Caylen's shout cracked through the hush as he hurled himself into the river, carving through the current like a blade thrown blind. Water slammed him from all sides, cold as iron and twice as cruel, yanking him under, turning limbs to anchors. He caught the girl just as she dipped beneath the surface, her body limp in the river's grip. His arms locked around her tight. He kicked and fought and pulled, muscle screaming, until the current bent enough to let him drag them toward the shallows.
Ezreal was already there, kneeling at the bank, both hands poised above her chest. His voice poured out of him in a low, pulsing chant—not a language built for human throats, something old and frictionless, like the sound water makes when it remembers falling. Light gathered between his palms, golden and strange, and bled into her through the air. He didn't own that magic. He borrowed it. Let it pass through him the way a key lets a door be opened.
Then a gasp. Wet. Ragged.
The girl coughed hard, eyes shooting open. Glassy and wide.
"I... I saw them," she whispered, voice small, thready. "They said they were my sisters. But their faces..." Her lips trembled. "They were wrong."
"You're alright now," Verek said, settling in beside her. His voice was the kind that could settle a fight without lifting a blade, slow and carved out of stone. "Whatever they were, they stay behind."
Caylen staggered up out of the river, soaked head to toe, hair plastered across his cheek, coat hanging heavy with water. He looked like the river had tried to eat him and only gave up halfway.
"This place isn't real," he panted, squinting into the trees. "It's some kind of snare. Dream trap."
Dax had his blade out already, steel glinting through the mist. "Then let's snap it in half."
He motioned toward a moss-crusted wall ahead, ivy clinging like bruised veins. Behind it, a split in the cliff gaped wide, stairs curling down into something dark, something that felt like it had been waiting too long.
The air shifted when they got close. Turned thicker. Tighter. Like it didn't want them there. They moved down together, blades drawn, every step echoing louder than it should have.
The stairwell narrowed quick. Moss slicked every surface, walls closing in with each turn. Fetishes dangled from hooks overhead—feathers, tiny bones, things tied up with wire and string. They swayed, though nothing touched them.
Each step sank in, soundless like the stone had swallowed heavier things than them. Lamps blinked. Cold crawled.
At the bottom, a chamber opened. Too wide. Too deep. The walls sweated tar and secrets, symbols twitching in and out of view. At the center, a cauldron sat ringed by warped totems—childlike carvings stretched into monsters.
Bones littered the ground. Not full skeletons. Just scattered pieces, like memories that had been picked clean.
"There's a silence under the dirt worse than sleep," Verek muttered. "And darker by miles."
Roots cracked through the ceiling, sagging like veins from a corpse. Runes crawled across the floor, messy, layered. Written like they didn't care if they could be read.
Ezreal crouched beside one. "Not fresh. Not theirs. This is older. Bound magic. Timeline's off."
Caylen's brow furrowed. "You think they locked something down here?"
Verek brushed his fingers over a rune. It pulsed back.
"They didn't lock it away. They built around it. This whole place is the latch."
The tunnel ahead looked like a ribcage. Curved inward, curling tighter the farther they walked. Cold clung to their lungs. The kind that whispered instead of bit.
The altar sat at the end. Half-sunk in roots, the arch above it bent wrong, held together by something that wasn't bark. No sound. No wind. Just a pressure.
Ezreal stopped, sweat trailing his neck. Even the dark here felt hungry.
Tattered relics hung on the walls—prayers to gods who hadn't listened in a long time. One lantern hung askew, its flame barely alive. Across from it, a torn tapestry fluttered. It showed a spiral of eyes eating a sun. The threads pulsed.
"This is pleasant," Caylen said dryly. "Really cozy."
Ezreal stepped toward a shattered desk buried under rock. A book sat there. No dust. No name. Just waiting.
"I vote we leave that alone," Caylen muttered.
Ezreal reached anyway. His fingers touched it.
The world flipped.
Pages screamed open. Lanterns died. Time twisted sideways.
He fell. Spinning. Surrounded by teeth and sound that bled like color. Screaming in a loop until it turned melodic.
Then, "Ezreal."
Verek's voice. Flat. Sharp.
"Ezreal, come back. Now."
He jolted back. The book lay open.
"It's blank," he said, voice hoarse. "But it took something. I was thinking of someone. They're gone now. I can't remember who."
"Nope," Dax said, digging through crates. "We're done touching cursed books."
Verek bent near the altar, brushed ash aside. A scrap of parchment surfaced. Its seal was broken, but the crest showed: Torvald's, scratched through with a spiral.
Ezreal leaned close. "Is it hers?"
Verek didn't answer. His face twisted something ugly.
Then the presence hit.
Not noise. Not cold. Just there. Sliding behind the teeth.
Each of them heard something different. A whisper. A loss. Something they had buried deep.
"We're done," Verek said. "We leave."
Behind them, the tunnel collapsed.
Stone groaned. Dust flew. Gone.
The tapestry twitched.
Ezreal stiffened. "No way back."
Dax stepped in front. "Then we go forward."
The dark wrapped around them.
A groan came from above. The roots overhead flexed. Dust trickled. The walls clenched.
"Move!" Dax barked. "No more riddles. No more relics. Out!"
They ran. Past the totems. Over bones. Through the ribs of this place.
Air shifted. Heavier now. Like the memory of them was being rewritten with every step.
Ezreal shivered. His skin prickled like static. Names echoed in his head that weren't his.
The chamber behind them gave a last breath. Then died.
"That tapestry moved," Caylen muttered. "I swear it."
"Don't think about the eyes," Ezreal said.
Verek led the climb, hands brushing runes, whispering soft wards under his breath. Things to tether the mind.
Halfway up, something brushed Caylen's sleeve.
He spun. Nothing. Just feathers.
"Did you feel that?"
"No," Ezreal snapped. "Doesn't matter. We're not staying to find out."
Dax growled. "Keep your mouth shut. This place eats questions."
They reached the top. But Verek stopped.
"These glyphs," he said, pointing to the wall. "They changed."
Blood seeped from them. The runes pulsed. Wrong.
"Something rewrote us," he said. "Memory's gone stale."
Ezreal nodded slowly. "We were seen."
"But what did we find?" Caylen asked.
Verek held up the parchment. The spiral.
"This."
Ezreal swallowed. "We weren't meant to remember her."
Dax frowned. "What kind of magic erases a person clean?"
"Old," Verek said. "Older than the Accord. This is rot. Mythrot. The Hollowing."
Caylen paled. "I know that word. It ends songs halfway."
Ezreal looked ahead. "We didn't find the Hollowing."
He met Verek's eyes.
"We walked into where it begins."