The silence between them was unbearable.
They hadn't spoken since leaving the crack in the forest floor. The shadows felt thicker now, clinging to the edges of their vision like sentinels, but neither of them acknowledged them. The betrayal was all that lingered in their minds.
Kodi walked ahead, his pace brisk, his movements tense. Aaliyah followed a few steps behind, her gaze fixed on the ground. She didn't trust herself to speak. Not yet.
It was only when they reached a small clearing that Kodi stopped abruptly, spinning to face her.
"Why didn't we see it?" he demanded, his voice sharp.
Aaliyah froze.
"She was with us this whole time," he continued, his blue eyes blazing with anger. "Fighting beside us. Watching our backs. And all the while…" He let out a bitter laugh, running a hand through his hair. "She was working with that thing."
His words hit her like a blow.
"I don't know," she said, her voice trembling. "I—"
"You don't know?" he snapped, stepping closer. "We trusted her, Aaliyah. I trusted her. And now she's gone, and she's probably leading that thing straight to the Skull."
Aaliyah's hands clenched into fists, her nails biting into her palms. "You think I don't feel that? You think I don't hate myself for letting her fool me?"
Kodi's jaw tightened, but he didn't interrupt.
"I saw the signs," she admitted, her voice breaking. "The way she held back. The way she watched us. I thought—I don't know what I thought. That maybe she was just… different."
Her throat tightened, and she looked away, ashamed. "I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe someone else I trusted could hurt me like that."
Kodi's anger faltered at her words, replaced by something quieter.
"She didn't just hurt you," he said, his voice softer but still raw. "She betrayed both of us."
"And we let her," Aaliyah whispered. She wrapped her arms around herself, as though trying to hold herself together. "I let her. I wanted to believe she was better than this. I wanted to believe I could trust her, and now…"
Her words trailed off, tears stinging her eyes. She wiped at them furiously, hating how small and vulnerable she felt.
Kodi sighed, his shoulders sagging. "We both let her in, Aaliyah. We both trusted her."
His voice hardened again. "But that doesn't make what she did okay. She knew what she was doing. She made a choice."
Aaliyah met his gaze, her chest tightening at the anger and pain in his eyes. "And now what? We just keep going? Pretend like this didn't happen?"
"No," he said firmly. "We don't pretend. We use it."
"Use it?"
"We don't let her win," Kodi said, his voice gaining strength. "She wants us broken. The shadow wants us doubting each other. But we don't give them that satisfaction. We get to the Skull first. We stop them."
Aaliyah stared at him, her heart twisting. He was always like this—always pushing forward, always fighting, even when the odds were stacked against him. It was one of the things she admired most about him. But now, it felt fragile, like he was holding himself together with sheer force of will.
"And what happens if we don't stop them?" she asked, her voice quiet.
"We will," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
She wanted to believe him. She needed to. But the weight of Elira's betrayal sat heavy in her chest, a reminder of how easily trust could be twisted and shattered.
The fire crackled like bones breaking.
Kodi stared into the flames, unmoving. His blade lay across his lap, untouched now. The whetstone sat beside him, forgotten.
Across from him, Aaliyah sat curled in on herself, eyes hollow. The light from the fire cut her face into pieces — bright cheek, dark jaw, tear-wet eyes.
"Say it," Kodi rasped. "Say she played us."
Aaliyah didn't speak. She didn't need to.
"She was my friend," he said. "I would've died for her."
The flames spit sparks between them.
"And she sold us to that thing like it was nothing."
"She sold me too," Aaliyah said. Her voice cracked, but her eyes didn't. "And I let her."
Kodi looked up. "You let her?"
"I saw her hesitation. I saw her lies. And I let it go. I was scared to lose another person."
He stood. "So you stayed silent, and now she's walking with the shadow that's been hunting us since Thornwick."
He turned away from the fire. His fists trembled.
"She knew everything, Aaliyah. About my father. About me. She used all of it."
"She knew about Rashad," Aaliyah whispered. "She asked about him. Pretended to care."
A pause.
Then Kodi said, "She made us bleed for her."
"And we would've done it again," Aaliyah said, bitter. "Because that's who we are."
He faced her. The fire reflected in his eyes — two shards of heat and fury.
"I'm done bleeding for people who smile while they twist the knife."
She stepped toward him. "Then what do we do?"
Kodi didn't blink.
"We kill the thing she chose."
