The dust hung thick in the air, a choking veil that turned every breath into ash. The collapse had come like the roar of the sky itself tearing open, stone grinding on stone, beams splintering, walls folding inward. Now, silence reigned in its aftermath—an oppressive silence broken only by the groans of settling rubble and the ragged coughs of the living.
Elian's hands trembled as he clawed his way free from a mound of shattered masonry. His throat burned with grit, and every muscle screamed from the shock of being thrown against the ground. For a heartbeat, he thought he had been buried alive. The darkness was so complete, so crushing, it felt like the ruins themselves pressed into his skull.
Then a sound broke through the silence.
"Elian!" Lyra's voice, raw and hoarse but unmistakably alive.
He stumbled toward it, half-blind in the dust. Shapes loomed and dissolved, shifting with each cough. His hands brushed stone, splinters of wood, and then—warmth. Lyra's arm. He gripped it tightly, grounding himself in the one certainty left in this suffocating void.
She coughed again, pulling a scarf from her torn satchel to wrap around her nose and mouth. Her face was streaked with blood and dust, but her eyes burned with the same stubborn fire that had carried them through everything so far.
"Are you hurt?" she demanded.
"Just bruised," Elian rasped, though his ribs ached with every breath. "You?"
"Alive," she said, which was enough.
A low groan cut through the air, deeper than stone shifting. They turned. Not rubble this time, but a man's voice.
Kaelen.
He lay half-buried beneath a fallen column, his body twisted awkwardly, his sword arm pinned. Dust coated his silver armor, muting the brilliance of the Solar Guard's emblem, until it looked less like a starburst and more like a smudge of ash. His breath came in shallow pulls, each one edged with pain.
"Kaelen!" Elian and Lyra hurried to him, clawing at the stones. They heaved together, muscles straining, until the column shifted enough for Kaelen to drag himself free with a grunt. He rolled to his side, coughing violently, before shoving himself upright with stubborn resolve.
His face was pale, but his eyes remained sharp. That fire—the same unyielding will Elian had once feared—still burned there.
"We move," Kaelen said, his voice as steady as ever.
"Move where?" Lyra shot back, frustration cracking through her exhaustion. "In case you haven't noticed, we're buried. The way out is gone."
Kaelen glanced around. He was right—walls had caved inward, tunnels collapsed, exits sealed under tons of stone. But he didn't flinch.
"Then we find another way," he said. "We don't stop."
Elian stared at him, the dust prickling his skin like a thousand needles. How could Kaelen remain so calm, so certain, when the weight of the earth itself pressed down around them?
"You sound as if nothing has changed," Elian muttered, bitterness leaking through his fear. "As if the stars still shine as brightly as they did before."
"They do," Kaelen replied without hesitation. His voice cut through the darkness like a blade. "They always will. What changes is men—their faith, their courage. The stars do not falter. We do."
Lyra's laugh was sharp, humorless. "That's convenient. Easy to blame mortals while your gods stay comfortably out of reach."
Kaelen turned his gaze on her, hard and cold, but he didn't argue. His silence was a wall, as unyielding as the rubble around them.
Elian stepped closer, his heart pounding. Something in Kaelen's stubborn certainty scraped against everything Elian had felt since the Ceremony. The new star, the shadow clinging to his skin, the way the world seemed to shift around him—it all whispered that the Captain's faith was brittle, already cracking.
But before he could speak, the ruins groaned again. Stone shifted above them, dust cascading in choking streams. The ground beneath their feet trembled.
Lyra grabbed Elian's hand instinctively. "It's not finished collapsing."
Kaelen drew his sword, the faint gleam of steel catching what little light remained from the cracks above. The gesture was almost absurd—what use was a blade against falling walls? And yet, in that moment, it steadied them. A reminder of defiance, even against inevitability.
"We move," Kaelen repeated, more firmly this time. "Now."
Together, they stumbled into the depths, away from the crushing silence of the collapse. Their path was narrow, jagged with debris, every step accompanied by the threat of another cave-in.
Elian felt the pressure of the earth around them—the sheer weight of it pressing down. The thought of how easily the ruins could seal them in forever made his chest tighten. But alongside the fear came something else: a strange pull, as though the shadows themselves whispered of hidden paths.
More than once, when they reached a dead end, Elian felt it—a tug at the edge of his vision, a thinning of the darkness that guided him toward a narrow crack, a hidden stair, a hollow space just wide enough to squeeze through.
Lyra noticed. Her hand brushed his as they slipped through one of these passages, her voice low. "You feel it too, don't you? Like the shadows are… showing you the way."
Elian didn't answer. The truth scared him more than the collapse.
Kaelen, though, seemed to sense their hesitation. His gaze lingered on Elian with growing suspicion. But he said nothing. Not yet.
Hours—or perhaps only minutes—passed as they crawled deeper into the maze of broken stone. Their strength ebbed, their voices faltered, but still they pressed on. The ruins whispered with echoes of the dead, and the deeper they went, the more Elian wondered if they had escaped one tomb only to descend into another.
At last, they reached a vast cavern, its ceiling fractured to reveal a sliver of night sky far above. The stars glittered faintly through the gap, pale and distant, but there was light.
They collapsed there, breathless, the dust finally settling. For a brief moment, silence became something else—less suffocating, almost fragile.
Lyra leaned against the stone, closing her eyes. Kaelen sank to one knee, sword still in hand, as though he feared the ruins themselves would attack if he let it go. Elian simply stared upward, toward the faint stars, wondering if they saw him at all.
And then—just as his breath began to steady—the flicker returned.
One star, faint and strange, pulsed once, twice, before vanishing entirely.
Elian's blood ran cold. He opened his mouth to speak, but the ground trembled violently beneath them. Dust poured down in choking streams. Cracks split across the cavern floor.
The collapse was not finished.
The ruins roared again, and before any of them could move, the ceiling gave way in a storm of stone and shadow, burying them once more in darkness.