The hum deepened.
It wasn't just sound anymore. It was sight, scent, memory — woven into every trembling stone. The survivors clutched one another as the hollowed spires blazed with light that wasn't light, their glyphs shining with an ancient brilliance long buried beneath ash.
The fire guttered, sparks dancing upward as if drawn into the resonance. Shadows fled. For a heartbeat, the ruins felt alive.
And then the visions came.
Elara's sun-eye blazed, pulling her into the current. The world spun — and suddenly she was not herself.
She was a child beneath a golden sky. Fields stretched to the horizon, rivers glittered with reflected fire. Voices laughed around her, weaving songs of joy. The spires towered above, radiant pillars that pulsed in harmony with the sun itself.
The Circle of Light.
She blinked — and it was gone. The golden sky cracked, splitting into storms of ash. Screams replaced laughter. The Citadel rose like a wound in the horizon, threads pouring from it, devouring the spires' song.
The silence spread like wildfire.
She gasped, stumbling back into her own body, clutching her head. Seris steadied her, eyes wide with fear. "What did you see?"
"Before," Elara whispered. "I saw the world before it broke."
Marek's face was hard stone, but his eyes betrayed something like wonder. "So it's true. The sun didn't abandon us. It was stolen."
Tomas nodded grimly. "And chained to the Citadel's will."
Nalia's voice cracked. "Then it can be freed?"
Silence followed. Even the spires seemed to wait for the answer.
Far below, Kael saw the same vision.
Through the chains, through the keepers' failing hymn, he saw the golden sky. He smelled the fields, felt the warmth on his scarred skin. For a moment, his rage faltered — replaced by grief for a world he had never known.
The reflection snarled, its crown sparking wildly. "Ignore it. Lies from dead stone."
Kael shook his head slowly, eyes blazing. "No. It's memory. Truth they tried to bury."
The keepers wavered, their voices discordant, struggling to drown out the spires' hum. Their silence cracked like glass under strain.
Above, the survivors weren't alone anymore.
Shapes moved between the spires. Not hollow ones. Not ash-figures. Something else.
At first, they looked like people — men, women, children. Whole. Alive. They glowed faintly, as though carved from the same light that had once filled the sky.
Jorn stirred in his sleep, whispering, "Papa?"
Nalia clutched him tighter, eyes wide. The glowing shapes turned their heads toward her, faces blurred but kind.
Seris raised her bow, voice sharp. "Don't trust them."
"They're memories," Tomas said quickly, almost pleading. "Not threats. Echoes of the lives the spires held."
The figures drifted closer, their lips moving soundlessly.
And then — one spoke.
Not in words, but in the resonance itself. The survivors felt it more than heard it.
The Citadel feeds. The spires remember. The chain can be broken.
Elara shivered, the voice flooding her skull. Her sun-eye throbbed painfully, threads of gold stretching outward to connect with the glowing forms.
She whispered hoarsely, "They want to guide us."
Marek's hand tightened on his sword. "Or lure us."
The hum swelled, reaching a pitch that shook the spires themselves. Cracks split wider, dust cascading. The glyphs blazed so bright it hurt to look.
The glowing figures turned as one toward the horizon — toward the Citadel. Their forms shimmered, wavered, and then unraveled into streams of light that bled into the night sky.
The spires groaned. The resonance faltered.
And in the silence that followed, something else stirred.
Low. Guttural. Wrong.
The survivors froze as the ground beneath the spires split open, and from the chasm rose a sound that was not song, but hunger given voice.
The silence had woken.
The earth split wide.
Ash cascaded into the yawning fissure, swallowed by blackness deeper than night. From the depths came a vibration that rattled their bones — not song, not hum, but the grinding ache of something vast and famished.
Nalia clutched Jorn to her chest as he whimpered. Seris pulled him behind her, arrow nocked, though she knew a bow was useless against the thing clawing its way up.
From the chasm, shadows boiled. They did not rise as smoke or mist, but as limbs — jagged, angular, reaching with the hunger of absence. The air grew colder, every breath frosting as though winter had crept into their lungs.
Marek stepped forward, sword drawn. His voice shook but held iron. "Stay behind me."
The shadows stretched higher, merging into a form that barely resembled anything human. A torso without face. Arms without hands. A mouthless void that opened wider and wider, consuming the firelight until only the glow of the spires kept them from total darkness.
Tomas's knees buckled. His eyes rolled white as he whispered, "An Eater… a child of silence… born when memory and hunger collide."
The creature loomed, blotting out the fractured moonlight.
And then it spoke.
Not with words, but with absence. Every memory of warmth, of laughter, of color was sucked from their minds in a sudden flood. For an instant, none of them remembered their own names.
Elara's knees hit the ground. The sun-eye in her brow flared, struggling against the void. "No…" she gasped. "Not mine. Not ours."
Threads of gold lashed outward from her eye, anchoring into the spire. For a heartbeat, the silence shrieked — a raw, metallic screech like steel tearing apart.
The survivors collapsed, hands clamped over their ears. Blood trickled from Marek's nose. Jorn screamed.
Seris loosed her arrow — it vanished into the void, devoured before it could strike.
The Eater surged forward.
Kael felt it.
Chains shuddered around him, the Citadel groaning in protest. The reflection staggered, its crown sputtering with broken light.
"You fools," it snarled. "You've woken the deep ones."
Kael grinned through bloodied teeth. "Good."
The keepers faltered, their hymn unraveling as cracks splintered through their veils. One by one, they turned toward the earth above, swaying as though the spires' hum were pulling them apart at the seams.
Kael tugged at his chains, and for the first time, they trembled as if they might break.
Back at the spires, Marek threw himself between the Eater and the others. His sword burned faintly with glyph-light — not from him, but from the stone beneath. The spires themselves were lending him strength.
He roared and struck.
The blade bit into the void-flesh — and the creature screamed, collapsing backward in a shudder of unraveling darkness.
For a moment, it seemed to falter, its form losing shape.
Tomas shouted over the chaos, "The spires remember — they can wound it! Anchor yourselves to them!"
Elara pressed her palm flat to the glowing stone, sun-eye blazing brighter. Seris did the same, trembling but resolute. Nalia forced her shaking hand against the glyphs while holding Jorn close.
The spires answered.
Light lanced outward, threads of ancient memory wrapping around them all. They felt the warmth of the golden sun, the joy of the lost world — and with that came strength.
The Eater shrieked, stumbling backward as the survivors glowed with stolen echoes.
But the silence wasn't done.
The fissure widened, and more shadows clawed free. Not one, but many.
An army of hunger.