Chapter 209: A wealth of Space
Walls began to rise.
Not built. Not summoned. They simply manifested—stone and structure bleeding up from the nothing between tiles, forming around the path like memory solidifying into architecture. Their surfaces were rough, a patchwork of cracked black stone and crystalline bone, threaded through with pulsing red veins that beat faintly beneath the surface, like heartlines wired into the Expanse itself.
The walls didn’t rise alone.
They spiraled upward, stretching into a single massive structure—twisting like a tower of vertebrae. Jagged. Uneven. Alive in the way old things are alive. Its silhouette loomed over the void, each sharp angle catching fragments of starlight torn from the sky above. Ancient gothic spires broke along its crown—more ruins than design, but none of them fallen.
It stood like a monument to decay.
Like a fortress carved from the skeleton of something older.
Then a gate dropped in front of them.
Massive. Wooden. A groan tore through the Expanse as it fell—slow, final. The wood was dark and warped, carved with runes that glowed faintly with pale blue soul energy. They shimmered across the grain like veins beneath thin skin.
The sound echoed like thunder dragged across steel, the vibration rattling through the air as the gate settled fully into place.
The godless crucifix continued forward, his steps silent against the cracked stone floor of the corridor beyond the gate. The crimson mist followed in a slow coil, trailing like a second cloak, while the red lining of his mantle caught the fractured starlight bleeding through the rifts above—brief smears of color thrown across the uneven walls.
Elias’s soul drifted behind him.