Adam and Ignis walked side by side through the sunken ruins, their fingers still tightly intertwined. The golden glow of Ignis’s Solar Aura pushed back the surrounding darkness, creating a small sphere of warm light as they moved carefully between the floating, broken structures.

Ignis suddenly squeezed his hand tighter, her golden eyes widening in shock as she remembered what Adam had said earlier.

"Ehh?! You met the Goddess?!" she exclaimed, voice full of disbelief and excitement. "The real Goddess? Like... the one who created the Loom of Fate?!"

Adam shook his head quickly, correcting her.

"Not the full Goddess. Only a fragment of her consciousness, the Echo she left behind. She called herself the lingering awareness of the Goddess who once descended to this world."

Ignis’s mouth opened slightly, clearly amazed, but before she could ask more, Adam continued.

"And that’s not all. I also found something huge before I reached you, a serpent skull so massive it dwarfed even my full Ouroboros form. It was the remains of the World Tree Serpent. It’s already dead, but I—"

Before Adam could finish his sentence, the darkness around them suddenly surged.

From the black void beneath their feet and the sides of the floating ruins, multiple shadowy hands erupted like living tentacles. They were pitch-black, formed from pure condensed darkness, with long clawed fingers that moved unnaturally fast. The hands lashed out aggressively, grabbing at their legs, arms, and waists, trying to drag them downward into the endless abyss below.

"Shit—!" Adam snarled, his crimson eyes flashing as he instantly activated his Trisense.

Ignis let out a sharp gasp. "What—?!"

One of the shadow hands had already wrapped tightly around her ankle and another around her waist, pulling her downward with terrifying strength. More hands shot toward Adam, aiming to seize his arms and drag him into the depths along with her.

The temperature around them dropped sharply as the shadowy limbs drained warmth and mana from everything they touched.

The shadowy hands surged forward like a tide of pure darkness, clawing hungrily at them.

Adam reacted instantly. His crimson eyes flashed with killing intent as he activated Domineering Will. A powerful psychic pressure exploded outward from his body.

"Get the hell off her!" he roared.

Several shadow hands that were reaching for his arms and neck were instantly crushed by the invisible force, disintegrating into black smoke. But more kept coming, endless and relentless.

Ignis let out an angry snarl as the hand around her waist tightened. Her Solar Aura erupted violently into golden flames.

"Burn!" she shouted.

A ring of blazing golden fire exploded from her body. The shadow hand gripping her waist let out a silent screech as it was incinerated, but another pair immediately replaced it, grabbing her arms and trying to drag her down faster into the abyss.

"Adam—!" she yelled, voice strained.

Adam moved like lightning. He grabbed Ignis around the waist with one arm, pulling her against his chest to stop her from being dragged away. With his free hand, he unleashed Void Prism, a swirling beam of prismatic void energy mixed with starlight and abyssal power.

BOOM!

The concentrated beam tore through dozens of shadow hands in a straight line, vaporizing them completely. But the attack only created a temporary gap. More hands erupted from the surrounding darkness, even thicker and faster than before, as if the abyss itself was angered by their resistance.

"These things don’t stop coming!" Adam growled, teeth clenched. He flapped his void-starlight wings once, lifting both of them higher, but the shadow hands simply stretched longer, refusing to let go.

One particularly large hand clamped down hard on Ignis’s leg. She hissed in pain as the cold drained her warmth.

"It’s sucking my mana!" she shouted, panic rising in her voice. Golden flames burst from her palms as she tried to burn it off, but the hand only tightened.

Adam’s expression turned cold. He channeled mana into his palm and fired another Prismatic Beam directly downward at the source of the hands. The rainbow-colored beam of destruction exploded against the void floor, creating a massive crater of light that burned away hundreds of the shadowy limbs at once.

For a brief moment, the assault stopped.

Adam held Ignis tightly against him, breathing hard, his crimson eyes scanning the darkness warily.

"Are you okay?" he asked quickly, checking her for injuries.

Ignis nodded, still catching her breath, her golden horns still flickering with flames. "Yeah... but these things are annoying as hell. It feels like the abyss itself is trying to swallow us."

The silence only lasted a few seconds.

Then, the giant shadow hand the size of a house rose fully from the crater, followed by an enormous upper body. More arms erupted from its torso, six, eight, then twelve massive shadowy limbs that thrashed wildly in the void. The temperature plummeted as the creature revealed its true form: a colossal humanoid made entirely of writhing darkness, its head featureless except for a gaping maw filled with swirling void.

Adam’s grip on Ignis tightened.

"Looks like the main one is coming now..." he muttered.

[Abyssal Shadow Titan Lv. ???]

A guardian entity of the eternal darkness. It devours souls that sink too deep and drags them into the final layer of oblivion. Extremely dangerous. Recommended to escape rather than engage.

Adam’s crimson eyes widened.

"Shit... it’s a Titan!" he shouted. "Ignis, we’re being pulled deeper! If we keep fighting here, we’ll sink even further into the abyss!"

The Titan let out a silent roar that shook the surrounding ruins. Dozens of shadow hands shot out from its body like spears, while the main arms swung down with devastating force.

Adam flapped his void-starlight wings with full power, shooting upward while carrying Ignis tightly in his arms. He fired Void Prism repeatedly behind him, each blast exploding against the Titan’s limbs and buying them precious distance.

But the creature was relentless. Its arms stretched unnaturally long, chasing after them like living whips. One massive hand grazed Adam’s wing, tearing through scales and draining a huge chunk of his mana in an instant.

"Gah—!" Adam grunted in pain.

Ignis twisted in his hold and unleashed a powerful Solar Flare, sending a spiraling column of golden dragonfire straight into the Titan’s face. The creature recoiled for a moment, its shadowy body burning and sizzling, but it only grew angrier. More arms burst out from its back, reaching for them at even greater speed.

"We have to go up!" Adam yelled, voice urgent. "We can’t win by fighting deeper, the more we sink, the stronger this thing gets! We need to ascend and find the exit portal!"

Ignis nodded quickly, her golden eyes fierce despite the fear. She kept firing bursts of golden flames behind them while Adam focused entirely on flying upward as fast as possible.

The Abyssal Shadow Titan roared again. Its massive body began to rise, chasing them through the sunken ruins like a monster from the deepest nightmare. The entire layer of darkness seemed to tremble as more shadow hands erupted from every direction, trying to block their path upward.

Adam clenched his jaw, wings beating harder.

"Hold on tight, Ignis. This is going to get rough!"