Aaliyah's breath caught. Her pulse thundered.
"We hunt them," Kodi said. "Both of them. I want her to know exactly what she gave up when she walked away."
"And if she regrets it?"
"Too late."
The fire between them flared, hot and angry. No warmth. Just rage.
Just war.
The fire was long dead.
Only blackened bones of charred wood remained — a quiet grave for a night that had changed everything.
Kodi didn't speak as he packed his gear, every motion exact, forceful. Straps pulled too tight. Buckles snapped shut like they'd wronged him. He'd rolled his bedroll with militant precision and tied it off like it might unravel the second he looked away.
Aaliyah watched him from a few paces away, kneeling beside her satchel, staring at the worn leather flap without moving.
Neither of them had slept. Not really.
Elira's name hung in the air like smoke. No one had said it since the betrayal.
Aaliyah finally closed her pack, her movements slow, like her limbs weighed double. She rose to her feet, eyes scanning the clearing — not for danger, but for something she hadn't yet found: a reason. An anchor. A way to stop feeling like she'd been hollowed out.
"She knew about Rashad," she said suddenly, quietly.
Kodi froze mid-motion.
"She asked me what it felt like to lose him." Her voice was soft, but brittle. "And I answered her. I told her everything. She listened. She said she understood."
She looked over at him. "She used that."
Kodi straightened. "She used everything."
A tense silence. The weight between them wasn't new. But this — this was different. This wasn't distance. This was rot.
Aaliyah's throat tightened. "How long do you think she was with it?"
Kodi's jaw twitched. "Long enough to watch us sleep. Long enough to lie with conviction."
"Do you think she meant it?" she asked, the question trembling out of her. "Any of it?"
He turned toward her, and for a moment, he looked like a man unraveling under his own skin.
"She made me believe she was one of us," he said, each word heavy. "She fought beside us. Bled beside us. I was ready to die with her at my back."
He let out a sharp breath, like the words scorched coming out. "And she pushed you down when I was hanging over a ledge."
The image returned — Elira's face, cold and distant, as she let the shadow step into view. That awful, silent confirmation.
"I should've seen it," Aaliyah whispered.
"You did," Kodi said. "We both did. We just didn't want to admit it."
His voice cracked a little. Not with weakness — with fury he didn't know how to control.
Aaliyah stepped toward him. "Kodi—"
"No," he said, almost a growl. "We trusted her. We gave her everything."
He looked toward the forest's edge, eyes flaring with something dangerous. "She knows us, Aaliyah. That's the worst part. She knows exactly how we break."
They left the clearing without another word.
The forest ahead was different — meaner. The trees grew crooked and low, their limbs hanging like snapped arms. The ground was soft in places, like something had been buried just beneath the moss. Fog crept in like it had been waiting for them.
Kodi walked ahead, every step decisive. He didn't slow to wait. Aaliyah followed at a steady distance, her eyes alert but her thoughts elsewhere.
There was something in her gut that she hadn't shaken since the fall — not just anger. Not just sadness. Shame.
She fooled me.
I let her.
She thought of all the moments she'd doubted Elira — the odd glances, the silences. She'd seen them. She'd felt them. But she didn't speak up. Because deep down, she wanted Elira to be real. She wanted someone else — anyone else — to share the weight of this curse.
"She's not the first person I've lost," Aaliyah muttered to herself. "Just the most recent one I handed the knife to."
Ahead, Kodi stopped.
The trees opened to a cliffside trail — narrow and slick with mist. Far below, the sound of rushing wind echoed through the canyon like distant screaming.
"There," he said.
Across the gorge, cloaked in fog and shadow, stood the Fortress of Sorrows.
It didn't look built. It looked grown. Like the stone itself had bled upward from the earth and twisted into towers. Whole sections leaned like they were collapsing, yet they didn't fall. Black banners hung in tatters, unmoving despite the howl of wind. Massive spiked chains stretched across the front wall — some snapped, others sinking into the canyon mist below, disappearing into whatever abyss lay beneath.
A stone bridge jutted from their side of the cliff, reaching across the chasm toward the fortress gate. The middle section was cracked clean through — only a thin, jagged ledge remained to cross.
They should have died ten times before they saw the fortress.
The forest did not let them leave — it hunted them. It tore itself open to keep them in.
The trees had grown into towers, jagged and leaning inward, closing like teeth. Branches slashed at them from above, roots tore up from below. The wind didn't howl anymore — it screamed, shrill and human, like a thousand voices begging them to turn back.
