The passage that opened before us was claustrophobic,barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, with walls that pressed in close enough that I could have touched both sides if I'd stretched out my arms. The ceiling arched low overhead, forcing even Xeno to duck slightly as we moved forward. Those same cold blue torches lined the walls at irregular intervals, and I noticed something unsettling: they flickered to life just as we approached, as if sensing our presence, and died the moment we passed, plunging the corridor behind us into absolute darkness.
The castle was herding us.
Guiding us toward something.
Or away from escape.
The air grew thicker with each step, heavy with centuries of accumulated dust that made each breath feel like work. That sweet-rot smell,funeral flowers mixed with decay,intensified until it coated the back of my throat, making me want to gag. But I swallowed it down, focused on putting one foot in front of the other, on keeping moving despite the pain radiating from my broken wrist.
My left wrist was swelling badly now, the skin tight and hot, turning deeper shades of purple and black with each passing minute. I cradled it against my chest, trying to minimize the jostling, but every step sent jarring shocks of pain up my arm. The bone felt *wrong* inside, like pieces grinding against each other that shouldn't be touching.
Beside me, Nyx limped heavily, her small body listing to one side. Her left wing,the mangled one,dragged uselessly behind her, the torn membrane leaving a trail of dark ichor on the stone floor like a grotesque breadcrumb path. Each breath she took was shallow and careful, ribs clearly damaged from being thrown into that pillar. Twice.
But even as I watched, I could see subtle changes happening. The torn edge of her wing membrane looked slightly less ragged than it had minutes ago. The deepest gashes in her skin had stopped bleeding, the edges beginning to knit together with agonizing slowness. Xenophore regeneration,not as fast as what we'd seen from the creatures we'd fought, but present. Persistent.
She caught me looking and managed a weak smile. "Hurts less already," she whispered, voice rough. "Give me an hour and I'll be... better. Not good. But better."
Xeno walked ahead of us, shovel gripped in both hands now rather than slung over his shoulder. His posture was rigid, controlled, the way people held themselves when they were keeping something locked deep inside. The photograph was tucked away in his pocket,I could see the slight bulge where he'd carefully folded it,but its presence was palpable. A weight he carried that had nothing to do with physical mass.
His blindfold had shifted during the fight with Azael, sitting slightly askew on his face. I could see a sliver of skin beneath the edge,pale, marked with what might have been a scar,but I kept my eyes averted. Whatever he was hiding, whatever he didn't want seen, was his business. His choice. I wouldn't violate that, no matter how curious I was.
He hadn't spoken since the girl vanished.
Not a word.
Just that heavy, oppressive silence that felt different from his usual quiet. This wasn't the comfortable silence of someone who simply didn't need words. This was the silence of someone who had too many words trapped inside and didn't know how to let them out.
The passage twisted and turned,left, then right, then left again,with no discernible pattern. No way to track our direction or distance. Just endless stone corridor lit by those eerie blue flames, walls occasionally marked with symbols I didn't recognize, that hurt my eyes when I tried to focus on them too long.
After what felt like hours but was probably only fifteen minutes, the passage opened.
The hall beyond was massive,easily a hundred feet long and fifty wide, with a vaulted ceiling that soared at least thirty feet overhead before disappearing into shadows the torchlight couldn't penetrate. The walls were lined with more of those disturbing statues we'd seen throughout the castle,warriors, angels, robed figures,but here they were all turned inward, their faceless heads oriented toward the center of the room as if in perpetual worship of something.
The floor was different here too. Instead of rough stone or faded mosaics, it was polished black marble shot through with veins of deep red that looked disturbingly organic, like frozen blood vessels running through flesh. The surface was so reflective I could see our distorted images looking back up at us as we stepped into the chamber.
And in the center, I saw them.
The others.
They stood in a loose cluster near the middle of the hall, and relief crashed over me so powerfully it made my knees weak.
Alive.
They were alive.
Lira was leaning heavily against Kai, her face pale beneath streaks of blood and tears and dirt. One arm was cradled protectively against her chest,broken wrist, like mine,and she was favoring her left side in a way that suggested cracked ribs. But her eyes were open, alert, scanning the room for threats even in her exhausted state.
Kai supported her weight with one arm around her waist, his usual cocky grin absent, replaced by grim determination. His shirt was torn in multiple places, stained dark with blood,some of it his, judging by the awkward way he held his right shoulder. But he was standing. Fighting. Alive.
