We split up.
Not far, never out of sight—but enough to cover more ground. The city was too large to comb through together. Every street bled into another, every building just like the last. Still pristine. Still empty.
Still wrong.
Kaelen searched the temple-like buildings near the plaza. Seonwoo scaled rooftops, looking for patterns or clues from above. I moved down the main road, eyes flicking between doors and windows.
"There's got to be something left behind," I muttered under my breath. "Anything."
Then I heard it.
A faint click. Like stone shifting.
"Did you hear that?" I called out, but neither of the boys responded.
I turned, stepping carefully toward the sound. It had come from one of the smaller buildings—something that looked like a shrine or archive. The door was cracked open.
It hadn't been before.
I pushed inside.
The air was colder here. Heavier. Walls of shelves stretched toward the ceiling, filled with scrolls, stone tablets, fragments of items that had once mattered. In the center of the room was a dais—empty.
But next to it lay a scrap of cloth.
And a trail of blood.
"Kaelen. Seonwoo. Come here. Now."
They rushed in seconds later, weapons drawn.
"What is it?" Seonwoo asked.
I pointed to the trail.
"Someone else was here. Recently."
Kaelen knelt and touched the dried blood. "Still warm underneath. Maybe an hour old. Someone's hurt—and hiding."
I looked at the shelf beside the dais. One tablet had been pulled out and placed carelessly, as if in a hurry. I scanned the symbols carved into its surface.
Most of it was unreadable, but one line was clear.
"The key chooses who may pass."
I stared at it.
"The key is sentient?"
"Or cursed," Seonwoo muttered.
Kaelen stood slowly. "Whatever it is, someone else has it. And they're bleeding."
I nodded once.
"Then let's find them before they bleed out... or something else finds them first."
We left the shrine, following the faint trail that led deeper into the city. Past towers, past arches. The blood became fainter—but it was still there.
Something was ahead.
Something alive.
And it held the only way out.
We followed the blood trail deeper into the city.
At some point, the buildings changed.
The clean lines of temples and towers gave way to something older—structures made of worn stone and pillars wrapped in glowing thread. The air shifted, colder now, carrying a strange weight. Like breath held too long.
Kaelen squinted at the road ahead. "Do you see that?"
At first I thought it was smoke.
Figures, tall and formless, drifted between the buildings. Their bodies weren't solid—more like moving mist bound by the faintest glimmer of shape. Humanoid, maybe. But blurred. Limbs trailing like streamers. Faces completely blank.
They floated above the ground in eerie silence.
Dozens of them.
"Spirits?" Kaelen asked.
"They don't feel... dead," Seonwoo replied. "But they're not alive, either."
We didn't move.
The cloud-creatures hovered ahead, blocking the trail, but made no move toward us. No reaction. No hostility. Just presence.
One of them turned slightly, drifting closer.
I stepped forward before either of the others could stop me.
The figure slowed. Its cloudy body shimmered faintly, and something inside its chest began to glow.
A shape.
Long. Slim. Fragmented—but familiar.
"The key," I whispered.
The glow intensified, and suddenly more of the figures shifted. Not toward us—but around us. They began to form a loose circle, drifting silently, their bodies undulating like smoke in water.
Kaelen's grip tightened on his staff. "They're not attacking, but I don't think they want us to get closer either."
Seonwoo stepped beside me. "They're protecting it."
"No," I murmured. "They're revering it."
The glowing piece inside the nearest figure pulsed again, and for a second, I could swear I heard something—like a whisper on the edge of hearing. Not words. Just emotion.
Recognition.
They knew the key. Worshipped it, maybe. Or followed its bearer.
"Do you think they'll let us take it?" Kaelen asked.
I glanced between the cloud-creatures, then back at the trail of blood fading beneath their feet.
"They haven't stopped whoever already did."
Seonwoo's eyes narrowed. "Unless the key chose that person."
I took a step back, pulse quickening.
"Either way, if we want through that gate, we need the rest of the key."
The figures made no move to stop us. But they followed. Silently. Closely.
They weren't hostile.
But that didn't make them safe.
We followed the blood, the faint trail staining the stone beneath our feet, leading us deeper into the city's heart.
The clouds drifted around us, silent and unfazed. There were no signs of danger from them—at least, not yet.
"This feels wrong," Kaelen muttered, eyeing the figures that followed from a distance. "They're watching us. But they're not doing anything."
I didn't answer. My focus was on the trail of blood, thickening as we moved through the narrow corridors. It was so quiet, the air dense with the weight of something ancient, something forgotten.
And then, we found him.
Collapsed by an altar, his chest rising and falling shallowly. He was covered in blood, clutching something to his chest. Something glowing.
A fragment of the key.
I felt it before I saw it.
A pulse. A call.
The moment he saw us, he lifted his head, his one good eye wide with shock. His gaze snapped to me. "You... you're...?" He coughed, struggling to sit up.
I stepped forward, my eyes narrowing as I saw the mark on his shoulder—a symbol I recognized from the fort.
"Who are you?" I demanded, voice cold.
