Serathis was dying.
Kael could see it from the ridge before the city gates—what had once been golden towers now stood like ribs jutting from a corpse, streaked in ash and wrapped in scaffolds of rusted light. The great solar conduits that once fed the city's heart flickered like breathless lungs. At its center, the Spire blinked with half-dead beacons—its radiant crown now a grim reminder of what the world had lost.
He tightened his scarf and moved forward, Nyxis humming faintly at his hip.
"Do you feel it?" she whispered.
Kael didn't answer. He felt it. Everyone did.
Serathis wasn't just broken. It was haunted.
The guards didn't stop him.
They didn't even see him.
Half of them were drones—machine-minds scavenged from Old War wrecks. The others wore faded uniforms and dull eyes. Purifiers, maybe. Or mercenaries too broke to care.
Kael passed through the gate like a shadow, boots crunching on the glass-dusted street. No one looked twice. That was the city's secret: as long as you didn't make noise, you could walk beside ghosts and still go unnoticed.
Still, Nyxis had her thoughts.
"You should've let me kill one. They smell like spoiled iron. One scream and we'd have the place to ourselves."
Kael signed sharply: [No killing unless necessary.]
"Pity."
The Bazaar was still running.
If you could call it that.
Vendors stood beneath shattered domes, their wares half-covered in dust and suspicion. Echo-scraps. God-blood distillates. Crystals supposedly extracted from the bones of Ascendants. Most of it was junk. Some of it was deadly.
Kael moved past them. A few called out with hopeful smiles until they saw his eyes—cold, unreadable. The way he moved. Silent. Intent. They looked away fast.
He stopped near a woman selling memory flasks.
Small vials of blue light sat beneath her cloak. One pulsed as he approached.
"Not for you," she said. "Yours would crack the bottle."
Kael raised a brow.
She met his gaze. "You're Echo-touched. Worse, maybe."
He signed: [I need information.]
She laughed without humor. "Of course you do. That's the only currency left." She held out a hand, fingers wrapped in coils of goldwire. "Name's Veyra. If you want info, you're buying it with truth."
Kael hesitated. Then opened his cloak slightly.
Nyxis pulsed.
Veyra recoiled.
"Void rot," she hissed. "That's not a relic. That's a sin."
"Charmed," Nyxis said in Kael's mind.
Veyra composed herself. "Fine. You want answers? Go to the Library of Hush. South ring. Ask for the Blind One. If he's still breathing, he'll know what that thing on your hip really is."
Kael nodded.
Veyra grabbed his arm before he turned. "If you hear singing—run."
He paused.
She didn't elaborate.
The Library of Hush wasn't a library. Not anymore.
It was a bunker—collapsed and half-submerged, a drowned god's temple turned tomb. The entrance was buried beneath rubble and veined with violet moss that pulsed like veins.
Kael slipped inside. Dust choked the air. Shelves lay splintered. Light was a memory.
Nyxis was silent.
He followed the path downward, deeper, until sound stopped entirely. Even his own breath refused to echo.
Then he saw him.
The Blind One.
He sat in a chair of roots, eyes sewn shut with threads of gold, surrounded by broken tomes and whispering shadows.
Kael stopped.
The man lifted his head.
"You carry the Mouth of the End."
Kael blinked.
"Speak," the Blind One said. "Let me feel your curse."
Kael hesitated. Then, barely above a whisper: "Why me?"
The world shuddered. Dust rose. Shadows screamed.
The Blind One smiled. "Because the Last Sol is coming. And you, Kael Ardent, are its voice."