Dax was the one who finally cracked the silence, his voice sharp-edged and thin with unease. "But why are they here?" He kicked at a loose tile on the floor, and the sound bounced off the walls, like a stone dropped into a shallow pool that didn't want to swallow the noise.
Verek didn't bother to look at him. His eyes stayed fixed on the shadowed far end of the chamber, where the stone figures stood lined up like forgotten ghosts. "Prophecy," he said flatly, the word tasting bitter and worn, like it had been used as a catch-all excuse one too many times. "It's always prophecy." He rubbed his fingers against a rune carved deep in the stone wall — cold and rough — and wondered if the magic there remembered a world that had never been.
Ezreal's gaze flicked around the chamber, slow and watchful, like he was trying to peel away layers from some hidden truth. When he finally spoke, his voice came out low and tight, each word weighed with caution. "Feels like judgment." The faint scent of swamp still clung to his cloak, but here the air smelled older — like wet stone and burnt oil mixed with something else, something sour and long dead.
"A court," Caylen whispered. His voice was thin, almost reverent, like he was afraid to break the fragile silence that stretched like cobwebs across the room. "A court that saw what was coming... and flinched." His hand brushed along the rough stone of a statue's robe, smearing away centuries of dust and something darker beneath. His fingers trembled just enough for Verek to catch it.
The stone figures stood motionless in rows, their faces worn down to nothing but vague impressions — silent as regret. They didn't shout or make grand gestures. They simply watched. Mourners carved by someone who'd run out of words, or hope. Below them, the dragon lay shackled in rusted chains, its great body half-submerged in briny water. It wasn't breathing — at least, not in any way they could see — but something stirred deep within the brine. A slow ripple rolled across the surface, like the faint pulse of something ancient and tired.
"Do you feel that?" Caylen muttered, eyes wide, voice barely above the hush of dripping water.
Ezreal stepped forward toward one of the consoles sunken halfway into the floor. The edges were crusted with dried alchemy — brittle salt crystals and cracked glass — half-hiding a faint, flickering glow beneath. He ran a finger over the worn runes, squinting at the uneven light. "They're draining it," he said, voice rough as gravel. "Pulling something old and buried out of it." He wiped his finger on his sleeve, and the residue smelled of brine and burnt incense.
Caylen stared at the dragon's chained body, his voice cracking around the words like the brittle bones beneath. "Why would anyone do that?"
Verek crouched next to one of the iron chains. His hand slid slowly along the corroded metal, tracing the rough links like he was trying to read the story of the pain trapped inside. Dust settled thick on his palms. "They're not just locking it down," he said, the edge of awe creeping into his voice. "They're changing it."
"Turning it into a vessel," Ezreal muttered, half to himself. Just above their heads, something flexed in the thick water — a cable, or maybe a vein — jerking with slow, pulsing life.
Ezreal's posture snapped upright suddenly, his voice sharper now. "We're not alone." His eyes darted toward the darkened corridor behind them, muscles tensing.
From somewhere in the shadows, a soft click echoed. Just once. The statues didn't move, but something about them shifted. It was as if the carved stone figures were suddenly aware, like they were listening — waiting. Dax swallowed, the sound louder than the click, breaking the tension.
Caylen stepped carefully between the figures, his fingers trailing along the smooth stone of a cloak. He whispered, "They feel... present. Like they're still listening." His breath caught, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple, cold despite the damp heat of the chamber.
Verek stopped beside a kneeling effigy. The intricate vinework etched deep into its cloak caught the faint light. His brow furrowed in confusion and recognition. "Vinescar," he muttered. "Coral limestone. Ocean stuff." He brushed a patch of slimy fungus away with his fingertips, the wet cold making his skin crawl.
Ezreal's eyes narrowed. "So this was built underwater?"
"Or it got dragged here," Verek said quietly. "Wasn't always this deep." He listened hard, feeling the faint pulse of tides in the stone itself.
A low, steady hum crept through the walls, a vibration just on the edge of hearing — like something ancient trying not to be forgotten. The chamber seemed to breathe with a slow, heavy sigh.
Ezreal turned back toward the center of the room. His voice had an edge of iron now. "It's a courtroom. The Council's mourning something. The dragon… maybe it's a witness. Or maybe a sacrifice." His eyes lingered on the great eye of the shackled beast, wide and haunted.
Dax made a sound that was half-laugh, half-grunt, rough and bitter. "So they cried it into a cage?" He cracked his knuckles with a sharp pop that echoed oddly in the stillness.
Caylen's voice was barely more than a thread. "The Hallowed Hymns."
Ezreal's eyes snapped to him. "What?"
"That's what it feels like," Caylen said, still staring at the rows of silent statues. "Like they couldn't stomach what they became." His hands rubbed over his chest, as if trying to soothe some internal ache.
The brine shifted again, chains creaking as if under weight. Somewhere, far in the dark, something massive moved. Even Thimblewick twitched anxiously on Verek's shoulder.
Verek stood slowly, backing away from the chains. His heart pounded in his ears. "Whatever they did here... it's not done." The hum in the walls grew louder, as if the place itself was waking.