Amie stood beside them, pistol still gripped in one hand, finger carefully off the trigger but ready to snap into firing position in an instant. Her left arm was wrapped in makeshift bandaging torn from someone's shirt, blood seeping through the fabric from a gash I couldn't see. Her face was drawn with exhaustion, dark circles under her eyes, but when she saw us her expression transformed into pure relief.
Kael stood slightly behind the others, staff held ready in both hands. Both hands,no more hiding, no more pretending the right one was still damaged. The fingers flexed with complete freedom, strong and sure, the serum's work impossible to deny. His chest was marked with four parallel gashes visible through his torn shirt,claw marks that had bled heavily but were already scabbing over.
"Yona!" Amie's voice cracked as she saw us, and she started forward, pistol lowering.
I didn't think. Didn't hesitate. Just ran,well, limped quickly,across the polished floor toward her.
She met me halfway, dropping to her knees so we were at the same height, and caught me in her arms. Gentle. So gentle. Mindful of my broken wrist, of the bruising I knew was spreading across my chest from Azael's kick. But tight enough that I could feel her trembling, feel the way she was holding herself together through sheer force of will.
"You're okay," she whispered into my hair, voice thick with emotion she was trying to control. "Oh god, you're okay. I thought,when we got separated,I thought—"
"I'm okay," I said, and my voice was muffled against her shoulder. "We're okay. We made it."
I buried my face against her, breathing in the familiar smell that was uniquely Amie,dust and sweat and gunpowder and something underneath that was just her. Home. Safety. Family.
Behind me, I heard Kai's voice, unusually soft. "Easy there, kid. I've got you."
I turned my head enough to see him catching Nyx as her legs finally gave out, easing her gently to the ground with surprising care for someone who usually acted so casual about everything. His hands were steady as he checked her over, cataloging injuries with the practical efficiency of someone who'd done field medicine before.
"Wing's pretty messed up," he said quietly to her. "But you're regenerating. I can see it. Ribs?"
"Cracked," Nyx managed, voice thin with pain. "Maybe two. Three. Hurts to breathe deep."
"Then don't breathe deep. Shallow breaths. Let the healing do its work."
Lira's voice cut through, rough and raw. "Xeno."
I pulled back from Amie enough to see Xeno standing at the entrance to the chamber, not quite having crossed the threshold yet. His blindfolded face was turned toward Lira, and for a long moment they just looked at each other,her exhausted and broken, him silent and rigid.
Then he nodded once. Simple acknowledgment. No words needed.
That seemed to be enough for Lira. Her shoulders relaxed fractionally, some tension bleeding out of her frame.
We came together slowly, carefully, like pieces of a shattered whole trying to reassemble themselves. Amie helped me over to where the others were gathering, Kai supporting Nyx, Xeno finally crossing into the chamber and joining the loose circle we were forming.
We sat on the cold marble floor,some more gracefully than others,arranging ourselves in a rough semicircle. Amie passed around the last water canteen, and we took turns drinking, the water warm and stale but welcome against the dust coating our throats.
No one spoke at first.
We just sat there, breathing, being alive, being together.
Checking injuries with quick, efficient assessments. Lira's cracked ribs, broken wrist. Kai's deeply bruised shoulder, possibly dislocated and popped back in. Amie's gashed arm. Kael's chest clawed, though already healing faster than it should. Nyx's mangled wing, cracked ribs, general trauma from being thrown repeatedly. My broken wrist, bruised chest, dozens of minor cuts and scrapes.
Xeno had the fewest visible injuries,some bruising across his face where Azael's backhand had connected, a split lip, bloodied knuckles. But his silence spoke of damage that went deeper than flesh.
"What happened?" Lira finally asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "After we got separated?"
There was a moment of silence as we all processed the question, decided who should speak first, how much to share.
Kai and Lira went first, and I watched Lira's face as she told their story. How they'd been trapped in a corridor, forced into a chamber. How the puppets had been waiting,Vesper and her great-grandfather, dead flesh animated by Azael's dark magic, strings of power pulling limbs and moving mouths.
Her voice broke when she described how they'd spoken. How Vesper had mocked her, reminded her of her town's screams. How her great-grandfather's puppet had used his voice,that gentle, teaching voice she'd loved,to tell her she'd failed them all. That the town had died because she wasn't strong enough. Wasn't there.