The man's head jerked up, eyes wide with shock. He stared at me for a moment, blinking as though he was seeing a ghost.
Then, he coughed weakly, the blood dribbling from his mouth.
"Not you," he rasped, his voice hoarse. "It's not supposed to be you."
Seonwoo stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. "What do you mean? Who else is there?"
The man's hand, trembling, lifted the key fragment. His grip was slack, and it shimmered faintly as it pulsed with energy.
"It's not for you either."
I watched, confused, as he turned his head toward Seonwoo. His gaze softened. "It's him. The key chooses him. Not you."
A sharp, sudden pulse of light flared from the fragment, and I took a step back, instinctively. The light was harsh, but it didn't burn.
It called.
Seonwoo moved closer, and I could see it then—the fragment responding to him. Not to me. To him.
He struggled to find words, his breath ragged. "I... I don't know your name. But I... I know this." He lifted his hand to show the key fragment, its faint glow flickering. "I thought... it would choose me. But... it rejected me."
The cloud-figures, who had remained eerily still until now, began to move. They surrounded him in a slow, deliberate circle. Their forms were translucent, but their presence was heavy, suffocating. Something was wrong.
"They're angry," Kaelen muttered, tightening his grip on his staff.
The man, Elar, flinched as the clouds began to hum, their forms crackling like electricity. He reached for the key again, but it was almost as though the clouds were pushing him back—rejecting him. The figure closest to him flared brighter, almost as if it was warning him.
I raised my hand to stop Kaelen and Seonwoo from moving in. "Wait."
Elar's face twisted in frustration. "It doesn't want me. You don't understand. I need it—"
Before he could finish, the cloud nearest him burst into a storm of light, swirling violently around him. His hand pulled away from the key as if something was burning him. He screamed in pain, but the clouds didn't relent.
They weren't attacking us.
They were protecting the key.
I took a slow step forward, the key fragment in seowoons' hand and beginning to pulse in time with the distant hum of the clouds.
"It's not for you." The words came out without me thinking. It was almost like a whisper. The key knew. It had chosen.
Elar fell back, panting, his hands now empty. The cloud-figures slowly quieted, retreating to their original positions, as if nothing had happened.
He turned toward me, his eyes wild with desperation and a touch of fear.
Seonwoo stepped forward. "We should leave him here. He's a danger to us."
I hesitated. I thought of the people he'd killed at the fort, the blood on his hands. But there was something in his eyes now—something darker than fear.
He wasn't just another enemy.
I could use him. He would follow the key, follow me, wherever it took us.
"He's coming with us," I said, finally.
Kaelen shot me a look, but I ignored him. "He knows something. He's not dead yet, and neither are we."
Elar's breath was still ragged, but his glare softened. "You think you can trust me?"
I didn't reply.
I didn't have to.
The key had already made the decision for us.
I knelt beside Elar, feeling the weight of the key in my pocket—a constant reminder that it hadn't chosen me. It had chosen Seonwoo. A part of me tried to ignore the feeling that lingered in my chest, but it was there, small but persistent. I wasn't sure why it bothered me so much. The key was just a tool, right? But still, I couldn't help but wonder why it had gravitated toward him and not me. Wasn't I the one who had fought so hard to get us this far?
I tried to push the thoughts aside as I looked at Elar, his feverish face contorted in pain. He had been obsessed with the key, thinking it could give him control, fix things. But it had rejected him, just as it had rejected me. Maybe it wasn't about control at all. Maybe it was just random. But I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't.
"Harin..." Elar's voice was weak, barely more than a whisper. His eyes flickered open, glazed with exhaustion. "It wasn't supposed to be me, was it?"
I didn't need to think about my response. "No," I said softly. "It wasn't supposed to be you. It chose Seonwoo."
Elar's lips curled slightly, though the movement seemed more like a grimace than a smile. He closed his eyes again, his body tense.
"I thought... I thought if I could just control it, I could make things right."
I didn't know how to answer that. I wasn't sure he ever would.
"You weren't meant to have it," I said, though the words felt less sure than I wanted them to. The key had chosen Seonwoo, and that should have been the end of it. I didn't need to keep thinking about it.
Elar coughed weakly, his face pale, and I took out a vial of healing elixir. As I tilted it to his lips, I could feel Seonwoo's presence nearby, like a shadow in the back of my mind. He was standing there, watching us, calm and still, as if the weight of the world didn't rest on his shoulders.
"I don't deserve this," Elar murmured, his voice strained.
I looked down at him, then back to Seonwoo, who seemed lost in thought.
"You don't have to deserve it," I said, though I wasn't sure I believed it. "You just have to stay alive."
"Are you an angel Harin...?" Haha...
That was so random and awkward we all stood silently.
I helped Elar drink the elixir, watching as the color slowly returned to his face. But my mind kept drifting back to Seonwoo. To the key. To the fact that it had chosen him.
"We'll figure this out," I whispered to myself. The words felt empty, but I said them anyway, as if they could somehow make sense of all the confusion.