Ezreal pointed toward a rust-streaked console half-swallowed by stone and dust. "There. Maybe it tells us what they started. Or what they're still trying to finish." His voice was softer now, almost pleading. "If we can read it."
No one moved.
Then the water boiled.
A sudden burst of heat and green flame ripped through the glyphs etched around the chamber. Chains flared with light, thrashing in the dark like serpents with broken bones.
The dragon opened its eye. It wasn't wrathful. It was heavy with grief — deep, raw, and unbearably real. A single tear slid down its scaly cheek and dropped into the brine.
It rose. The whole world seemed to tilt and buckle. Chains hissed and melted, statues cracked and crumbled. The chamber groaned with a sound that was not sound — more a weight of mourning that crushed the breath from their lungs.
They didn't run. Couldn't. They just stood there, too small, too stunned.
Ezreal was the first to move. Hands low, voice quiet but certain. "You fought them."
The dragon's gaze locked onto him, slow and deliberate, like the turning of a moon against the pull of some terrible truth. Its voice rumbled like distant thunder, scraping across the bones of memory. "At a price. What you see now... is resistance. Not life."
The way it spoke, Verek could tell it remembered being worshipped once, remembered the end of that worship. It was tired. Hollowed. Still proud.
Dax's grip tightened on his blade, fingers white as stone. "We thought the rot was from the crypts. But it's you. What they did to you."
The dragon bowed its head slowly, exhaustion bleeding from every scale. "They took more than stone. They hollowed the sacred. This place was once blessed. Now even the dead forget their names."
Caylen bowed too, small and soft. "Why stay? Why not leave this place behind?" His voice cracked like dry leaves underfoot.
The silence that followed wasn't peace. It was a wound that bled into the air.
"I can't," the dragon said, voice thick with something like sorrow. "Part of me is bound beneath this place. Beneath him. The Elder Thoughtreaver. They want to reshape me. But there's still a spark left. It won't let them."
Ezreal stepped closer, his tone gentler now. "Why call to us?"
The dragon let out a long breath, eyes dimming as it lowered its head. "Because you still mourn."
Something shifted behind them, not a sound, but a pressure that made the hairs on the back of their necks stand. Presence. Watching.
They all turned.
The Hallowed Hymns stood silent like before. Watching. But now, their grief felt shared. Not just theirs alone.
They moved deeper.
The air grew cooler and damp. The walls sweated like the breath of something too big to wake. Above, faint blue light laced the stone like veins trying to remember how to pulse again.
No one spoke.
Ezreal led, arcane fire flickering behind his eyes like a nervous heartbeat. "Something's off again," he said softly. He ran a hand up the wall, feeling the cold damp gathering around the carved runes.
Dax stalked up behind him, voice prickly. "What, just now? You think this is the part that's off?"
The corridor pulled tight like a fist and then spilled them out into a vast chamber that didn't feel built so much as grown wrong.
This place had started as a tomb. But it had been used for other things.
The silence wasn't peace. It was starvation.
Sarcophagi lay broken in rows, their lids torn open like empty mouths gasping. Tubes and machines clung to them like parasites, glass vats hooked into the stone with sinewy metal cords that gleamed like veins.
The air hissed softly, like even it wanted out.
Some vats glowed faintly with sickly light. Others were dark and empty.
What made them stop moving wasn't the dark.
It was the dryness.
Moss crumbled into flakes beneath their boots. Carvings faded to chalk dust. Even the air felt rubbed raw, like skin scraped too hard.
"Something's feeding here," Caylen whispered. His hand hovered near his holy symbol, trembling.
Verek's voice came from deeper inside himself, rough and dry. "No. It's not feeding. It's harvesting." He tasted dust and rust in the air and swallowed hard against nausea.
Dax crouched near the far end, brushing dust off a cracked slab. "Not Common," he muttered.
Ezreal knelt beside him, eyes scanning the scratches carved long ago. "Elvish. Old. Says, 'To the nameless protectors, sworn to rest, their silence—' and then nothing. It just... stops." He tapped the slab with a finger, dust falling like ash. "Interrupted."
Caylen stood near a glowing vat. Inside floated something once-human but stretched thin, wax-like, melting in the heat of this place. Its limbs bent wrong, like a broken doll. Wires spidered into its spine. Metal circled its skull.
"They're not saving people," he said quietly. "They're turning them." His voice shook, brittle as dried leaves.
At the center, Verek stepped onto a raised slab. He knelt and ran a hand over a cracked rune. The lines shimmered faintly, like magic barely holding on. He traced every crack and chip with care, feeling the weight of everything lost.
"These symbols predate the Empire," he said softly. "Might be feywork. Protection spells. They're coming apart."
Dax's knuckles were white as he clenched his fists. "Why?"
Ezreal rested a palm on one of the tubes. The glow pulsed weakly beneath his hand, like a dying heartbeat. "These machines... they're not just preserving the dead. They're warping the whole place. Twisting it."
Verek's words landed like a stone in a grave. "They're interfering. With the gods."
And then nobody said anything.
Not for a long time.