Tears fell freely as she talked about fighting them, about how grief and rage had made her sloppy, had nearly gotten her killed. About how Kai had saved her. How they'd saved each other. About the moment she'd driven her knife into her great-grandfather's puppet and whispered an apology he couldn't hear.
"It wasn't him," she said, voice thick. "I *know* it wasn't him. Just a corpse dancing on strings. But it looked like him. Sounded like him. And killing him,even knowing he was already dead,it felt like losing him all over again."
Kai's hand found her shoulder, squeezed gently. "You did what you had to. We both did. And we made it out."
She nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing tears and dirt together.
Amie and Kael went next, their story punctuated by glances at each other that spoke of tensions still unresolved. The laboratory chamber. The massive Xenophore,intelligent, cunning, regenerating so fast they couldn't damage it faster than it healed.
Kael's voice was quiet when he mentioned using his healed hand, when he talked about the strength the serum had given him. "I couldn't have destroyed the core without it," he admitted, eyes on the floor. "Couldn't have struck hard enough, fast enough. The healing... it saved us. Maybe."
Amie's expression was complicated,worry and understanding and lingering anger all mixed together. "We'll talk about it more," she said. "Later. When we're not..." She gestured vaguely at the chamber, at our collective state of barely holding together.
Then it was our turn.
Xeno spoke first, and his words were sparse, stripped down to bare facts. The chamber. Azael appearing. The fight,brutal, overwhelming, their leader stronger and faster than anything we'd faced. Pride incarnate.
I filled in details Xeno left out. How Azael had swatted me aside like I weighed nothing. How he'd caught Nyx mid-flight and nearly crushed her. How Xeno had fought with that horrific efficiency that was more slaughter than combat, shovel breaking bones and splitting flesh, relentless even when it seemed hopeless.
How Nyx had climbed Azael's back like a feral thing and gouged out his eyes while Xeno battered him down. How the three of us,broken and small and desperate,had brought down something that should have been immortal.
"And then?" Kai prompted gently when I paused.
"And then he regretted it," I said quietly. "At the end. When he was dying. He said Pride had corrupted him. That he'd been a doctor before. Someone who tried to help people. But the sin had whispered, promised greatness, and he'd listened. And it consumed him. Turned him into... into what we fought."
Silence fell heavy.
"He asked Xeno to end it," I continued. "Said he was tired. Tired of being what he'd become. Tired of hurting people. He wanted it over."
More silence.
Finally Kael spoke, voice rough. "Even monsters can regret what they've become. That doesn't absolve them. Doesn't undo the harm. But..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "I don't know. Maybe there's mercy in that. That at the end, they can see what they've lost."
I wanted to tell them about what came after. About the girl appearing, mocking Azael's corpse. About the photograph she'd thrown at Xeno.
But when I looked at him, at the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his hand rested near his pocket where the photo was hidden, I couldn't.
Not yet.
Not without his permission.
"There was someone else," I said instead. "A girl. She appeared after. Said Azael was useless. Disappointing. Then she left."
It wasn't the whole truth, but it was enough for now.
The others accepted it with nods, too exhausted to press for details, and I saw gratitude flash across Xeno's blindfolded face. A slight relaxation in his posture. Permission to keep that pain private for a little longer.
We sat in silence again, processing everything, and I noticed Nyx's wing had visibly improved in just the fifteen minutes we'd been sitting. The torn membrane had closed another inch, the bent bones straightening with tiny crackling sounds that made me wince. Her breathing was easier too, ribs knitting together.
"We need to find the scroll," Kael said finally, voice tired but determined. "That's why we came. Why we fought through all this. We can't leave without it."
He was right.
We couldn't.
Slowly, painfully, we pushed ourselves to our feet,some faster than others, all of us moving like we'd aged fifty years in the past few hours. We spread out across the chamber, searching, weapons ready in case this was another trap.
It didn't take long.
In the exact center of the room, positioned so perfectly it had to be intentional, stood a pedestal.
It was maybe four feet tall, carved from the same black marble as the floor, the red veins running through it in patterns that were almost hypnotic if you stared too long. And draped over the top was a cloth,not fabric, not exactly.
Skin.
Human skin, tanned and preserved, stretched and treated until it was supple as leather. I could see the pores, the fine hairs, the slight variations in tone that spoke of what this had been before someone had turned it into a covering.
My stomach turned.
