Dust exploded behind Seo-jun as he dashed forward with his sword slicing through the air behind him like a ninja. He tightened his grip on the handle as the Serakels circled him like a slow tide.

He counted four as he swung through like killing mosquitoes, then eight, then stopped counting while green blood continuously splashed on him.

The Serakels’ tongues sliced through the hot air in unison as their coordination turned the sweat back to cold.

"Leon!" Seo-jun said the name in a loud tone, while his bones shook as his boots slammed the ground hard. But only the low hiss of the countless forked tongues and the crunch of bones beneath scaled tails answered.

’Don’t freeze. Don’t you dare freeze.’ He said to himself as he swung the blade wide and opened one creature from the shoulder to its hip. Green blood misted the air.

Another Serakel dove from above with its talons stretched for the human’s head, but Seo-jun ducked. He felt the wind following the creature brush his head as he drove the blade upward.

The creature shrieked and spiraled, while slamming its snake tail on the ground as if bitten by an ant.

’Oh no,’ Seo-jun said to himself as all the creatures stopped chasing after Leon and directed their attention on him.

He pulled back until his heels found the walls of a cave he had passed meters ago. He pressed his shoulders against the stone and raised the sword with his right arm, while he clenched the left into a fist.

"Come on!"

Two creatures dashed toward him in unison, but a rolling disc whistled through the air and took their heads off before they could reach Seo-jun.

Another disc appeared when three snaked under the falling heads of the first two, and got themselves splattered in half by the waist.

Leon placed slow steps as he walked through the slowly collapsing circle of Serakels without hurrying. When the discs redirected toward him, he caught them without even looking at them and hurled them behind him, slicing through the creatures one after another.

"You still have that thing on your shoulder?" Leon said in a dissatisfied voice while slowly shaking his head.

Seo-jun looked down at the sac he had gone back for, then lifted his face to Leon, then grinned.

Leon said nothing, he just turned and began moving forward.

Seo-jun didn’t move as his legs remained locked. It took him three full seconds before he could unlock them, then followed Leon’s path.

Above them, the Serakels circled in the cave on the mountain walls, snarling but none of them came down to attack, they just watched.

Leon looked at them once then shifted his gaze to the path ahead. He pulled out the golden triangular remote of the Triarch, then pressed a blue button on it.

"Gia."

"Hello, Leon Storm. You’re two minutes away from the destination."

"Okay."

Leon released his thumb from the button and placed the remote back in his pocket. ’Two minutes.’

The Serakels shifted their formation when another blue scan lanced through Tartarus. But this time, something that had been sleeping for a long time felt the light and opened one eye.

...

The Triarch’s ramp opened when Leon and Seo-jun reached the destination.

Eun-woo was already sitting at the top with his hands folded and tapping his foot against the metal like he’d been waiting for hours.

"You know I aged three years standing here." He said in a sharp voice while nodding repeatedly.

"Move," Leon said in a calm voice.

Eun-woo stepped aside immediately, then laughed when he saw the green blood dressing Seo-jun. "Haha."

Seo-jun climbed the ramp and placed the sack down against the inner wall. He shook his arm once, then relaxed his shoulders.

Kim didn’t say a word when she saw the look on Seo-jun’s face. She just tore a strip from her sleeve and pressed it against the deepest claw mark without asking for permission.

Seo-jun’s head snapped back when pain tickled through his skin, but he allowed her without pushing her back.

Gia reeled to life before Leon could even touch the control panels.

"Welcome back, Leon Storm."

"Thank you." Leon said then sat down breathing slowly.

"The Serakels repositioned while you were gone. Seventeen of them are hiding in the walls around here."

"They won’t come, not yet." He said as he pulled up the scan.

Tartarus landscape spread across the screen in blue, ridgelines, dead flatlands, while the wreck of the second Triarch was marked with a blinking point in the east.

Leon stared at the scan for a moment, then squinted at the heat signature emitting from the Heart of Tartarus.

"Gia. Run a deep scan on the Heart of Tartarus and tell me what you find."

The blue light blasted out, but returned in a few seconds.

"Leon Storm. The scan is returning a reading I have no classification for."

"Describe it."

"It is large, old, and," Gia paused for two seconds. "It is aware of us."

The control panel hummed under Leon’s hands but he didn’t pull them right away.

Behind him, everyone in the craft was quiet, even Eun-woo wasn’t talking.

"How long has it been aware, Gia?" Leon asked, then zoomed in on the Heart of Tartarus.

"Since the first scan. The one you used to map Tartarus for navigation."

’We woke it.’ Leon said low in his head while his brow raised. He looked at the blinking point in the east, then exhaled once. ’We’ve got to get the stones from the second Triarch.’

"How long do we have until it reaches the surface?"

"At current movement rate," Gia’s blue wave pulsed again, "forty-three minutes."

Eun-woo’s voice echoed from behind. "Leon, what is it?"

Leon looked at the scan for a second, then grabbed the steering wheel. "Something that was buried here for a reason has woken." He pushed the throttle forward. "We’re going to get the stone in your Triarch at the east and leave before it finishes remembering why it was buried."

The blue flames of the Triarch flared wide as it lifted without a sound. It climbed and cut through Tartarus’s dead sky, and flashed toward the east.

Below the Heart of Tartarus, in a dark section that hadn’t been touched in centuries, something shifted its full weight for the first time and caused the ground above it to crack.