The tremor faded, but the air pressed heavier against my chest.Every breath carried the taste of iron.
I stepped into the plaza's center, boots clicking against the cracked stone disk. Up close, the fissure wasn't a break—it was a wound. The edges were jagged, clawed outward, as if something beneath had once torn free.
The Nameless God's voice dripped into my mind. It was only hungry.
Across the plaza, the masked figures I'd passed earlier now stood in a perfect circle around the fissure. Beast-faces—wolf, serpent, crow, stag, lion, and rat—all tilted toward the wound in the stone.
Their hands rose, palms out, each clutching a shard of glowing crystal. The light bled across their masks, carving their shadows long and sharp against the ground.
They began to hum—low at first, almost below hearing, then rising until the air itself vibrated.
The green veins in the surrounding walls brightened in time with the sound, crawling upward like veins filling with fire. The smell shifted—metallic at the edges but sweet at the center, like flowers rotting in stagnant water.
The wolf-mask stepped forward, placing their shard into the fissure. It sank slowly, as though pulled by unseen fingers.
One by one, the others followed. Each time, the fissure exhaled a ribbon of black vapor that curled lazily in the air before dissolving.
My grip on my sword tightened. The vapor made my skin prickle.
And then—
A memory slammed into me without warning.
Chains rattling.Lira's voice—not calling my name, just a sharp, startled cry.Her face was pale in the torchlight, eyes darting between her parents and me.The room smelled like burning cloth.
They didn't scream when they began.Only she did.
The vision tore away as quickly as it came. My breath felt too loud in the quiet plaza.
The humming stopped. The vapor collapsed into the fissure like it had never been.
The masked figures lowered their hands in perfect unison—and turned to face me.
The crow-mask tilted its head. The Nameless God's voice cut through the silence. They see you.
In the next breath, the masked figures scattered, vanishing into the web of narrow streets without a sound.
Only the cracked disk remained. Quiet. Waiting.
I stepped through the archway, deeper into the First City.