Beneath the skin-cloth, rolled and waiting, was the scroll.
Ancient parchment, yellowed with age, tied with a ribbon that might once have been red but had faded to rust-brown. The edges were brittle, cracking slightly where they'd been rolled too tight for too long.
Beside it, scattered across the pedestal's surface, were papers. Notes. Dozens of sheets covered in cramped, obsessive handwriting that I recognized from the diagrams we'd seen in the laboratory.
Azael's handwriting.
Kael reached the pedestal first, his healed hand steady as he carefully lifted the skin-cloth and set it aside,trying not to think about what it was, who it had been. He picked up the scroll with reverence, hands gentle on the fragile parchment.
"He deciphered part of it," Kael breathed, eyes scanning the notes. "Azael. He translated sections. Made annotations. Theories."
We gathered around him, reading over his shoulder, voices low as we took turns reading passages aloud.
The scroll itself was written in Old Script,the formal language used before the Fall, back when humanity was unified under the previous civilization. Most of it was degraded, faded, or simply too archaic for us to parse. But Azael had done the work we couldn't, translating key sections into modern language, adding his interpretations in the margins.
What we read made my blood run cold.
*"The First Book speaks of the beginning. Before the Fall. Before the Marks. Before the sins were given flesh and set loose upon the world.*
*Our ancestors were offered a bargain by something ancient. The texts call it the Primordial. A being of vast power, neither god nor devil but something older. Something that existed before such distinctions had meaning.*
*The Primordial offered knowledge. Power. The secrets of life and death, of creation and destruction. In exchange, it asked only for restraint. For boundaries to be respected. For certain doors to remain closed.*
*Our ancestors agreed.*
*But they lied.*
*They took the knowledge offered. They learned the secrets. They gained the power to extend life, to cure disease, to reshape flesh and bone and spirit. They built a civilization that would have been paradise.*
*And then they wanted more.*
*They broke into spaces they'd promised to leave alone. They opened doors that had been sealed for reasons they didn't care to understand. They took and took and took until the Primordial could no longer ignore the violation.*
*The price for their betrayal was the Fall.*
*The Primordial didn't destroy them outright,that would have been mercy. Instead, it cursed them. Cursed their descendants. Cursed the very *world* they'd built.*
*The Seven Deadly Sins,Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth,which had always existed as abstract concepts, as human failings, were given form. Given power. Set loose to corrupt and consume.*
*The Marks appeared,symbols of judgment carved into flesh, passed down through bloodlines, connecting the descendants to the sins of their ancestors.*
*And the Xenophores... The Xenophores were humans sins that had taken form, by exposure to things that should have stayed buried. They became monsters. Hungry things. Echoes of what humanity had tried to steal.*
*This is our inheritance. Our curse. The price of our ancestors' pride and greed and relentless hunger for more."*
The notes ended there, but Azael had added more in the margins, his handwriting increasingly frantic as he connected dots we couldn't see.
*"I was wrong. I thought the First Book would contain salvation. A way to undo the curse. To free humanity from the sins that plague us.*
*But it doesn't.*
*It contains judgment.*
*The Primordial isn't gone. It's waiting. Watching. And certain Marks,the ones that carry the deepest connection to the original sin,are KEYS.*
*When enough keys wake. When enough Marks activate fully. When the conditions are right...*
*The Primordial returns.*
*Not to save us.*
*To finish what it started.*
*The goddess the people worship,she isn't mercy. She's PUNISHMENT. She's the Primordial's agent. Its judge. Its executioner.*
*And the Mark that wakes,the one prophesied to appear in the final days—"*
The writing dissolved into scribbles after that. Symbols that hurt to look at, that made my eyes water and my head pound. Diagrams that defied geometry, that seemed to shift and twist when I tried to focus on them.
Madness.
The end of Azael's notes was pure madness.
We stood in horrified silence, processing what we'd read.
"So we're cursed," Kai said finally, voice hollow. "All of humanity. Because our ancestors broke a promise they made to something ancient and incomprehensible. And now we're paying for it. Forever."
"The Marks aren't random," Amie said slowly, working through it. "They're connected. To the original sin. And Yona's Mark..." She looked at me, and I saw fear in her eyes. "You're a key."
I looked down at my arm, at the symbol I couldn't see but could always feel, burning under my skin.
A key.
To what? The Primordial's return? The end of everything?
