The corridor narrowed as Kael and Sera pushed deeper into the ruins, walls shifting from carved stone to something older—rougher, etched with primitive markings that twisted the longer Kael stared at them. Symbols that moved when you weren't looking.
"Do you hear that?" Sera whispered.
Kael paused.
It was faint, barely there—but yes. A whisper, like wind through a broken harp.
He followed the sound.
It led them into a chamber shaped like a crescent moon, its ceiling open to a sky of swirling red clouds. At the center stood a statue—tall, faceless, arms outstretched. In one hand it held a mask, cracked down the middle. In the other, a dagger.
Sera stepped forward. "This wasn't here before."
"No," Kael said, his voice low. "It wasn't."
The air was thick with something more than magic. It felt like memory—pressed into stone, looping endlessly.
As Kael approached the statue, a pulse rippled out from its base.
His Eye flared—unbidden, uncontrolled.
And he fell.
Not physically.
Pulled inward—backward.
Through shadow and fire and something deeper.
He stood now in a mirror of the same chamber, only whole, untouched. The statue wasn't stone—it was a man. Hooded, standing on a dais, facing a room filled with kneeling figures.
Velis stood beside him, younger, hands still human.
"I offer my vow," Velis said. "My mind, my soul, my memory. Let the Veil take what it must. Let it give us back the truth."
The hooded figure spoke. His voice was thunder whispered through cloth.
"You will forget your name."
"I accept."
"You will forget your purpose."
"I accept."
"You will forget who you once loved."
Velis's voice broke. "I… accept."
Kael felt his own breath catch, though the memory wasn't his.
The figure raised the dagger.
The scene fractured—shards of vision scattering like broken glass.
Kael snapped back into his body, gasping.
The statue still loomed.
But the mask in its hand now faced him.
And it was no longer cracked.
It was whole.
And somehow—it looked like his face.
Sera stepped back, readying her glaive. "What did you see?"
Kael stared at the mask.
"Velis gave up everything. Willingly. For something he thought was worth it."
He didn't add what terrified him most.
That he could feel the same pull now.
A voice echoed faintly in his mind—not Velis's, not Iris's.
His own.
"One day, you will wear this mask. Not because you're forced to… but because you'll want to."
They left the crescent chamber in silence.
Kael didn't speak about the vision. Not yet. Not while the echo of his own voice still lingered in his head. The memory—the prophecy—wasn't something he could share. Not until he understood what it meant.
Sera walked a step behind him, unusually quiet. Her usual sharp-edged confidence dulled, as if the gravity of the last few hours had finally sunk claws into her.
They followed the spiraling corridor down—deeper than any map had charted, past the known layers of the ruins, into a place that shouldn't exist. The architecture began to change again. The stone was smoother here, almost metallic, with lines of light pulsing beneath its surface like veins under skin.
Kael paused at a turn.
Ahead, the hall split three ways—each path lit by a different color: blue, crimson, and white.
Sera narrowed her eyes. "Another trial?"
"Feels more like a test," Kael muttered. "Or a warning."
They stood at the junction, letting the silence settle over them.
Each path pulled.
Kael could feel it in his chest—the sword vibrating gently against his back. The Eye burned in its socket, just faintly. No pain. Just… awareness.
The red path whispered like the gate had. Hunger and promises.
The white path hummed—sterile, still, a place of forgotten truths.
But the blue…
He took a step toward it instinctively.
And stopped.
Because he saw something there.
A figure—just a glimpse, just for a heartbeat.
A girl.
Long white hair.
Iris.
Her back was turned.
"Sera—did you see that?"
"See what?" she asked, on edge.
He stared down the blue path.
Empty now.
But he knew what he saw.
"Iris went this way," he said. "Or something that wants us to think she did."
Sera hesitated. "Then we go together."
"No," Kael said quietly. "You take the white path. I go blue."
"What?" she snapped. "Absolutely not."
"If it's a trap, we can't both walk into it. We split. We regroup where the paths meet again—if they do."
Sera stared at him, jaw clenched.
"Don't get dead," she said finally.
"You too."
They nodded once, turned, and walked away from each other.
Kael entered the blue corridor alone.
As the light wrapped around him, a low voice whispered through the walls.
"She called to you. And you heard her. That means you're ready."
Kael didn't answer.
He just kept walking.
And the door at the end began to open.
Kael stepped through the door.
The corridor behind him vanished the moment it shut. There was no handle, no seam—just a smooth obsidian wall at his back, like he had never come from anywhere at all.
The chamber beyond was circular, immense, and silent.
Soft blue light drifted from the ceiling like mist, illuminating towering crystal spires growing from the floor, their surfaces swirling with moving reflections.
And in the center, on a raised platform, she stood.
Iris.
Unbound. Untouched.
Her eyes were closed, lips slightly parted, arms relaxed at her sides.
Kael moved toward her slowly. "Iris?"
She didn't react.
As he stepped onto the platform, a pulse of energy rippled outward—cold and sharp, like a blade skimming water. The crystals responded, humming low, and Kael saw shapes flickering across them:
Himself.Velis.Sera.The sword.The Gate.The Seventh.
Then he heard her voice—not aloud, but inside him.
"You shouldn't have come."
Iris's eyes snapped open.
They weren't her eyes.
The irises had turned solid black, ringed with a glowing crimson edge. Her mouth opened—and a voice that wasn't hers echoed through the chamber, layered, ancient, and echoing with a thousand screams.
"He has arrived too soon."
Kael staggered back.
Iris floated upward, arms lifting. The ground beneath her cracked with veins of red lightning. Symbols exploded into the air around her, burning and rearranging faster than he could follow.
"The chains break because you brought the key. And now... the body must awaken."
Kael reached for the sword.
Iris raised a hand—Kael's body froze, paralyzed mid-motion.
"You are the Veil-Splitter. The Seed. The Shadow of the Shadow."
"But you were never meant to reach me."
Her body convulsed—levitating higher.
Cracks spread across her skin like porcelain splitting.
Kael forced his hand to move, muscle by muscle, inching toward the hilt of his blade.
Then—
The ceiling above shattered.
A figure dropped from the void, landing hard in a crouch.
Kael blinked.
It was him.
But older. Taller. Scarred across the jaw.
Wearing a cloak marked with the insignia of the Veiled Order.
The same sword on his back.
The older Kael stood slowly, glaring at Iris—not with fear.
With rage.
"You're not taking her," he growled.
And behind him, the sky began to tear open.