That stopped them.
Ezreal turned slow, his voice tight, brittle, like he was trying not to let it crack. "The silence we've felt… maybe it wasn't absence. Maybe it's suffocation."
Caylen's gaze dropped to the cracked stone beneath their boots. His voice had weight now, dragged low by something old. "Holy ground doesn't just rot on its own. You've gotta poison it first. This place… used to be sacred."
"They're choking the flow," Ezreal said, barely above a whisper, like the words burned coming out. "Turning divine ground into... what, a machine? That's why it's bone dry. That's why the tombs thirst."
His eyes fell on the nearest vat, its jagged shape lit by a sick flicker of green. Something inside it twitched, just once. His breath caught shallow in his chest. "And if this is what it costs… then whatever they're trying to finish is already past the point of stopping."
Nobody spoke. The quiet stretched and grew heavy, humming like a jaw clenching too hard.
Then something moved behind them.
A whisper of sound—barely more than cloth brushing stone. Or breath. Where nothing should've been breathing.
They all turned at once.
From the far side of the chamber, shadows peeled off the wall and crept forward.
A figure came with them, wrapped in what looked like silk, though it shifted like something alive. The cloak shimmered, catching firelight like oil slick on water. Its mask was sculpted from gold and onyx, etched with too many mouths, all weeping. The eyes were spiraled, blind things. It didn't walk so much as slide across the space, feet not really touching the floor.
Ezreal's jaw clamped tight. His breath stilled as a name clawed its way into his mind—Zavara's voice, remembered like a blade to the ribs. Istuvarel. The veiled one. The apostate.
The figure raised both hands, its voice smooth as frozen glass. "You do not belong here."
It kept gliding closer, slow and steady, limbs too fluid to be flesh.
"These souls," it said, each word too sharp, like it had been filed down to a point, "are not lost. They are ascending."
Three vats flickered.
Then blinked out.
The children inside dropped like their strings had been cut. Limp. Gone.
Dax lunged forward, voice a raw thing barely reined in. "That's what you call ascension?"
Istuvarel lifted its arms.
The whole chamber groaned.
The statues along the walls—hooded, faceless things with hands always hiding their eyes—split straight down the middle. From inside, shadows poured out. Wraiths, built of rot and memory, peeling themselves into shape like wilted petals.
"Protect the dream," Istuvarel said. He didn't yell. Didn't have to. The dark things obeyed him anyway.
Then his body came apart.
Two copies stepped forward from the same skin, hands lit with flame that didn't burn light but snuffed it out.
Caylen's fingers struck his lute. The chord snapped bright in the gloom. "Circle up!"
Thimblewick shot into the air, trailing sigils like sparks off a flint. Verek veered left, loosing a blast that shimmered—illusion. Ezreal mirrored him, but his strike hit nothing but smoke.
"Middle one!" Ezreal shouted, carving a sigil through the air like it owed him blood.
Too late.
The first wave slammed into them. Screaming shadows fell like knives.
Dax grunted, a claw raking down his shoulder. Caylen threw radiant force upward—one of the specters popped like a soap bubble, vanishing in golden haze. Verek's fire roared, wild and furious, like a temple catching fire.
But Istuvarel didn't even flinch.
Ezreal shut his eyes for a second. Forced his brain to keep moving.
Think.
Caylen's tune shifted mid-breath, voice bending into words meant to unmake. A hymn not for worship but exile.
One of the wraiths shrieked, then crumpled, glass-sharp and brittle.
Istuvarel howled—but it wasn't pain. It was fury.
His veil split.
There wasn't a face behind it. Just a hollow streaked with veins of silver, packed with eyes that blinked too slow, too many, and not all in the same moment.
The pods thrashed behind him.
Verek's voice cut through the din. "He's tied into them! Every hit we land, he funnels it into the dreamers!"
Caylen's head snapped around. His eyes lit with decision. "Then we don't destroy," he said. "We bind."
Ezreal's arms swung wide, sigils flaring in circles from his palms.
