The whisper lingered in the air long after it had been spoken.
"Not what… but who."
The words seeped into Kaelen's mind, not heard with his ears but felt, as if the shadows themselves had reached inside him and pressed their meaning into his thoughts.
The chamber was still, yet thrumming with an unseen energy. The creatures—those living voids of shadow—remained where they stood, no longer lunging forward, no longer attacking. They watched him now, heads tilted in unnatural angles, shifting in and out of form as though they struggled to remain in this reality.
Kaelen's grip tightened around his sword. His instincts screamed that this was wrong, that no magic, no force he had ever encountered, should feel like this. And yet, he didn't move.
Neither did they.
Rina, still standing near the pedestal, barely breathed. Her wide eyes flickered between Kaelen and the shadowed figures, her knuckles white where she gripped the dagger at her waist. "What in the Abyss is going on?" she whispered.
Kaelen didn't answer immediately.
The whispers returned, a chorus of voices overlapping, indistinct yet carrying weight. They murmured like forgotten echoes, lost in the vast expanse of time. Then—one voice cut through the rest.
"You stand upon the precipice of truth."
The words carved into his soul rather than just his mind, cold yet patient, expectant.
Kaelen exhaled slowly. "Who are you?"
A long pause. The shadows stirred. The chamber trembled.
"We are the remnants. The forgotten. The forsaken."
Kaelen felt the chill creep deeper into his skin.
"We are the ones who swore to protect what should not be touched… and failed."
The stone walls cracked as something ancient shifted beneath them, as if the very ruins had awakened at the mention of those words.
Rina took an instinctive step back. "Kaelen, we need to leave," she murmured. "Whatever this is… it's beyond us."
He wasn't so sure. Something inside him—something old—resonated with these voices. The weight in his chest, that pull he had felt ever since entering this vault, tightened.
This was familiar. Somehow.
Kaelen's lips parted, the question forming before he could stop it.
"What was sealed here?"
The shadows reacted immediately.
A violent pulse of energy burst outward from the pedestal, sending cracks spiderwebbing across the floor. The shadowed figures shuddered, their forms flickering wildly, unstable—frightened.
"The one who was never meant to wake."
A silence heavier than death fell over the chamber.
Then, the world shook.
A deep, resonant boom rumbled beneath their feet, ancient stone groaning as if something below them had exhaled for the first time in eternity. The pedestal glowed, runes along its surface igniting in a brilliant yet unnatural blue. The air rippled.
Kaelen took a sharp step back. "Tell me what that means—now."
The whispers began to fade, pulling away like mist retreating from the sun.
"You will know soon enough, Shadowborn."
And then—they vanished.
The shadowed figures collapsed into the darkness, dissolving as if they had never been there at all. The oppressive weight lifted, leaving only the distant hum of whatever power had been set into motion.
Kaelen's breath came fast, but he forced himself to focus. He turned toward Rina, who looked just as shaken as he felt.
"Shadowborn?" she asked.
He didn't answer. Not because he didn't want to. But because, for the first time in his life, he felt that something had been watching him long before this moment. And now?
Now, it had begun to stir.