairis raised a hand.

"This is the first gate," she said. "The last remnants of the Ash Bastion. What remains of the Hollow King’s western wall."

Leon stared at it. "Looks like it fell centuries ago."

"It did," Kairis said. "But things that fall still cast shadows."

Mira stepped around one of the spears. "So what’s waiting for us in there?"

Tomas knelt by a charred helmet lodged in the dirt. He picked it up and turned it over—nothing inside. "Hopefully not the choirboy."

"The lullaby," Kairis said, eyes narrowing, "is not a child."

Leon’s brow creased. "What is it then?"

She looked directly at him. "A splinter. Left behind when the Hollow King fell. A broken part of his will. What we’d call a wraith if it hadn’t learned to speak."

Leon felt the second shard press harder against his ribs.

"That thing was part of him?"

"Yes," she said. "And now it knows you carry him. It wants you close."

"Why?"

Kairis didn’t blink. "Because it thinks you can finish what he started."

Tomas stood. "And what was that? Whisper people to death?"

"No," Kairis said. "He wanted silence. Total. A world without noise, conflict, memory. No fire. No grief. No hope. Just stillness."

Leon felt cold settle into his spine.

"That’s not peace."

"No," Mira said, voice low. "It’s erasure."

Kairis nodded. "Exactly. The wraith doesn’t remember the king’s purpose—only the feeling. It doesn’t know why it sings. But it does. And now... it sings for you."

Leon looked at the shattered arch again. "So we go in. And end it."

Tomas made a face. "You’re not gonna say something dramatic, are you?"

"No."

"Good."

Leon started forward.

The others followed.

They passed beneath the broken arch.

And the world changed.

The ash that floated in the air turned solid—hanging like strands of silk, unmoving. The sound of their steps dulled, then disappeared altogether. No echo. No scrape. Not even breath.

Then the lullaby stopped.

Dead silence.

Tomas froze. "Nope. Nope. I liked the singing better."

Mira grabbed Leon’s wrist. "I can’t hear anything. Not even myself."

Leon’s eyes widened. He couldn’t feel her touch either. Her grip looked real—but the sensation was gone.

He opened his mouth to speak—but no sound came.

Kairis turned to them and moved her lips.

No voice.

Only her eyes spoke. Keep moving.

The sky above this place cracked faintly like stained glass, frozen in time. Structures—bent towers, bridges made of interlocking swords, cities curled in on themselves—floated in layers across the sky. Not illusions. Memories. Disconnected pieces of what the Hollow King once ruled.

Then they heard it.

Not the lullaby.

A breath.

Wet. Close.

From below.

Leon stepped forward, drawing his blade—

And something grabbed his ankle.

Cold. Writhing.

He looked down.

Hands. Dozens of them. Child-sized, bone-thin, grey and ash-covered—reaching from the soil. Reaching for him.

For the shard.

Mira struck first, slashing through a bundle of fingers before they could latch onto Leon’s knee.

Tomas followed up, hurling a blade into a patch forming near Kairis.

She didn’t flinch.

Instead, she extended her hand, and the world around them shuddered.

The hands screamed—but no sound came.

They scattered.

Faded.

And the silence cracked like glass under strain.

Kairis looked to Leon again.

"This place is breaking," she mouthed.

Leon stared ahead, toward a glowing shape further in—deep inside a broken hall of twisted glass and empty thrones.

He pointed toward it.

Then started walking.

Whatever sang to him was waiting.