Caelan woke in darkness.
For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming. The shadows, heavy and unyielding, wrapped around him like a cloak. The weight of them pressed on his chest, making each breath a struggle. His fingers twitched, reaching for the sword that wasn't there. His hand came up empty.
The room was silent, too silent. Even the usual distant hum of the undercity felt far away, swallowed up by the shadows.
He wasn't in the stone chamber anymore. He wasn't even in Lowtown.
The realization hit him like a fist to the gut.
The last thing he remembered was the woman's words—the Weave was a mirror of his soul. And he had seen the Weave. Felt its cold embrace. It had nearly consumed him.
But there had been something else, something deeper in the darkness. A presence. Faint, like a whisper on the edge of his thoughts. He shuddered, the sensation crawling up his spine.
He stood slowly, his limbs stiff and sore. His pulse drummed in his ears as he searched the room. The stone walls had disappeared, replaced by something far worse: an endless void. The floor beneath him was soft, like ash.
A figure stepped out of the darkness, tall and cloaked in tattered black. Caelan's breath hitched. He could feel the weight of the presence pressing against him, like the figure was both there and not there, a specter existing outside of time.
"Caelan," the figure spoke, its voice low and guttural, like the scrape of stone on stone. "You have awakened."
His mind raced. The woman had said he wasn't ready. But this... this was different. This wasn't the Weave. This was something else entirely.
"Who are you?" Caelan's voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper. He took a step back, but the figure moved with him, always just a shadow's length away.
"Who am I?" The figure laughed—a low, mocking sound that echoed through the void. "I am the one who was forgotten. The one who never should have been. But now... now you've called me forth."
Caelan's chest tightened. His instincts screamed at him to run, but the shadows held him in place. He had to face this. There was no escape. Not anymore.
"What do you want?" he demanded, forcing his voice to sound stronger than he felt.
The figure tilted its head, its eyes glowing faintly in the dark. "What do I want? Oh, child, I don't want anything. I never did. But you... you were not meant to know this place. To see it. To feel it."
The figure's voice dropped to a whisper, "The Weave is not yours to control, Caelan. It never was."
The ground beneath Caelan's feet trembled. His hands clenched into fists, his knuckles white. He could feel the Ashweave stirring in his chest, thrumming with an energy he didn't understand. It was alive—alive in a way that terrified him.
"What do you know of the Weave?" Caelan asked, his voice steady now. His eyes flickered to the Eclipsed Veil in his mind, but the interface was silent. No help there.
"More than you ever will," the figure replied, its voice dripping with venom. "The Weave is older than you can comprehend. And you—" it pointed a skeletal finger toward him, "you are its pawn. A mere flicker in the grand design."
Caelan's stomach churned. The words dug into him like poison, and he felt the weight of them sink deep into his bones. He didn't want to believe it. He couldn't.
"Then why help me?" Caelan spat. "If I'm just a pawn, then why not let me fall?"
The figure stepped forward, its cloak swirling around it like smoke. "Because, child, you're not just a pawn. You are an echo. And echoes... can change the world."
A shard of something cold and unfamiliar pricked at Caelan's mind. It wasn't fear, but something else. Recognition. He'd heard these words before. In the undercity. In the chamber beneath the earth.
"You're the one who spoke to me," Caelan breathed. "In the dark. That presence... you're the one."
The figure smiled, a terrible, empty thing. "Yes. And you—" it gestured at him with a long, twisted hand, "you are the one who must decide."
Caelan felt a surge of power in his chest, the Ashweave stirring violently, trying to break free, to take control.
"Decide what?" he asked, his voice trembling. But it wasn't fear anymore. It was something else—something that burned through him like a fire, untamed and wild.
The figure didn't answer immediately. It stepped back, its form flickering like a dying flame. "There will come a time when the Weave will ask you to make a choice. To bind yourself to it, or to destroy it."
Caelan felt the weight of those words settle over him like a shroud. The very air around him seemed to thicken, the shadows pressing in tighter.
"You're not ready," the figure whispered again, "but you will be. In time."
And then, just as abruptly as it had appeared, the figure vanished, leaving Caelan standing alone in the void.
His heart raced as the darkness began to recede. The room around him shifted again, the weight of the shadows lifting just enough for him to breathe. But something was different. The air felt thick with the memory of the encounter.
Caelan's mind was spinning. He wanted to scream, to rage against the unknown, but the words wouldn't come. The figure's cryptic warning echoed in his thoughts, blending with the remnants of the Weave's power still swirling inside him.
He wasn't the only one marked by the eclipse.
And now, he wasn't the only one in the dark.