Istuvarel shrieked one more time, rage warping into a final, crushing wave. Energy slammed outward like a dying star.
Verek stepped into it.
One spell. One blow.
The mask cracked.
Fire took the figure whole.
Istuvarel dropped into the vat. His scream didn't echo—it vanished, swallowed up by the brine.
The pods stilled.
The wraiths withered and fell away.
Silence folded back in—twitching, charged.
They stood in it, breaths ragged, blades still in hand. The tomb's green light jittered against sweat-slicked skin.
Dax dropped to one knee, sucking in air. "Is it over?"
Ezreal stared into the still water. "No."
Caylen's voice came low, like the words were half-choked. "That was just the preacher. So where's the god?"
No one had an answer.
Behind them, the Hallowed Hymns stood frozen. Their veiled faces turned inward, like even they didn't want to see what was coming next.
Then the sound came.
A long, cracked trill.
Not a creature's cry. More like a memory unraveling. Like something old remembering its name after forgetting for centuries.
They turned. Weapons raised by instinct.
All but Thimblewick. He hung there in the air, staring toward the dark at the edge of the room. He didn't look scared.
He looked like he knew.
Ezreal stood, fingers already sketching wards. "He hears something."
Dax braced, one hand flexing like it remembered old pain. "That's never good."
Verek stepped past them, gaze hard. "How close?"
Thimblewick twitched. One eye widened into a molten gold disc. The other narrowed to a point like obsidian. Then he jolted, eyes locked on a mist-veiled tunnel—and screamed.
Not loud.
But wrong.
The sound clung to bone. Like a funeral bell, underwater and still ringing. It didn't call across space.
It called across time.
The floor shivered.
Not cracked. Not falling.
Breathing.
Ezreal staggered back, palm pressed to his ribs. "Something's waking up."
Caylen yanked upright, white-knuckled around his holy symbol. "We need to go, now—"
But Verek stayed still.
His eyes locked on the tunnel's mouth. The air there had thickened, like syrup. Something moved inside it. A shape, not formed yet, like the idea of a body hadn't finished deciding what to be.
He took a step forward. Voice steady. "No. We don't run. Not yet."
Dax spun toward him, eyes wide. "You've lost your damned mind if you think—"
Then he saw it.
A light broke through the fog. Green, gold. It wasn't magic. It wasn't holy.
It felt like something left over.
Something that should've been forgotten but never was.
It floated toward them, quiet as a thought, gliding without pushing the air. Around it, the space went... empty. Not cold, not dead. Just drained. Like it pulled meaning out of everything near it.
Verek whispered, hoarse and low, "I've seen scraps of this. Writings. Half-lost texts. A harvester. Not of bodies. Not even of souls. It eats fate."
The light reached the edge of the chamber.
And stopped.
It didn't cross the threshold.
Just... watched.
Thimblewick hissed and disappeared behind Verek's shoulder. The elf didn't blink. He raised a hand.
"I don't know what you are," he said, soft as ash, "but I see you."
A moment passed.
Then the light pulled in on itself.
The mist snapped back, sucked into the tunnel like someone had ripped the air out. Torches fluttered. The stone groaned.
Then—nothing.
Gone.
Ezreal stumbled, breathing too fast. "It… tasted us."
Caylen grabbed his arm, holding steady. "Then why didn't it strike?"
Verek sheathed his blade slow. "Because it didn't have to."
Dax spat, sharp and bitter. "So it's toying with us?"
Verek's eyes went cold. "No. It's marking us."
The words settled like dust after a cave-in. Heavy. Still.
Not an enemy.
Not yet.
But watching. Waiting.
Caylen broke the quiet, his voice a cracked thing. "Rest's over, then."
No one argued.
They moved quiet, fast. Every strap pulled tight, every buckle checked. Whatever peace they'd thought they'd had was long dead.
Behind them, the path was smoke and ruin.
Ahead waited something that hadn't breathed in ages.
They stepped into the tunnel, the walls closing in. Shadows stretched longer. The air turned thin.
But they didn't stop.
Something had stirred in the dark. And it was waiting for them to follow.