The first fracture wasn't loud.
It was a whisper—so quiet it barely stirred the air. But Kael heard it like thunder.
He had been staring at the mark on his arm again. It shimmered faintly, like heat rising from stone, and for a moment, he thought he saw a shape inside it. A figure. A face.
Then the ground beneath him trembled.
Just once.
Liora looked up from her scrolls. "Did you feel that?"
Elias was already reaching for the blade at his side. "That wasn't natural."
They weren't alone anymore.
From the edge of the ruins, a sound rose—like fabric tearing, but deeper. Like something ancient being undone. Kael turned toward it just as the light shifted, dimmed, and bent.
The air rippled.
And something stepped through.
It wasn't a creature exactly. Not flesh, not shadow. Just... form. Moving where form shouldn't exist. It had no eyes, yet Kael felt it looking straight at him.
The mark on his arm pulsed. Hard.
Then, without thinking, Kael stepped forward.
"Kael, don't!" Elias barked, but he was too late.
The thing turned sharply toward Kael. The symbols on the manuscript began to swirl like water caught in a whirlpool. Liora cried out and tried to hold the pages down, but they lifted on their own, spinning.
And in that moment, Kael heard the voice again.
"You are the break. You are the bridge."
It wasn't spoken out loud. It echoed inside him.
Something inside Kael opened—like a gate.
And the Void rushed in.
He collapsed.
He didn't feel himself hit the stone. He only saw flashes:
A tower of black glass.
Liora screaming his name.
A sky with no stars—just a wide, yawning eye.
Then—silence.
A long silence.
And in the silence... a whisper.
"We were waiting, Kael. Now you must decide what lives."
When he woke, it was night.
He was lying in a cot inside a small room. A single lantern burned low in the corner, casting gold shadows across the wooden walls.
Liora sat beside him, her head in her hands.
She looked up when he stirred.
"You were gone for hours," she said softly. "But your body never left. You were just... empty."
Kael touched the mark. It was cool now. No glow. Just a faint outline on his skin.
But he knew what had happened wasn't a dream.
Something had opened.
Something ancient.
And it wasn't finished with him.