Chapter 76: Ash Expanse!

The wind in Vandral’s Spine was insanely hot, it was much higher than the Delmoor Ruins. The air had no warmth at all, it was like literally living within a furnace, laced with sulfur.

However, none of the Demons even slightly reacted to this intense atmosphere, since it was normal to them, they had lived all their lives in this atmosphere after all.

Albedo weaved through the crowd silently, but made sure to look around, constantly spotting new things every time, like the weapons on their belts, or the runes and magical brands etched into their flesh.

The Draconic aura he carried sat heavy on his shoulders, not something he consciously displayed, but it leaked nonetheless.

Lesser demons sidestepped without realizing why, vampires gave him a second glance before returning to their idle elegance, and more than one Lich tilted its skull as though tasting his soul in the air.

He had no time for them, his eyes sweeping through the twisting streets until he found what he was looking for, a building larger than most, its roof sloped like the jaw of a beast, lined with teeth-like spires.

Above the black iron door hung a sigil carved from bone and inlaid with molten gold: a serpent coiled around a goblet. The name was burned into the stone lintel above it.

The Venom Chalice.

A Tavern, Perfect. Albedo quickly went there and pushed the heavy door open, stepping into an environment of low firelight, and the aroma of old smoke and older blood.

The interior also held a similar aesthetic, tables of warped blackwood were scattered across the floor, their surfaces scarred with claw marks and blade grooves.

The bar stretched along the far wall, behind which shelves of bottles glimmered like jewels, liquids of impossible colors, some glowing faintly, some swirling on their own.

The patrons were exactly as expected. A horned brute in plate armor polished with oil, sipping from a chalice carved from a skull.

Two succubi leaning over a table, their tails coiling together as they whispered, wearing thin fabrics that barely covered their breasts and their lower region, the rest of their body on full display.

There was also a vampire, their ringed fingers tapping an empty glass in silent impatience.

In the corner, a shadow sat in human form but flickered like a faulty lantern, its edges fraying into smoke.

Albedo ignored the stares that met him and made for the bar, heading to the bartender, who had grey skin, eyes that were twin slits of molten gold, oil black hair bound in a braid, and she was polishing a crystal glass with a rag that shimmered faintly with cleansing runes.

“What’ll it be, traveler?” she asked, voice smooth but heavy with that practiced neutrality barkeeps carried when they served all manner of killers.

Albedo didn’t bother with pleasantries, looking at the menu and browsing it quickly before making his purchase, “Bloodwine. Cold.”

Then, after the faintest pause, “…and information.”

One of her brows arched as she heard that latter phrase, smiling as she returned a statement, “Information costs more than the drink.”

“I’ll pay.”

The bartender studied him for a long moment, gaze lingering not on his face but the subtle pressure in the air around him.

She set the glass aside and turned to a bottle, a long, thin vessel of smoked glass with a single glyph pressed into its neck. When she poured, the wine came out thick and dark, catching the firelight with a glimmer of crimson-gold.

The goblet slid toward him. Albedo caught it without breaking her gaze.

“What do you want to know?”

He lifted the drink, the cold burn of it coating his tongue before it slid down his throat. Mana rippled faintly from the vintage, a good sign. “The Hollowglass Ridge,” he said simply. “And the Weeping Catacombs beneath it.”

The ambient noise of the tavern shifted almost imperceptibly as Albedo said that.

A nearby table stilled mid-conversation. One of the succubi flicked her eyes toward him before returning to her companion, voice lower now.

Even the vampire seemed to pause, as though listening with half an ear.

The bartender didn’t answer right away. She poured herself a measure of something pale and viscous, sipping it before speaking.

“That’s not a place most ask about unless they’re looking to die,” she said finally. “The Ridge is… cursed. Not in the cheap, superstitious way mercenaries like to claim before charging double. It’s a wound. One the land hasn’t healed from in thousands of years.”

“Go on.”

“The glass isn’t glass. It’s bone, molten bone, fused with the sand when an Old War ended. The air there cuts you if you breathe too deep. The Catacombs…” She glanced toward the shadow in the corner, as though gauging if it was listening. “…they weep because the walls bleed. Not water. Blood. Some say it’s the blood of everyone buried there. Others say it’s someone elses.”

Albedo leaned back slightly, turning the information over in his mind. The scent of the wine lingered sharp in his senses. “And the path?”

“Northwest gate. Out into the Ash Expanse. Follow the black obelisks until you reach the windwall. Past that, the Ridge will find you.” She looked at him, her molten eyes narrowing just slightly, “You’re not going alone, are you?”

