The parchment stayed sealed in Kieran's hand for hours.
He didn't open it right away.
Instead, he wandered.
Not as a lost soul—this time, as a hunter. Watching the streets. Feeling them. Letting the city breathe against his skin, hot and thick with unseen threats. Every whisper felt aimed at him now. Every door closed a little too fast.
But in all that noise, something else whispered back.
Not all chains are forged from iron. Some are forged from silence.
A Hidden Sanctuary
Kieran ended up beneath the city.
Past the water lines. Past the flickering lanterns. Through tunnels so old even Varneth's maps forgot them. The kind of place where voices stopped working.
He found a crumbling chapel hidden in shadow, moss-eaten and marked by a symbol etched in moonstone:
A dagger split in six.
He lit a single flame.
And then, opened the parchment.
The Parchment's Truth
The letter was handwritten—unmistakably old. The ink had faded into gray.
To the one who defied Noctis—The dagger you seek was never meant to kill.It was meant to sever fate.
Six fragments.Six truths buried beneath six cities that once stood before Varneth was born.But the dagger was too powerful. So Sylas—your grandfather—broke it.Then he disappeared… not to hide, but to watch.From the Eye.
If you are reading this, you are not the first to try.But you may be the last.
Below this chapel lies the Eye Beneath the City—a place untouched by House Noctis.A place even they fear.
Go alone. Or don't go at all.
At the bottom was a symbol: a single open eye drawn in black flame.
The Descent
Kieran pushed aside the stone altar.
It took strength.
But beneath it, he found a stairway spiraling into endless dark. Not carved by tools—but shaped by will. The walls pulsed faintly, not with life, but with memory.
And as he descended, something began to change.
His heartbeat slowed.
His thoughts sharpened.
The air shifted. Not heavier—cleaner.
He reached the bottom.
The Eye
A circular chamber opened before him—massive, domed, and ringed with faded murals of beings made of light and void. In the center: a pool of still, black water. Above it, suspended in the air by nothing at all, was a shard.
One of the six.
The fragment.
It pulsed softly. It recognized him.
As he reached toward it, a voice echoed—not aloud, but inside him.
"You are the echo of Sylas. The heir of the undone blade."
"If you claim this, the city will break its silence. And so must you."
Kieran didn't flinch.
He grasped the fragment.
Awakening
Pain.
A storm of light and memory seared through him—visions of Sylas walking through fire, shattering stars, sealing the dagger in six realms guarded by beasts of shadow.
Visions of a man not feared, but mourned.
And something more.
Another figure.
A rival.
One who wore white and gold, face blurred, but eyes—green as burning emeralds—locked with Sylas's in a clash that split the skies.
Back Above
Kieran emerged hours later.
But he was not the same.
The fragment pulsed in his chest now—not physically, but spiritually. A mark not even Noctis could erase.
And behind him, from the shadows of the tunnel, Cael stepped forward again.
"You touched it."
"Yes."
"Then the real city will show its teeth now."
Kieran looked toward the surface—toward the spiral towers of Varneth.
"Let it."