All Chapters of CHAINS OF ETERNITY : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

🌑 Chains of EternityThe labyrinth was quieter than it had ever been. No whispering stone, no grinding walls, only the shallow breaths of the four who had survived its cruelty. Kael stood with his sword lowered, his chest heaving as sweat and blood streaked down his face. Brann leaned heavily against his war axe, muttering curses between gasps. Seris’ eyes never stopped scanning the shifting dark, her bow ready even when her arms trembled. Liora knelt, her hands glowing faintly as she pushed her remaining strength into closing Brann’s wounds.The silence felt wrong. It wasn’t peace—it was a pause.Then the wall ahead shivered.Stone cracked like brittle bone, a fissure spreading outward in jagged lines. From the break spilled shadow, liquid and writhing, as though the labyrinth itself bled darkness. Kael raised his blade again, every muscle taut. The shadows withdrew, peeling away as though unveiling something hidden beneath them all along.A figure slumped forward, chained to the st

🌑 Chains of EternityThe corridor they followed pressed in like the throat of some slumbering beast, damp air clinging to their skin. Every drip of water from the unseen ceiling echoed too loudly, too sharp. Brann trudged forward with stubborn force, shoulders hunched as though daring the dark to test him again.Kael’s mind wasn’t on the corridor. It was on the man walking a few steps behind him.Eryndor’s gait was steady, not the stagger of someone recently freed from chains. He walked like a man who belonged here, each stride deliberate, each breath measured. Too measured.Kael kept glancing back, catching details the others ignored. The slight tremor in Eryndor’s left hand. The way his jaw clenched when the walls shifted with faint groans. And the eyes—those faint glimmers of unnatural light that vanished as quickly as they appeared.Liora tried again to bridge the silence, her voice fragile against the suffocating air. “When we thought you were gone… Brann said if anyone could cl

🌑 Chains of EternityThe path narrowed until the walls brushed their shoulders. The air grew heavier, pressing down like a weight, thick with the faint tang of blood and damp stone. Every breath felt stolen, every step too loud.Kael led the way, sword in hand, Seris just behind him with her bow. Brann trudged near the middle, his broad shoulders scraping the stone, while Liora kept her staff lifted, her dim light pushing back the dark.Eryndor brought up the rear. He made no sound, no complaint, no muttered curse like Brann, no hushed prayers like Liora. His silence was different. It was… listening.Kael felt it.They came upon the first sign of slaughter.The corridor opened into a shallow chamber, and the floor was slick with ichor. Monsters lay scattered, their bodies split open, their forms already dissolving back into shadow and mist. The wounds were surgical—joints severed, throats opened, spines broken. Not the chaotic hacking of desperation, but the clean precision of a pract

🌑 Chains of EternityThe air thickened the deeper they went. No roars. No skittering claws. Not even the distant grinding of stone.Kael hated it. Monsters could be fought, traps could be endured—but silence meant the labyrinth was watching.And it was watching through Eryndor.Brann was the first to speak what none wanted to. “Strange, isn’t it? How we haven’t run into anything since he showed up again.” He jabbed a thumb at Eryndor, grinning. “I like it. Means fewer teeth snapping at my neck.”Seris’s reply was a dagger. “Or it means the teeth are waiting for his command.”Eryndor gave no reaction. His gaze remained fixed ahead, shoulders set as though he bore a weight invisible to the rest of them. The faint rune beneath his sleeve glimmered when the shadows shifted, then dulled as if ashamed.Kael said nothing. But he felt it too. The wrongness.They reached a corridor where the floor had collapsed, leaving a pit of shifting darkness. The gap stretched too wide for any ordinary l

🌑 Chains of EternityThe corridors narrowed again, twisting into a jagged throat of stone. Each step echoed back, too loud, too sharp, like the labyrinth itself was mocking their presence.Kael led with his blade raised, his every nerve frayed raw. Seris’s bow followed close behind, her eyes never leaving Eryndor’s back. Brann trailed last, axe resting on his shoulder, grumbling at shadows. Liora clutched her staff near the center, her face pale but steady.Eryndor moved like water through the stone. Calm. Measured. His shoulders squared as if each twist and turn was expected, each hollow passage already known.Kael hated it.The silence was wrong. He had grown used to the labyrinth’s cruelty—monsters waiting in the dark, traps that bit into flesh, whispers that clawed at his mind. But this… this absence was worse. It felt like the world was bending around them, smoothing every path, drawing them toward something unseen.And all of it revolved around him.They reached a wide hall of