Lysander's breath hitched in his throat.
The voice—his name—it had been real.
His thoughts spun in chaotic circles, clawing for answers that didn't exist. His body remained frozen, his mind screaming for something, anything, that made sense.
Who said my name? Where are they? Do they know me? Do they know where we are?
Silence.
Then—light.
The gas lamps along the distant walls, long choked by dust and time, flickered to life. First one. Then another. And another.
A corridor revealed itself, stretching deeper into the temple's ruins. The floor, layered with ash and shattered stone, groaned beneath an unseen weight. The air thickened, the stale scent of time replaced by something sharper—iron, rust, blood.
Lysander's fingers curled.
It wants me to enter.
The realization crawled under his skin.
But he didn't move.
He couldn't.
What should I do?
His eyes flicked toward the entrance—still open, still possible.
I could run.
But even as he considered it, a sharp, searing burn flared through his arm.
"Agh!"
The pain struck like a blade driven through his palm.
Lysander staggered back, clutching his wrist, eyes widening as his skin pulsed with an eerie, shifting glow.
The mark on his hand bled light. Not normal light—something raw, unclean, unnatural.
It pulsed. Once. Twice. A slow, deliberate rhythm, like a second heartbeat.
"What the hell is this?"
His breathing grew ragged. The pain burrowed deep, an ache that wasn't just physical—it was something else entirely.
He forced himself to look up—to the ruins.
Something moved.
Soft. Deliberate. Footsteps.
His instincts screamed to run.
But something held him in place.
Fear? No. Something deeper. Something woven into the mark itself.
Lysander swallowed hard. His pulse hammered against his ribs.
A figure stepped into view.
Tattered cloth wrapped around its form, obscuring all but the faintest silhouette. Its posture was unnatural—too still, too rigid, as if it did not breathe.
It stood at the temple's threshold, silent.
Watching.
A sense of déjà vu clawed at Lysander's chest.
"I know them."
The thought came unbidden. But how?
His fingers tightened around the air where a weapon should be. His broken sword was gone.
The figure moved, its presence unnerving, like a painting staring back.
And then—it spoke.
"You were not meant to return."
The voice—wrong.
It did not belong to a single being. It layered upon itself, one voice folding into another, overlapping in a chorus of echoes.
"The Veil is not yet undone."
"He still watches."
Lysander's stomach turned to ice.
Who? Who watches?
The mark on his hand flared violently.
Fire—cold and searing at the same time—ripped through his veins. His knees buckled, his fingers digging into the dirt as his body convulsed from the shock.
The figure did not move.
The temple did.
Cracks split through the statues, their stone faces turning toward him in fractured, jagged motions.
The air groaned, heavy with something ancient. Dust trembled, rising from the ground in delicate spirals, as if the ruins themselves were exhaling.
The temple—no, something deeper—was responding.
Lysander clenched his fist, his hand trembling violently.
"Stop. Stop. STOP!"
The pain refused.
The light from his palm pulsed brighter, brighter, blinding—
The figure was gone.
Erased.
One moment it had been there. The next—the air swallowed it whole.
But the Veil had already shifted.
The temple began to shake.
The walls bent. Folded. Moved.
The entrance—gone.
Lysander was trapped.
His breath came ragged. His vision blurred. His limbs felt less real by the second, as though the Veil had begun unraveling him, thread by thread.
A moment of weightlessness crushed down on him.
For a fraction of a second, he was somewhere else.
A glimpse.
Cold. Endless.
Something vast. Watching. Waiting.
Lysander gasped—his mind split between two places at once.
Then, just as quickly—
A whisper.
Clear. Unmistakable. Right behind him.
"Wake up."
Everything shattered.