It didn't want them to leave.
The forest had stopped whispering. Now it roared.
The path that had guided them for days twisted violently beneath their feet. Trees uprooted themselves, groaning like tortured giants, crashing into the trail behind them. Branches snapped like whips. Bark peeled back in long strips as if screaming.
Kodi was running ahead, cutting a path through the undergrowth that writhed like flesh. Vines coiled toward his ankles like they were sentient. He slashed them away with a furious swing of his blade, not slowing.
Aaliyah sprinted behind him, ducking under a limb that fell hard across the path. The impact sent a shockwave through the ground. She stumbled, caught herself, and kept running.
"We're close!" Kodi shouted over the noise. "It knows!"
Something shrieked behind them. It wasn't an animal. It wasn't even a voice. It was the forest itself — outraged, wounded, alive.
A great split opened in the trees to their right. A towering figure of twisted vines and splintered wood clawed its way from the roots — a malformed sentinel made from everything the forest had been holding back. Its eyes glowed with green fire, its limbs moving with slow, deliberate hatred.
"Don't stop!" Kodi yelled, dragging Aaliyah forward.
But the terrain fought them.
The ground rippled like water. Tree roots burst up in front of them like spears. Kodi leapt over one, rolled beneath another, and kept moving. Aaliyah barely made it, stumbling as a root scraped a shallow wound along her thigh.
She grit her teeth and pushed harder.
The trail was gone now — it had been erased. Rewritten behind them.
Only the incline remained.
Up.
Up toward the cliffs. Toward the fortress.
A log crashed down to their left, shattered on impact. The forest screamed again. Birds — the few that had remained silent — burst upward in terrified flocks. Mist thickened in their path, blinding and choking.
Kodi's breath hitched. "Come on!"
Another shriek. Something grabbed his pack from behind — a thorned branch, barbed and fast like a striking snake. It wrapped around his shoulder and yanked.
Aaliyah spun. "Kodi!"
He fell to one knee, the thorn cutting deep.
Without thinking, she drew her blade, rushed forward, and hacked at the branch. Once. Twice. The third cut went through, and the vine retracted with a screech, vanishing into the ground.
Kodi surged up, shoulder bleeding. No thanks. No pause. Just fire in his eyes.
Together, they ran.
And then they saw it.
Through the trees — a thin glimpse of black towers.
The fortress.
Aaliyah gasped. "We're almost—"
The ground ahead collapsed.
Cracked open like a jaw, a gaping ravine between them and the final ridge.
"Go around!" Kodi snapped.
"There's no way around!"
"We make one!"
He grabbed a fallen trunk and rammed it into the gap. It didn't span the full width — just enough to leap.
He backed up. Aaliyah knew what he was about to do.
"Don't—"
He ran and jumped.
Midair, he twisted, landing hard and low. Dust exploded around him. He turned immediately. "Go!"
Aaliyah backed up, ran, leapt.
She hit the edge. Slipped.
Her fingers caught rock. Kodi dropped to his stomach, reaching for her.
"I've got you!"
The forest howled. The ground behind her cracked again.
Kodi caught her wrist. Pulled with everything left.
She scrambled up beside him as the ledge behind her gave way, crumbling into the mist below.
Panting. Bleeding. Shaking.
But alive.
The forest finally stopped screaming.
Because they had escaped.
The forest didn't chase them because it didn't have to.
It let them go the same way a beast lets its prey think it's escaped — right before it watches them walk into something worse.
The land ahead rose like a broken wall.
The path was no path at all — just a slant of rock bleeding upward into black sky, jagged with ancient stone steps that cracked beneath their boots. A storm of mist rolled down the incline, thick and cold and full of voices.
Kodi gritted his teeth and climbed.
Aaliyah was just behind, her thigh bleeding from the forest's last strike. The cut throbbed, but she said nothing. She couldn't afford weakness — not here.
The wind hit them like a fist the second they left the treeline.
It wasn't natural wind — it had weight, temperature, malice. It didn't howl. It whispered. Thousands of broken voices spoke at once: low, slithering, constant.
Not words. Accusations.
You brought this.He'll die because of you.She's waiting.You'll never leave.
Aaliyah stopped climbing for half a breath. Her eyes were wide.
"Kodi," she said, voice low, shaken. "Do you hear—"
"I hear it." His voice was a snarl now. "Don't listen."
