Behind them, the city of Phokorus faded like smoke blown out too fast, the sharp outlines of its towers blurring into mist. The spires fell silent first, then the lower halls, until the whole city felt like a distant memory glimpsed through rain-streaked glass—something half-forgotten and left behind. Ahead, the land opened wide and strange, a flat stretch that might have once been fields but now looked like ancient, cracked skin baked by a merciless sun. No road led forward. Nothing marked the way except the endless, brittle stretch.
The air itself reeked of wrongness.
Verek's boots cracked the dry grass beneath, brittle and yellowed like broken needles. Every snap echoed too long, dragging at something inside his chest. He slowed, scanning the horizon with a weight settled deep in his bones. This place wasn't just abandoned. It was waiting. Waiting for someone—or something—to disturb its uneasy sleep.
Ezreal stuffed the map back into his coat, his jaw clenched tight. The shard's glow was a weak pulse now, a faint twitch in his peripheral vision, flickering like breath on frozen glass—there then gone. Somewhere buried beneath that cursed valley lay the next shard. Lost. Hidden. A smear on the map with no name, no record, nothing but a space carved out on purpose.
Verek's gaze hardened. He'd felt the same tug from the shard—a cold knot in his gut telling him this place wasn't meant to be found.
"This place wasn't meant to be found," Caylen muttered, stepping over brittle brush that shattered beneath his heel. The sound made him flinch like a wound reopened. "Feels like we're trespassing in a graveyard."
Verek took a steadying breath, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. "Then let's make sure we're the ones who do the digging."
Dax's eyes narrowed ahead, watching the haze that draped over the sloping ground like a shroud. "It remembers," he said quietly, voice tight as wire. "And it sure as hell doesn't want us here."
The trail didn't so much lead forward as bend out of their way, broken and thin like a threadbare cloak. The soil was loose beneath their feet, threatening to give out with every step. Sharp roots stabbed like dry fingers from shallow graves, brittle and hollow.
The air was thick, metallic with a stale tang—less decay than old iron dropped in cold water, a scent that clung like a warning. Verek tried not to breathe through his nose, but the smell caught at the back of his throat, biting sharp and cold.
Caylen's hand shot up, palm flat against the cracked leather of his gauntlet. "There," he said, voice low.
Verek followed his line of sight and saw the ruin—a black, ragged shape pressed into the earth beneath the ridge. It wasn't built. It clawed its way out of the dirt like something desperate to escape, but stopped halfway, defeated.
The walls weren't walls at all. They curved and twisted like broken ribs, dull black stone chalked at the edges and pocked like old teeth. No roof. No symmetry. Just jagged bones reaching toward the sky.
Faint glyphs blinked faint and off-rhythm across the surface—no language they knew. But the feeling hit Verek in the gut: a name long forgotten, scratching just beneath his thoughts, out of reach.
Ezreal's voice cut through the stillness. "This isn't built. It dragged itself up. Like it wanted out."
Verek's eyes narrowed. The ruin reeked of copper and grief, like a battlefield still soaked with blood long cooled. The cold pressed in, a weight settling on his chest that made every breath hard.
They crossed beneath the first arch and the air slammed down like a cold tide. Verek swallowed hard, feeling the pressure squeeze ribs and throat. The silence grew too loud—footsteps echoed sharp, each one a trespass the ruin was marking in memory.
Dax touched one of the curved walls, and Verek saw his fingers come away damp—not wet, but heavy, soaked with something older than water. Sadness, maybe. Or something darker.
Caylen's hand brushed a mural faded by time, and Verek caught the flicker of pain that crossed his friend's face. The images shifted—faces from the past, broken and twisted: a mother lost to fire, a battlefield burnt out, a cracked mask splitting apart.
The ruin remembered. And it hated what they were doing here.
Verek's gaze flicked toward the shadowed passage deeper inside. "It's not dead," he said low. "Just sleeping. And now it knows we're here."
A low moan rose beneath the floor, not a sound but a pressure, a presence pressing close. Verek's muscles tensed, every instinct screaming that something was leaning into their space, ready to strike.
Dax's hand went to his sword, steady and cold. His eyes locked forward—thinking through angles and escape routes, last stands and desperation.
Verek moved with them, silent, sharp. He led, even here, where the air was thick with dread and the past clawed up from stone.
The stairs spiraled downward, warped and leaning like they'd been twisted by time's cruel hands. The walls squeezed tighter. Magic residue hung like cold ash on the edges, dead embers of a fire that had long since gone out.
At the bottom, the chamber waited.
A narrow room barely wide enough for three, its walls curved like a trap for sound. It smelled of lightning just before the strike, and old blood long left to sour in damp cloth.
At the center, a cracked glass pillar held the shard—a weak yellow glow pulsing faint like a tired heartbeat refusing to die.
Verek stepped forward, but Ezreal caught his arm, halting him just in time.
"Wait," Ezreal whispered. "Something's wrong."
The floor shimmered—not light, but memory. The ruin remembered all the pain and fury it had swallowed.
Ghostly flickers rose from the stone—screaming priests with silent mouths, fingers clawing through bone, people walking backward into walls, never to escape.
Verek's jaw tightened. "This isn't a vault," he said quietly. "It's a seal. This place isn't protecting the shard. It's holding something in."
Dax stared at the glass pillar, mouth a tight line. "If we take it, the seal breaks. We open the door."
Caylen's voice cracked like dry wood. "If we leave it, Malarath gets it. You think he cares what it opens?"
Verek took a breath, the weight of command pressing down hard. "Then I'll take the risk. If it goes wrong, I'm the one who carries the blame."
Without hesitation, he reached out. His fingers hovered, then closed around the shard. The glass didn't resist. It gave way like fog, parting without a fight.
The moment his skin touched the shard, the world lurched.
A scream tore through the chamber—raw and ragged, like a wound ripped open too wide to ever heal. The walls flexed and cracked, shadows spilling from the seams.
They weren't walking shadows—more like twisted, crawling things, limbs bent wrong, too many eyes frozen wide in silence.
Caylen yanked Verek back by the collar just as the first thing lunged.
Dax was already moving, sword flashing in a deadly arc. The creature shrieked, then collapsed, twitching like a broken marionette.
But more poured out—fast and relentless.
"Move!" Verek shouted, pushing forward, drawing his blade.
They ran.
The tunnels folded and warped behind them. Glyphs flared in furious bursts, spitting flame that burned no flesh but seared memory—hate thrown like knives down the hall.
Stone peeled. Walls screamed. The ruin heaved one last time before collapsing into the earth like a beast finally spent.
They stumbled out into the harsh daylight, lungs burning, dirt caked on boots, bruises blooming across ribs.
Dax wiped blood from his shoulder on the brittle grass, which crumbled even as it grew.
Verek glanced down at the shard in his hand. Its light had shifted, blackened like a wound festering beneath skin.
Ezreal exhaled heavily. "What, three down?"
"And like, seven left," Dax muttered grimly. "Each one worse than the last."
Verek looked back at the ruin, face grim but steady. They were past turning back.
Behind them, low clouds gathered, rolling slow and heavy like fists preparing to land.
From far east beyond the haze, a distant drumming began—steady, deliberate.
Phokorus was no longer quiet.
Malarath was moving.
And beneath the skin of the world, the shards were waking.