The Soul Sanctum, Central Feraxia…

After Two Days of High-paced Travel…

The Soul Sanctum was a spectacle to behold.

It was unlike most grand building structures in that its grandness didn't lie in vast displays of opulence or size. It wasn't a particularly tall building, at most it was ten floors high. Neither was the design of the structure particularly spectacular. Rather, its grandness lay deep into the ground.

Built in a perfect pentagon, the ancient structure sank into the earth like it contained things better left buried. It plunged downward into the Feraxian bedrock as if the architects had decided that the true measure of power was not how high a structure could be, but how far deep it delved into the ground.

From above, the opening resembled a five-sided throat, with each side covered by thick, weathered stone that had stood for centuries — Criss-crossed by what made the Soul Sanctum so unique-looking…

Bridges.

Hundreds of them.

They were suspended in the air, cutting across each level of the vast internal space like strands of webs. They stretched from wall to wall, level to level, descending into depths that remained shrouded in utter blackness from above.

And the bridges themselves looked precarious. In particular, the chains holding the bridges were old, rusted metal that looked like they had endured for longer than any living Ossuarist could remember, bearing witness to generation upon generations of Ossuarists.

To sell the ambience of the dark, gritty, structure more, the lighting within was also dim. Intentionally so.

Simple-looking lamps lined the walls at irregular intervals, casting their soft orange glow of illumination only for the short distance their light could travel. And in the space their light couldn't reach, pockets of darkness reigned, giving the entire structure an overall oppressive, and even claustrophobic quality despite the vast emptiness all the way down.

And within this structure, Ossuarists could be seen moving around with purpose.

They traversed the chain bridges in their black uniforms, carrying out duties that required no explanation.

Some of them physically descended from level to level, following the staircases carved into the pentagonal walls, while others simply dropped multiple levels directly, using shadow manifestations or body-enhanced leaps that would have killed ordinary people.

The entire place was utterly silent. No one spoke unnecessarily. No one stood around idle. There were no guards to be seen anywhere despite the fact that this was where the Ossuary kept its most dangerous secrets… its most volatile soul masses… its deepest horrors.

And today in particular, the Soul Sanctum felt emptier than it usually did. In fact, emptier than it had ever been in decades, or even centuries…

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Thirty Levels Below The Surface…

Within A Vast Chamber…

Loud, chilling shrieks could be heard as a Grade 3 Caretaker was attempting to assimilate an S-Grade soul mass.

The soul mass dominated the center of the chamber floor, writhing and roiling like a thick wave of chaotic shadow and black flame that stretched across an area the size of a football field.

It pulsated and engulfed the surroundings below with thick chaotic energy. It was the soul mass of a dragon so large and so powerful that its mass had nearly torn open a chaos breach from the sheer density of its chaos alone.

There was no doubt about it. During this creature's life, it was a Calamity-Grade Beast. A natural disaster on its own. What more now when it was dead?

The air rippled and distorted around its mass, creating visible fractures in reality as a result of entropic decay caused by its chaos alone.

Staring at it directly made the eyes water and the mind recoil, activating some primal part of human consciousness — an Ossuarist's consciousness — that this thing should not exist. That it was an anomaly, a wrongness, to the world itself.

But it did exist…

And a single Ossuarist knelt at its edge, attempting to assimilate it.

She was perhaps in her forties, with streaks of premature white cutting through her black hair. Sweat poured down her face despite the chamber's cool air. Her entire body trembled with effort as she forcefully tried to maintain the chants of her Soul Edict, struggling even to speak the words as if it was a battle between her and the creature's domineering will.

Dozens of specialized soul tools had been driven into the chamber floor in a precise geometric pattern — ancient artifacts of dark metal and specially crystallized soul essence that glowed with dull, green color.

They formed a containment array, a framework that prevented the dragon's chaos from expanding beyond the designated zone and consuming everything in range.

Without them, first, the assimilation would have been suicide, and any onlooker or weaker-willed Ossuarist moving above, even if they were tens of floors higher, and without any knowledge as to what was happening within this chamber, would've dropped to their knees, barely able to breathe from the intense chaos radiating from the dragon's mass.

This was one of the final trials before a Grade 3 Caretaker could be recommended for Preceptor rank.

They were to face an S-Grade soul mass on their own, to wrestle with a chaos so dense it threatened to become a breach on its own, yet emerge with their mind and soul intact.

Needless to say, most who attempted this trial failed.

Many died.

But this woman was still fighting.

And high above her, suspended on one of the more precarious chain bridges that cut across the vast space, a young man watched the spectacle with an expression of profound boredom.

He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, with blonde hair that seemed to catch and hold what little light filtered down from the upper levels. His face was striking, with perfectly symmetrical features, making for a classically handsome look that was more like an artist's sculpture than a flesh-and-blood person.

But it was his eyes that truly set him apart.

They were gold. Pure, glowing orbs of gold. And they held absolutely no interest whatsoever in the life-or-death struggle playing out below.

He leaned indifferently against the rusted chain railing with one arm, watching the Caretaker below scream as the dragon soul mass surged against her defenses, nearly overwhelming her Soul Edict's dominance.

To anyone else, even without understanding the full details of what was happening, they would have been enraptured by the intense struggle below…

But all the blonde man did was yawn.

Then, as if sensing something far more interesting than the display before him, his gaze lifted slowly.

Across the vast chamber, at a height level with his position but on the opposite side, was one of the Soul Sanctum's observation rooms.

Built into the pentagonal walls like cells in a honeycomb, they were small, fortified spaces with thick glass windows that allowed privileged observers to witness trials without being subjected to the crushing soul pressure radiating from below.

The artifacts embedded into the walls outside of these rooms were powerful. Anyone inside would feel nothing of the dragon's oppressive presence, no matter how chaotically it raged.

And inside one of these rooms stood three figures.

The blonde man's gold eyes focused on them, locking specifically onto one of the three…

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