But the voices were listening. Every thought, every regret, every scar they hadn't spoken aloud — the fortress knew them. It fed on them.
A gust slammed into Kodi, and he lost his footing.
He slipped, falling hard onto one elbow as gravel tore into his skin. His blade clattered down the slope, bouncing once… twice… and disappeared into the mist.
"Kodi!"
Aaliyah reached him just as the rock beneath him cracked.
His hand shot out. She caught it. Her boots slipped. They both almost went over.
But she pulled. He scrambled. They rolled back onto the ledge, coughing, limbs shaking, heartbeats thundering like drums.
He lay on his back, eyes closed.
"Thanks," he breathed.
She didn't respond. Just sat there, staring at the dark sky above them.
Then she spoke.
"This place wants us dead."
Kodi sat up slowly, shoulder bleeding. "No," he said. "It wants us to give up first."
The incline grew steeper. The stone colder. Their muscles screamed. Their hands bled.
They passed remnants — not ruins. Remains.
A shattered sword. A boot. A pack ripped open, contents strewn like someone had been dragged away. Then the bones. Small. Twisted. Still curled like they were reaching for something.
A message was carved into the rock beside them. The letters were shallow, shaky — as if etched by broken fingernails.
TURN BACK OR BECOME STONE
Aaliyah stared at it, heart hammering. "They didn't make it."
"We will," Kodi said, climbing again. "We don't have a choice."
Behind them, the wind howled again — but it wasn't the same wind.
Something had begun to follow.
They didn't look back.
They crested the final ridge just as the last of the mist peeled away.
And there it was.
The Fortress of Sorrows.
Not built — grown. From obsidian and ruin. From grief itself. Towers rose at impossible angles, curved inward like it had collapsed in on itself and still refused to die. Black chains coiled around its spires, stretching across the sky, pulling at the very mountain like anchors.
Every window bled faint green light — not illumination, but warning.
Aaliyah exhaled, trembling. "It's bigger than I imagined."
"It's worse than I imagined," Kodi muttered.
In front of them, the last obstacle.
The bridge.
A single stretch of ancient stone, no wider than a man's shoulders, crossing a chasm so deep the bottom didn't exist. Only mist. Only silence.
Sections of the bridge were gone — shattered in jagged intervals. Some stones barely clung to the chains suspending them. Others tilted at awkward angles, like they'd given up trying to hold their shape.
And then Aaliyah froze.
Because at the far end of the bridge — where the gates of the fortress yawned open like a mouth —
someone stood.
A silhouette. Motionless.
Tall. Cloaked. Watching.
Pale hair flicked in the airless wind.
Elira.
Alive. Whole. Waiting.
Kodi stepped forward like a man being pulled by a tether. Rage and grief warred in his throat.
She didn't wave. She didn't speak.
She turned. And vanished into the fortress.
Aaliyah touched his arm. "We don't know what's in there."
He didn't blink. "We'll find out."
He took a step onto the bridge.
Stone groaned beneath his boot. Dust trickled down.
She followed.
The wind held its breath.
And the fortress watched.
The forest screamed as it died behind them.
Trees tore from the earth with soundless rage. The ground cracked like splitting bone. A swarm of ash-gray leaves rose in a spiral, choking the air like smoke. The forest wasn't retreating — it was throwing them out.
Kodi didn't look back.
Aaliyah stumbled over a raised root, caught herself, sprinted harder.
They weren't running anymore — they were being hurled up the mountainside by sheer adrenaline, pain, and momentum. Every inch forward was fought for. The incline steepened. The air grew thinner, the wind heavier. It punched their chests with every breath, whispered poison into their ears:
You shouldn't be here.You're not worthy.She's already waiting for you to fail.
The broken trail gave way to jagged stone and ruin. A mountain path that had long since stopped caring whether anyone made it to the top. Crumbling stairways twisted into black walls. Ledges snapped beneath boots. Every reach for the next hold came with the risk of death.
A boulder the size of a wagon broke loose above them. It didn't fall — it dropped, like the mountain had spat it out.
"MOVE!" Kodi grabbed Aaliyah and yanked her sideways as the rock slammed down where they had just stood. The cliff shook beneath their feet.
They didn't stop.
Their fingers bled on sharp edges. Their legs burned. Aaliyah slipped — twice — once nearly going over. Kodi caught her, gritting his teeth through the pain of a dislocated shoulder he didn't have time to pop back into place.
