After the darkness of the shadow path, the silence of the Old Capital was somehow worse.
Where once spires had kissed the clouds and streets pulsed with song, now only ruin remained. Vines strangled statues. Towers slumped like broken limbs. Roads were cracked ribs in the earth.
The heart of Eldoria had stopped beating.
They passed through a great stone archway, half-collapsed, carved with faded runes. Elara ran her fingers along one glyph, tracing it as if touching a memory.
"This city once glowed like starlight," she whispered. "Now it mourns."
The buildings loomed, hollow-eyed, watching. Fog clung low and pale. Every echo stretched too far.
"This is it," Lyra said, her voice low. "The kingdom's soul, reduced to bones."
Kai stepped forward, gaze heavy.
"Then we breathe life into it again."
They moved through streets lined with rot and ruin. Skeletons in rusted armor lay where they had fallen, swords still gripped. Books, half-burned and weather-worn, lay open in courtyards. A child's toy sat undisturbed on a step, green moss creeping over its wooden frame.
Elara paused before a shattered fountain, kneeling beside a pile of bones.
"Some stayed. They believed someone would return."
The stillness was pierced only by distant caws of carrion birds and the soft rustle of unseen things in the fog.
The deeper they ventured, the stranger the city became.
Rooms warped by Sgaazoz's magic twisted in geometry that defied reason, doorways that led nowhere, stairs that curved upward into shadow, mirrors that reflected a younger version of the viewer's face.
Torvin grunted, smashing one such mirror with the butt of his axe.
"Hate this place."
They pressed on. Hidden traps lay in wait, some mechanical, some magical. Elara defused glyphs that could turn blood to fire. Lyra spotted sigils drawn with bone-dust.
And always, they were watched.
Eyes glinted from behind broken windows. Spies of Sgaazoz. Or worse.
Days passed. The city unfolded like a riddle, slow and cruel.
It was Elara's visions, and the Sunstone's soft glow, that guided them to the old palace. A sprawling ruin of marble and thorn, choked with ivy, its windows shattered, its banners long faded.
In its heart: a door. Tall, sealed with runes older than language. Stone golems stood sentinel on either side, unmoving.
"The final guardians," Elara said. "They test the blood. The heart. The will."
The golems stirred.
Massive stone limbs cracked and shifted. Blue light blazed in their hollow eyes.
They attacked.
Steel and stone clashed.
Torvin's axe sparked uselessly against the golem's hide. Lyra fired arrow after arrow, each one shattering harmlessly on impact. Elara summoned flame, but it dissipated before it reached them.
"Nothing breaks them!" she cried.
Kai stood still. The Sunstone pulsed at his chest.
He stepped forward, raising the fragment high.
The runes on the door ignited, glowing gold. Light arced outward, striking the golems.
They froze.
Cracks bloomed across their bodies, like lightning across ice.
Then, collapse. The golems shattered into dust.
The door swung open.
Beyond, darkness waited. And within it…
The Sword of Kings.