Kael didn't speak much the next morning.
He sat on the temple steps, staring at the horizon. The sunrise was pale today, the colors dulled like someone had scraped the sky raw.
Liora joined him in silence, bringing warm tea in a clay cup.
She didn't ask questions.
Not yet.
Kael wrapped his hands around the cup and finally said, "I wasn't alone in there."
She nodded slowly. "I know."
Elias arrived soon after. He didn't sit.
He stood with arms folded and a hard look in his eyes. "Whatever that thing was—it came from a breach. A real one. The Veil isn't holding anymore."
Liora looked up sharply. "You're sure?"
"I scouted at dawn," Elias said. "Something's growing in the northern forest. A rupture. I could feel it before I saw it."
Kael's voice came quieter than both of theirs, but heavier.
"It's because of me."
Neither of them argued.
Later, they climbed the ridge where the forest began to shift.
Kael noticed the change in the air first—cooler, thinner, like breathing through cloth. Birds didn't sing here. Leaves didn't rustle. Even their footsteps made no sound on the forest floor.
The trees near the breach had begun to twist, their bark splitting in places to reveal veins of faint violet light. The ground itself pulsed every few seconds.
At the center, the rupture floated like a wound in the world.
Black, slow-turning, silent.
Liora stepped close but didn't cross the invisible line. "This isn't just energy," she whispered. "It's a memory. A place that remembers being whole—and hates being broken."
Elias stared at Kael. "Can you feel it?"
Kael didn't answer.
Because the Void was already speaking.
"One more gate must fall. Below the temple. Where the old blood sleeps."
He grabbed Liora's arm suddenly. "There's something beneath the ruins. Buried. Sealed."
She blinked. "You mean the catacombs?"
"No," Kael said. "Older."
That night, Kael returned alone.
He lit no torch. His steps were guided by something deeper than sight — a knowing that came from the mark, from the whispering in his bones.
He found the cracked cracked floor tile behind the altar.
He pried it loose with trembling hands.
And beneath it, he found stairs.
Cold stone. Going down. Much farther than they should.
As he descended into the dark, he didn't feel fear.
He felt... welcome.
Like something had been waiting for this moment a very long time.