“I usually do.”

She gave a low hum that might have been amusement or pity, “Then I’ll tell you this. If the Catacombs call your name, do not answer. Not even in your own head. That’s how they take you.”

Albedo rose, sliding a handful of coins across the bar, demon-forged silver etched with the likeness of a horned duke. More than enough to cover the drink and the words.

The bartender swept them into her palm, saying nothing else.

He turned toward the door, the crowd parting just enough for him to pass. Behind him, the murmurs began again, voices hissing in languages older than the city itself.

Outside, Vandral’s Spine greeted him once more with its furnace heat and stench of power. Somewhere beyond those black spires and violet skies, Hollowglass Ridge waited.

And beneath it, the Weeping Catacombs, so he quickly began walking, exiting through the NorthWest Gate and moving onwards.

Once he arrived at the NorthWest Gate, he saw two hulking guards flanking it both clad in overlapping plates of obsidian chitin, their helms sprouting tusk-like protrusions. Neither spoke as Albedo approached.

They only stepped aside as though some instinct made them unwilling to stand in his path.

Beyond the gate lay the Ash Expanse.

It stretched endlessly, a plain of ashen soil baked into cracked scales, shimmering beneath the distorted haze of the sulfurous sky. No grass. No shrubs.

The only vertical shapes were the black obelisks jutting from the earth at irregular intervals, each as tall as a keep tower, carved in patterns that shifted if one stared too long.

At their base, the ground was littered with long-forgotten bones, whitened to brittle chalk.

The heat out here was worse. In the Spine, the heat had been background, the kind that clung to your skin and made your breath taste faintly of burnt copper. Here, it was an open hand pressing down on him, searing the inside of his lungs with every inhale.

Even the light had weight.

Albedo didn’t slow. Havoc and Ruin hung loosely in his hands, the pistols resting low at his sides but ready at a thought.

The Ash Expanse wasn’t silent. The wind here carried an undercurrent of sound, a long, low keening that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

The obelisks were his path, just as the bartender had said.

The first hour passed without incident, save for the shifting shadows at the edge of his sight. They weren’t tricks of the light. Now and then, a shape would drag itself over the horizon.

These weren’t the frantic, rabid creatures found in the Demon Kingdom’s hunting pits. They were the remnants of whatever had crawled too far into this wasteland and been half-digested by it.

Their skin was stretched tight, blackened in places as if charred, and torn in others where pale bone jutted through. Each one moved with an uneven, swaying gait, their clawed hands dragging rivulets in the ash as they walked.

They sniffed constantly, their breath whistling through split throats, but their sunken eyes slid right over him.

But their sounds were constant.

A wet, dragging exhale. A guttural clicking in the back of the throat. The crunch of ash under rotted feet. Some would stop mid-step, heads twitching, jaw hanging slack, then shuffle on again as though whatever had caught their attention no longer existed.

By the second hour, the haze had thickened. The obelisks looked like shadowy spears in the distance, their inscriptions writhing under the veil of heat distortion.

H passed a carcass, if it could be called that. A demon warrior, or what was left of one, half-fused into the glassy soil. His armor had melted into his bones, and the skull still wore a twisted expression of defiance.

No vultures here. No scavengers. Even the wind seemed to bend away from the corpse.

Albedo pressed on. The monsters grew denser the farther they traveled, clustering in loose herds like sleepwalkers.

Some tilted their heads toward him as he passed, nostrils flaring, but their eyes remained dull, clouded, unable to pierce the enchantment.

Then, slowly, the air changed.

The Expanse’s oppressive heat shifted from furnace-dry to humid and suffocating, as though they’d stepped into the breath of some enormous beast.

The wind no longer moved freely. Instead, it coiled and pressed in one direction toward a faint shimmer on the horizon.

The windwall.

From a distance, it looked like a mirage. Closer, it became a towering curtain of distorted air, rippling and bending the world behind it into impossible shapes. Ash swirled violently at its base, whipped into miniature cyclones that hissed like snakes.

Even from here, Albedo could feel it. A slow, resonant pressure against his skin, vibrating faintly in his bones. it was magic given motion, bound into a barrier that screamed without sound.

He stopped just short of its reach, eyes narrowing. Beyond that wall lay the Hollowglass Ridge, and beneath it, the Weeping Catacombs.

Albedo immediately summoned Havoc and Ruin, and then without a word, he stepped forward.

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