Their reward for surviving?
The Fortress of Sorrows, towering at the summit like a god that had been chained, starved, and left to rot.
It came into view like a hallucination.
A narrow strip of stone, cracked and partially crumbled, stretched across a canyon so deep the bottom didn't exist. The mist below moved like lungs. Like something enormous was breathing — watching.
Kodi slowed. His hand went to his side — no blade. He'd lost it on the climb.
Aaliyah stepped up beside him, blood down her calf, face pale but unflinching. She nodded once.
They stepped onto the bridge.
The moment their boots touched stone, something shifted below. A rumble. A groan. Not of earth or rock — but of something waking up.
The wind returned in a sudden gust. Not cold. Hot.
Kodi grabbed Aaliyah as the air around them turned molten. Heat without fire. Pain without flame. The bridge shimmered. Illusions danced at the edges — ghosts of the past. Kodi saw his father walking ahead. Aaliyah saw Rashad, smiling.
Both figures stopped. Turned.
And burned.
"GO!" Aaliyah shouted.
They ran.
The bridge cracked behind them with every step. Stone dropped away into the void. The mist below surged upward like a hand reaching.
Then it screamed.
A sound that didn't belong to the living. Not human. Not beast. A sound of loss made manifest.
A chain snapped loose from the fortress wall above them. It fell like a whip, slamming into the bridge behind them — shattering half of it into the abyss.
Aaliyah jumped. Kodi grabbed the edge of a splintering stone and pulled himself up with a roar.
The gates were ahead — closed.
But something waited behind them.
A silhouette.
Elira.
Pale cloak. Stillness like ice.
The moment they reached the final stones, the gates groaned.
Iron screamed as the doors pulled open.
Green light bled out.
Elira stepped back into the shadows within.
No words.
No fight.
Not yet.
The gates were open.
But neither of them moved.
The bridge behind them was gone — shattered, broken. Fog swirled where the stone had collapsed. The fortress loomed ahead like a gaping mouth, breathing slow, silent breaths. Green light pulsed faintly inside, casting flickering veins of illumination across the black stone walls.
Elira had vanished within. And still, the door waited — wide enough to welcome them, quiet enough to threaten them.
Aaliyah stared into the dark. "We don't know what's in there."
"No," Kodi said, eyes narrowed. "But it knows what's in us."
Something deep within the fortress shifted — a long, grinding scrape, like stone dragging over bone. They both froze.
The air thickened. The green light pulsed again, a little brighter this time. Almost like a signal.
Or a heartbeat.
Kodi's hand hovered near his belt. Empty. His blade had fallen to the depths below. His fingers curled into a fist instead.
Aaliyah's voice was barely audible. "Do you feel that?"
"Yeah."
It wasn't cold anymore.
It wasn't heat.
It was pressure — like standing on the edge of something vast. Not a cliff. A decision.
Aaliyah took half a step forward — and then stopped.
"I can't," she said.
Kodi turned to her, eyes sharp. "What?"
"I can't just walk in. Not like this." Her voice was shaking now. "This isn't a trial. This isn't a cursed ruin. This is something else."
He said nothing. Because she was right.
They'd passed ruins. Temples. Monsters.
But this? This was something they hadn't faced yet.
Will.
Kodi stared into the green-lit void and saw something waiting.
Not Elira. Not the shadow.
Something worse.
Himself.His father.Everything he'd buried.
"You think it's real?" he asked. "What we're walking into?"
"I think it's more than real," Aaliyah whispered. "I think it knows us."
The green light pulsed again. Faster. Like it was growing excited. Expectant.
A noise echoed from within — soft and wet and wrong.
A slow, dragging step.
Then another.
Closer.
Kodi's breath caught. "We wait too long, we die outside instead of in."
"And if we go in?"
He didn't answer.
For the first time in a long time, Kodi Prime looked uncertain. Hollowed. Human.
They stood in silence, hearts racing, staring into the dark that watched them back.
Then Aaliyah did something she hadn't done since Rashad died.
She reached for someone's hand.
And Kodi let her.
Her grip was tight. Not for comfort. For survival.
She met his eyes. "We walk in together. Or not at all."
Kodi nodded once.
Together, they stepped forward.
The second their boots crossed the threshold—
The gates slammed shut behind them.
The sound echoed like a scream.
Then everything went black.