Chapter 206: The Warden of the Eastern Gate
The altar trembled beneath their feet.
Alena clutched the Dragon’s Essence vial to her chest. Her eyes darted toward the massive stone doors at the far end of the chamber.
"They’re opening," she whispered.
Damon drew the Chaos Devourer.
The doors groaned apart. Dust and ancient air spilled out. A figure emerged from the darkness beyond.
It was a man. Or what had once been a man.
His body was wrapped in black iron armor that had fused with his skin. His eyes glowed with amber light. In his hand, he carried a massive halberd that crackled with residual lightning.
"The Warden of the Eastern Gate," the ancient voice announced.
"To claim the central treasure of this realm, you must defeat the one who guards it."
The Warden stepped into the chamber. His weight cracked the stone floor.
Alena moved behind Damon. "I can help. I have pills that can boost your strength temporarily."
"Save those pills," Damon said, his golden eyes already fixed on the towering figure ahead.
"You’ll need them more once we’re past this."
He rolled his shoulders and walked forward.
The Warden raised his halberd. Lightning arced along its length. The air grew heavy with pressure.
"You are not worthy," the Warden said.
His voice was hollow and vast, like wind dragging itself through an ancient tomb that had never once held warmth.
It came not from his throat but from somewhere deeper — from the chest of a thing that had long since forgotten what it felt like to breathe for the simple pleasure of it.
"Probably not," Damon replied, tilting his head slightly, golden eyes running calmly up the towering armored figure with the quiet, measuring patience of a man already calculating where the gaps would be.
He rolled the Chaos Devourer once in his grip, the blade catching the amber glow of the Warden’s eyes and throwing pale light across the cracked stone floor.
"But I’m taking the treasure anyway."
He attacked.
The Chaos Devourer met the halberd in a shower of sparks. The impact sent shockwaves through the chamber. Alena stumbled back, shielding her face.
Damon pressed forward without hesitation, closing the distance before the Warden could reset his footing.
He had the clear advantage in speed.
The Warden was monstrously powerful, each step shaking the chamber floor like the blow of a siege hammer, but he was slow — the weight of that fused iron armor, sealed into his very flesh, dragged against every movement.
Damon read the rhythm of him instantly.
He ducked low beneath a thunderous horizontal swing that would have taken his head clean off, feeling the displaced air rake across the back of his neck, and drove the Chaos Devourer hard into the Warden’s exposed flank.
The blade scraped and ground against the iron shell with a shriek of tortured metal, throwing sparks that stung Damon’s hand.
It didn’t penetrate. Not even close.
The Warden didn’t even flinch. His amber eyes shifted downward, slow and indifferent, as though registering the presence of an insect. Then his free arm moved.
The backhanded strike came too fast to fully dodge. It caught Damon across the ribs and launched him sideways through the air.
He smashed into one of the ancient pillars lining the chamber wall.
The stone cracked and groaned around the point of impact, fractures spidering outward like a shattered mirror, a cloud of centuries-old dust and pulverized rock raining down across his shoulders.
"Damon!" Alena’s sharp voice cut across the chamber. He could hear the fear in it, raw and unguarded, a crack in her usual precise composure.
He rose. Slowly. His back screamed in protest against the movement, and something warm and copper-tasting was spreading across his lower lip.
He pressed the back of his wrist against his mouth and looked at the smear of red it left behind.
His golden eyes lifted back to the Warden.
"Tough bastard," he said quietly, and almost smiled.
The Warden advanced.
His halberd swept forward in a wide arc.
Damon jumped over it and landed on the shaft.
He ran up the weapon and drove his heel into the Warden’s face.
The Warden’s head snapped back.
He stumbled.
Damon landed and struck again. This time, he aimed for the gaps in the armor. The joints. The exposed flesh at the neck.
The Chaos Devourer bit deep.
The Warden roared. He swung wildly. Damon dodged and countered. Each exchange pushed him further. He was learning the Warden’s patterns.
But he wasn’t winning.
The Warden’s regeneration was too fast. Every wound closed within seconds. Damon needed something stronger.
He stepped back and raised his free hand.
"Chaos Slash."
The spatial tear ripped forward. It struck the Warden’s chest and carved a deep gash through the armor. The Warden staggered. Black blood poured from the wound.
"Now," Damon said.
He charged.
The Chaos Devourer glowed with dark light. He drove it into the Warden’s chest, through the wound, and out the other side.
The Warden went utterly still. Every titanic muscle locked in place, the enormous frame that had shrugged off a dozen strikes now standing motionless as a stone monument.
The halberd trembled in his grip before his fingers went slack around the shaft.
His amber eyes flickered.
The fierce, burning light behind them guttered like a candle flame in a sudden wind, dimming from that blazing furnace-gold to something pale and distant.
Whatever ancient will had sustained him through the battle wavered and faded, retreating somewhere deep and unreachable.
"You..." he rasped, his voice a grinding ruin of what it had once been.
The single word scraped out of him like stone dragged across stone, carrying with it the weight of something vast and old, something that had waited inside this sealed realm for far longer than Damon had been alive.
"Have passed."
The words carried a strange solemnity, a finality, as though they had been spoken a thousand times before in some distant age and were only now being spoken for the last time.
Then the Warden collapsed. His massive body hit the ancient stone floor with a tremendous, bone-shaking crash that sent dust cascading from the cracked pillars and rolled through the chamber like a thunderclap, the sound of an era ending all at once.
The halberd clattered to the ground.
The Warden’s body crumbled into dust.