The air inside the fortress was a suffocating weight, thick with age and silence—like stepping into a memory the world itself had tried to forget. Each step Kaen and Lira took echoed as if the walls themselves were listening.
Symbols and carvings lined the stone corridors—twisted glyphs that pulsed faintly, neither alive nor dead. Kaen felt them clawing at the edges of his mind, whispering truths in a language his blood almost remembered.
"Stay close," he murmured, his voice swallowed by the vastness.
Lira nodded, blade in hand, though even she knew steel was meaningless here.
As they ventured deeper, the whispers began—at first like wind through a grave, then rising into voices. Not loud, but sharp.
"Return…"
"Awaken…"
"Blood of the Firstborn…"
Kaen stumbled as a vision slammed into him. The corridor vanished. In its place: an ancient city wreathed in flame, towers crumbling into oceans of ash, shadows weeping fire.
He fell to one knee, gasping.
"Kaen!" Lira's grip was firm, grounding. "Don't lose yourself."
The pendant at his chest glimmered faintly—protecting him. Pushing back the madness.
He forced himself upright. "We're getting close."
"Close to what?" Lira asked, but there was no time to answer.
A deep crack echoed. The stone beneath them split—and from it rose black mist, thick and sentient, writhing with hunger.
From the mist emerged a figure.
Not like the Ash Heralds. Something far older.
Its body was cloaked in flowing shadow, its face hidden behind a fractured, eyeless mask. In one hand it gripped a broken staff from which hung dozens of silver chains, each one twitching like a living thing.
Kaen's breath caught. "The Gatekeeper…"
The creature turned toward them, and its voice was like mountains groaning.
"You carry the Betrayer's blood. You should not have come."
Lira stepped forward, voice steady. "We're not here to desecrate. We only seek passage."
The Gatekeeper laughed. A cold, brittle sound. "There is no passage. There is only binding. You were written into the stone long before you were born."
Kaen's jaw clenched. Inside, the embers stirred—stronger, hotter. His mother's voice flickered in his thoughts.
Stand.
He stepped forward.
"I didn't come for permission," he said, raising his hand.
The Gatekeeper shrieked and attacked. Chains flew like vipers, snapping through the air.
Kaen met the first strike with raw instinct. His hand ignited with light—a flare of unstable power—and he caught the chain. It slammed into him with crushing force, but he didn't yield.
The Gatekeeper recoiled.
Lira threw her dagger, but it passed harmlessly through the mist. "Of course," she muttered, eyes scanning for weakness.
Kaen's gaze locked onto the mask. Behind it—just beneath the eye-line—a shard of light flickered, faint but steady.
"There!" he shouted.
With a surge of strength, Kaen lunged. The pendant flared as he drove it into the shard.
The fortress roared.
The Gatekeeper screamed—an ancient, echoing wail—before its form unraveled into a storm of black mist, vanishing into the stone.
Silence reclaimed the hall.
Kaen collapsed to one knee, his breath ragged. Lira knelt beside him.
"You alright?"
He nodded, eyes still glowing faintly. "Better than him."
Together, they stood. Ahead, the corridor stretched on—darker, deeper, and hungrier.
Kaen stared into it. "Something's waiting."
Lira smirked. "Then let it wait."
Together, they stepped into the shadows once more—where embers still burned and the voices of gods long forgotten whispered through the stone.