The guards were harder. According to Theron, the maths only needed a third of their number volunteered. It was a sobering, necessary balance. The remaining two-thirds were tasked with the future—maintaining order in the final, frantic hours and leading the evacuation through the tunnel once it was complete. Theirs was a different kind of courage: the courage to live with the memory of our deaths and ensure they were not in vain.
After gathering everyone, I told them to rest and prepare themselves for tomorrow: by Theron's own words, they needed time to collect themselves.
And when the next day came, we stood before Theron in the inner sanctum, a group of two dozen: priests, guards, and me. There were no speeches left to give. The bronze door stood before us, its chained sun seal seeming to pulse with a faint, anticipatory light.
Theron looked at us, his face a mask of sorrow and reverence. "The path will be forged with light," he said, his voice thick. "Your light."
He turned to the door, and for the first time, I saw him begin the process of opening it not with a key, but with an outpouring of his own soul, a soft, golden radiance flowing from his hands to the intricate seal. The chains on the sun began to glow, then unravel.
To my shock, the bronze door didn't open-it melted away. The liquid bronze then filled grooves carved into the walls and floor, where it shimmered and waited. Theron walked on unbothered, and we followed him.
Once everyone passed, the bronze surged upwards and once again took the shape of a solid metal door, unchanged from before. Behind the door was a simple tunnel, carved from smooth rock with no artwork or carvings, just torches placed every eight feet evenly. We walked in silence for anywhere between five minutes and thirty, before reaching our destination.
Once I stepped inside, it felt like the air itself had vanished, replaced by a substance that was pure, thrumming power. It was hard to breathe, not from lack of air, but because each inhalation felt like drawing in liquid light. My eyes, even before they were forced shut, could only manage fractured glimpses of the source.
It was a crystal, three meters tall and perfectly geometric, but that was like calling the sun a warm rock. It wasn't a thing that contained light; it was light given impossible, solid form.
A miniature sun of silver and gold, its brilliance was a physical force, a pressure against my face and soul. Looking directly at it was like trying to stare into the heart of a star—blinding, painful, and utterly mesmerizing for the five seconds my vision could endure before white spots drowned everything out.
Theron's voice was a strained thread woven through the overwhelming hum that now filled the chamber. "The circle. Join hands."
We fumbled for each other, priests, guards, Jeryl, myself—a chain of the doomed linking around the impossible crystal. Jeryl's grip on my right hand was like iron, his calloused palm steady. The priest on my left was trembling, his fingers cold and slick with sweat.
Theron placed his own hands upon the crystal's blazing surface. There was no cry of pain, only a deep, resonant groan that seemed to come from the very bones of the mountain. The light didn't just brighten; it detonated without warning.
A silent, concussive wave of pure radiance slammed into us. My eyes screwed shut of their own accord, seared by the intensity even through my eyelids. The world vanished into a white-hot void.
And then the pull began.
It was not a pull on my body, but on my essence. My Spirituality. It felt like a hook had been set deep in my core, and an inexorable force was steadily, mercilessly, reeling it out.
A cold fire raced along my veins, not burning, but unmaking it, breaking it down to the purest components on a molecular level. I could feel pieces of myself—my memories, my thoughts, the very fabric of my being—being drawn toward the crystal, atomized into pure energy to feed its hunger.
A scream tore from someone's throat—a raw, ragged sound of agony and terror. I didn't know if it was mine. I clenched the hand to my left as hard as I humanely could, and felt someone squeeze mine in turn. The Radiance didn't need Spirituality from anyone but its actual user, but it would still take what was given to it. The main ingredient though, I could already start to feel being taken from me.
The pain was striking, burning hot irons being pressed onto the soft tissue of my belly. Within seconds, I felt the uncontrollable urge to just let go, to turn my back and flee, to give up and submit, to scream and destroy that wretched thing which afflicted such pain on me.
But I ignored all those impulses. To flee, surrender or resist would trigger my own doom. I had agreed to come here, and now I had to fulfil my vow.
The affirmation may have helped, or maybe it was just my mind scrambling for anything to distract it, but I swear I felt the pain lessen a fraction.
Beneath my knees, the solid marble floor of the sanctum shuddered. Then it began to vibrate, a deep, subsonic tremor that climbed into a violent shake. The hum of the Radiance deepened, becoming the grinding roar of impossible forces at work. It was the sound of reality being rewritten, of stone not being melted or vaporized, but uncreated, its existence revoked by the sheer, annihilating light.
A pressure descended, immense and focused. It wasn't the diffuse weight of the Radiance's aura. This was directed, purposeful. It pushed down, a divine piston driving into the foundation of the world. This was it. This was the force forging our path to survival. Every shudder of the ground, every scream of straining rock, was a meter of tunnel being carved through the impossible mountain.
The cost was etched in the agony of the circle. I could feel the person to my left weakening, their grip going slack as their essence-not Soul Essence, but the literal essence of their existence- was drained away faster than their body could endure. The Radiance was a hungry god, and we were its communion.
I clenched Jeryl's hand tighter, anchoring myself in the solid, stubborn reality of his presence as my own was slowly siphoned away into the light. We were paying in blood and soul for every inch of freedom. And the bill had just come due.
The cycles blurred into a nightmare of light and agony. Six hours of soul-rending drain, a few precious moments of collapse where we shoved tasteless nutrient gruel into our mouths and gulped tepid water, then the circle would reform.
The sanctum, once a place of reverence, now felt like a slaughterhouse, the air thick with the scent of ozone and a deeper, more metallic tang of spent life force.
Theron moved among us during these respites, a ghost of his former self. His own light was dimmed, his face gaunt, but his hands were gentle as he passed out rations and checked on the weakest. His voice, though hoarse, never lost its thread of steadfast assurance.
"The path extends," he would rasp, his eyes holding onto ours with a desperate intensity. "Another fifty meters cleared. The rock gives way. Hold on. We are closer."
We clung to his words like drowning men to splinters. But doubt was a rot in my mind. Could he truly see the progress? Or were the numbers—fifty meters, a hundred meters—just invented comforts, a necessary lie to keep the human components of his machine from breaking down too soon? The Radiance offered no feedback, only a constant, voracious demand. We were burning ourselves out based entirely on faith in a man who was burning himself out faster than any of us.
The first death came fifteen hours in.
It was two of the youngest priests, brothers who had volunteered together. Their faith had been the brightest, their resolve the most fervent. Perhaps that was why the Radiance consumed them first.
One moment they were in the circle, their faces masks of strained concentration. The next, a soundless flash of silver-gold erupted from the crystal, not outwards, but inwards, like a vacuum imploding.
It wasn't fire. It was pure, instantaneous dissolution.
Their forms didn't burn; they were unwoven at the seams. Their bodies became shimmering motes of light for a fraction of a second, then were sucked into the heart of the crystal. There was no scream, no time for one. One moment they were there, the next, two empty spaces in the circle, their absence a deafening silence in the roaring chamber.
The shock was a physical blow. The circle wavered, the flow of energy stuttering. A raw, animal sob escaped from one of the other priests.
"Steady!" Theron's voice cracked like a whip, frayed with his own grief but utterly commanding. "Their sacrifice is not in vain! The path lengthens! Hold the line!"