"We need to find the First Book," Kael said, voice firm despite the revelation. "If Azael was right,if the Marks are keys,then we need to understand what they unlock. What's coming. Maybe there's a way to stop it. To break the curse instead of fulfilling it."
"Or maybe we're all damned and there's nothing we can do about it," Lira said bitterly.
"Then we die trying," Kai countered. "But we don't give up. Not while we're still breathing."
We stood there, the weight of what we'd learned pressing down on us like physical mass, and then Kael pointed to the doors leading off the main chamber.
"We should search the rest," he said. "If Azael learned this much, there might be more. Evidence. Clues. Anything that might help."
We split up, checking the rooms that branched off from the main hall. Each door we opened revealed new horrors, new evidence of what Pride had driven Azael to become.
The first room was another laboratory, but larger than the one Amie and Kael had fought in. The walls were lined with massive glass tanks,ten feet tall, five feet wide,filled with murky fluid that had once been clear. And floating in those tanks were... things.
Bodies.
Hybrids.
Human and Xenophore merged together in ways that violated nature. I saw a torso that was human from the waist up but ended in tentacles below. Arms that terminated in claws like Nyx's but attached to normal human shoulders. A face that was half-human, half something with too many eyes and a mouth that split vertically instead of horizontally.
And they were alive.
Not moving. Not conscious, maybe. But alive.
Their eyes were open, tracking us as we moved through the room. Watching with expressions that might have been pleading or accusing or both.
"He was trying to create something," Amie said, reading notes scattered on a workbench. "Perfect vessels for the sins. Bodies that could contain them without being consumed. He thought if he could engineer the right host, he could control them. Become them. Become... god."
"Blasphemy," Kai whispered, and his voice shook with rage and horror.
We found another room,an altar chamber. The walls were carved with symbols that made my eyes hurt, geometric patterns that shifted when viewed peripherally. The altar itself was black stone, stained dark with dried blood,so much blood that it had pooled in the carved channels and never fully dried, just thickened into something like tar.
Candles surrounded it,hundreds of them, different sizes, made from wax that wasn't quite the right color. Human fat? I didn't want to know.
And behind the altar, carved into the wall in letters three feet high, was text in Old Script. Kai translated haltingly:
"Through blood and sacrifice, through flesh and pain, through the breaking of all that is sacred, I call to that which sleeps. I offer myself as vessel. I offer my Pride as gateway. I seek to become MORE."
A summoning ritual.
Azael had tried to summon something. The Primordial? One of the sins? Something else entirely?
Whatever it was, it hadn't worked.
Or maybe it had worked too well.
The next room made Kael stop dead in the doorway, his face draining of color.
It was a chapel. Or had been, once.
Pews lined both sides, facing a raised platform where a pulpit should have stood. The walls were decorated with faded frescoes showing religious scenes,creation, salvation, judgment. But someone had defaced them. Scratched out faces. Painted over sacred text. Added new symbols that perverted the original meaning.
And on the platform, crucified on a cross made of twisted metal, was a Bible.
Pre-Fall. Ancient. The leather cover cracked but intact, the pages yellowed but preserved.
It had been impaled through the center with a spike of black iron, pinning it to the cross. The pages were torn,not accidentally but deliberately, ripped out and scattered across the floor. And in the margins of the remaining pages, written in what looked disturbingly like blood, were annotations.
Azael's handwriting again.
Mocking verses. Crossing out passages about mercy and love and redemption. Adding his own twisted interpretations that inverted everything sacred.
"There is no god but Power. No salvation but Strength. No redemption but PRIDE."
Over and over, variations on that theme, filling every available space.
Kai stepped forward slowly, reverently, and carefully pulled the spike free. The Bible fell into his hands, and he cradled it like it was a wounded child, tears streaming down his face.
"He desecrated everything," Kai whispered. "Everything sacred. Everything holy. Twisted it into worship of himself. Of the sin that consumed him."
We gave him a moment, standing in respectful silence while he held the ruined Bible.
Then we moved on.
More rooms. More horrors.
A gallery of paintings,all self-portraits of Azael, showing his transformation. The first few were normal, showing a handsome man with kind eyes and a gentle smile. A doctor. A healer. But with each successive painting, the corruption became more visible. The eyes colder. The smile more arrogant. The final painting showed what we'd fought,beautiful and terrible, Pride incarnate, barely human anymore.
