Kallum drew a breath, the frigid air scraping his lungs, sharp with the mineral bite of ancient stone.
Dawn etched the jagged peaks in merciless clarity, exposing a desolate world of fractured rock under a bruised sky.
The memory of the Order's hidden sanctum lingered like frost in his bones, a hard, cold certainty pulsing in time with the aberrant power beneath his skin.
Grief had dulled; a sharper edge had taken root—a cold resolve born from betrayal and necessity.
Elyria studied him from the rocky shelf, her pale gaze catching the stark light, unreadable yet edged with recognition of the shift in him.
"The heights beckon," she said, her voice a quiet intrusion into the hush.
She rose with fluid grace against the barren stone.
"We climb before the peaks fully awaken."
Kallum nodded, his movements stiff, joints grinding from cold and the lingering recoil of power spent too deeply.
Ahead, the Silent Peaks loomed—not merely mountains but the weathered fangs of a forgotten god, piercing an unforgiving horizon.
The path felt less like a trail and more like a transgression into something ancient and watchful.
Their ascent was wordless, the terrain turning cruel beneath their boots. Scree glinted with obsidian shards, threatening to slice through worn leather.
The wind rasped across cliffs—a dry whisper like shedding skin—then fell away entirely.
No life stirred—only a stillness so profound it pressed in, not mere silence but a presence: a void that listened.
"This quiet isn't right," Kallum muttered, his voice jarring in the oppressive hush.
Elyria's breath fogged faintly. "We've entered the domain of Quietus. Its king sought sanctuary from the Abyss's Chorus—a perfect silence."
She gestured to a crag ahead, darker than shadow, swallowing the dawn. "But silence here isn't absence. It's a force. It remembers."
They rounded an angular bend and halted.
A flattened ledge bore signs of recent passage: scraps of oilcloth, a ration husk, and a cracked leather glove marked with the scorched insignia of the Order of Quiet Light.
Kallum crouched, eyes scanning the cliffs. "They passed recently."
Elyria examined the glove without touching it, noting drag marks and stone smeared smooth as if melted. "In haste," she confirmed. "Something intercepted them."
No blood—just a dark, iron-scented dust and a static charge in the air that made Kallum's scar thrum with cold vigilance.
"What hunts in a place like this?" he asked, senses straining against the stillness.
"Here, the silence breeds guardians," Elyria murmured. "Listeners. Beings that purge intrusion and noise."
They pressed on, the silence pressing back.
The path narrowed into a jagged fissure, dark walls threaded with pale veins of quartz that glowed with a slow, internal light.
Sound died utterly—no footfalls, no breath—only the rush of blood in Kallum's ears.
Above, bone-white growths clung to the ceiling, contracting like diseased lungs, drawing the hush into themselves.
A pebble dislodged, falling silently.
It vanished mid-air, leaving a shimmer of absence.
Elyria gripped his sleeve, her eyes sharp with warning. Don't stop. Don't speak.
They edged along, tension a coiled blade between them.
Then came the tremor—not heard, but felt—a ripple through the stone.
From the fissure's shadowed end, something moved. It didn't walk—it flowed.
A shape of liquid darkness, limbs too elongated, with a face that absorbed light entirely. It surged forward with oily fluidity, drawn by their presence.
Kallum faced it as Elyria darted for cover.
He reached inward, not to grief, but to the cold imperative beneath—a need for balance, for an end to the encroaching void.
The unfamiliar power gathered in his palm, umber darkness laced with rigid, shadowed lines. The air warped around his fist, heavy with a weight that seemed to defy the silence itself.
He didn't strike—he imposed.
A surge of force erupted, a paradoxical silence that clashed against the creature's form.
It flickered, unraveling like smoke caught in a vacuum, patterns of frost spreading across its shape—absence consuming absence.
With a soundless pull at Kallum's core, it dissolved, scattered into the surrounding stillness.
He staggered, a hollow chill seeping into his marrow, the exertion leaving him scoured and trembling.
Elyria was at his side, her grip firm as she hauled him forward, eyes wide with wary awe.
"Your power..." she breathed, words barely piercing the heavy quiet. "Silence turned against itself. We need to move—there will be more."
They scrambled from the fissure onto a windswept plateau.
The wind howled—a scouring lament—yet the listening stillness lingered beneath, woven into the stone and sky.
Ahead, the highest spire of the Silent Peaks stabbed skyward, shrouded in bruised cloud. Clinging to its impossible height were ruins—skeletal towers and crumbling ramparts, less a fortress than the husk of a forgotten empire, radiating vacancy.
"The Throne of Quietus," Elyria whispered.
Near its base, faint pinpricks of blue-green light—Order lanterns—flickered defiantly against the emptiness.
They were there, poised at the heart of forsaken silence.
Kallum met Elyria's gaze. The ascent was over.
The true descent awaited.
The listening stillness of the peaks seemed to hold its breath. Within Kallum, the cold resonance of his aberrant power answered with a steady, unrelenting pulse.
He steeled himself. Whatever awaited within those ruins—whatever truths, dangers, or revelations—the path forward was clear.
They advanced toward the silent fortress, two figures against the vastness, their shadows stretched thin beneath the uncaring sky.