The chamber's silence was suffocating. The echo of breaking chains still lingered in their bones, faint but undeniable.
Kaelen scanned the shadows above. "Something's awake."
Lyra kept her blade drawn, the molten edge humming low. "Then we keep moving before it finds us."
The candle-bearer nodded once and led them to a narrow archway on the far side of the chamber. Beyond it, the passage sloped upward in a gentle spiral, walls smooth as glass. No carvings. No watchers. Only that faint, rhythmic clink…clink…clink from far above—like iron links dragged across stone.
They walked in silence, every footstep amplified in the emptiness.
After a while, Lyra glanced at Kaelen. "That vision—of us destroying everything… Do you believe it?"
Kaelen didn't answer immediately. He watched the fire in his hand, flickering restless. "I believe nothing is written. Not even the Tower can decide what we become."
The candle-bearer's voice was quiet. "The Tower doesn't decide. It remembers. Even futures that haven't happened yet."
Before Kaelen could respond, the walls trembled. Dust sifted from the ceiling.
The clinking stopped.
And then—silence so absolute it felt like the Tower itself was holding its breath.
Lyra raised her blade. "Kaelen…"
He felt it, too. A presence. Heavy. Vast. Moving above them.
A single sound broke the silence: a low, resonant hum, like the watchers' earlier chorus—but deeper, older, hungrier.
The candle-bearer's flame flared violently, reacting to something unseen. "Run."
The glass-smooth walls ahead split open like a wound, and from the fissure slid a shape too large to comprehend—a serpent of obsidian and shadow, its body etched with spirals that burned faintly as it moved. It filled the passage, coils upon coils, eyes like twin voids.
Lyra's breath caught. "What in the infinite—"
The serpent opened its jaws, and the sound that poured out wasn't a roar but a command.
"Kneel."
Kaelen's fire guttered as the word clawed into his mind, dragging him toward obedience. Lyra's knees buckled. Even the candle-bearer staggered, their flame nearly extinguished.
Through the haze, Kaelen heard one thought—his own voice, fierce and defiant.
Nothing decides for me.
He slammed his fist into the ground. Fire exploded outward, breaking the serpent's grip for a heartbeat.
"Move!" he shouted.
They ran—into the darkness ahead—while behind them, the serpent uncoiled, the sound of chains breaking growing louder and louder.