A library filled with books bound in skin,human skin, stamped with symbols that hurt to look at. I opened one and immediately regretted it. The text was written in blood, describing rituals for binding souls, for consuming essence, for stealing life.
Dark magic.
Occult knowledge that should have been destroyed centuries ago, preserved here by someone who thought himself above consequences.
We found a room full of idols,statues of the Seven Deadly Sins rendered in grotesque detail. Each one was unique, disturbing, wrong. Pride stood seven feet tall, beautiful and terrible, eyes of fractured red. Greed clutched gold that dripped like blood. Lust writhed in poses that made me look away. Envy consumed itself, eating its own flesh. Gluttony was bloated and weeping. Wrath burned with eternal flame. Sloth decayed while still standing.
And all of them wept black tears from eyes that seemed alive, that tracked us as we moved through the room.
"We should destroy them," Lira said, knife raised.
"No," Kael said quickly. "Don't. Don't touch them. These are conduits. Channels. Breaking them might release what's contained. Or summon what they represent. Just... leave them."
We left them.
Moved on.
Found records in another room,journals documenting Azael's experiments. Names of people he'd used. Towns he'd destroyed. Xenophores he'd created or corrupted. The scope of his crimes was staggering. Hundreds dead. Maybe thousands. All in pursuit of knowledge and power and Pride.
And at the end of the journals, a final entry:
"I have failed. The vessel cannot contain what I sought. The Pride consumes rather than elevates. I am lost. And yet I cannot stop. Cannot turn back. Cannot do anything but continue on this path until someone stops me.
Perhaps that is mercy.
To be stopped before I destroy everything.
Let this castle stand as testament. As warning. As confession.
I was wrong.
And I cannot be forgiven."
We stood in the record room, surrounded by evidence of atrocities, and I felt sick. Not just physically,though my broken wrist and bruised chest were definitely making their presence known,but soul-sick. Contaminated by knowledge of what humans were capable of when consumed by sin.
"We should burn it," Kai said quietly. "All of it. This whole cursed place."
"We can't," Amie replied, practical even now. "The stone won't burn. And some of this... as horrible as it is... it's evidence. It's knowledge. About the curse. About the Marks. About what we're facing."
"So we take what we can carry and leave the rest," Lira decided. "The scroll. Azael's translations. Maybe some of the journals. Anything that might help us find the First Book."
We gathered what we could,the scroll secured carefully in Amie's pack, the translated notes, a few of the less disturbing journals that contained information rather than just catalogs of horror. The Bible Kael held like a treasured possession, refusing to leave it behind.
As we worked, I watched Nyx. Her wing was almost fully healed now,the membrane whole again, though still slightly translucent where it had torn, new tissue not quite matching the old. She could fold it properly now, tuck it against her back without pain visible on her face. Her ribs were better too, breathing easier, able to stand straight.
Xenophore regeneration.
How long before she was fully healed? Hours? A day?
How long before the rest of us recovered from injuries that would take humans weeks?
We reconvened in the main hall, laden with salvaged knowledge, and stood looking at each other in exhausted silence.
"So now what?" Kai asked.
"Now we find a way out of this place," Kael said. "And then we continue. Find the First Book. Learn the truth about the curse. Figure out how to break it instead of fulfilling it."
"Together," Amie added, looking at each of us in turn. "No more separating. No more secrets. We do this together or not at all."
"Together," we echoed.
As if summoned by our declaration, the far wall began to rumble. Stone grinding against stone, ancient mechanisms activating, and a massive archway opened,revealing not another passage but for an exit outside.
A way out.
We walked toward it slowly, carefully, weapons ready in case this was one final trap. But nothing stopped us. Nothing attacked.
The castle was letting us go.
We'd taken what we came for. Survived the games. Defeated Pride.
And learned truths that might doom us or save us or both.
As we crossed the threshold and felt actual wind on our faces,cold and clean and free of that sweet-rot smell,I looked back at the castle one last time.
It stood there, black and twisted and wrong, a monument to what Pride had built. To what corruption could do to even the best intentions.
And somewhere in those depths, whispers echoed.
Not Azael's voice.
Something older.
Deeper.
Waiting.
"Come on," Xeno said quietly, his first words since we'd reunited. "We need to move. Before it changes its mind."
We moved.
Together.
Broken and exhausted and traumatized.
But alive.
Still alive.
And carrying knowledge that might change everything.
For better or worse.