The fire died without a final crackle, its bluish glow retracting into a ghostly shimmer before vanishing entirely, swallowed by the glacial void that surrounded them. Nothing remained, not even a single ember to testify it had ever burned. Only a deep, unfathomable darkness lingered, closing in around them like the jaws of a beast ready to snap shut.
Brann moved first.
With a fluid, silent grace, he rose, more specter than man. His long black coat slipped from his shoulders like a stream of shadow. Seeing him this way, alert and unmoved, Gaël understood: the former Brother hadn't slept. He had stood watch, a sentinel guarding their fleeting rest.
"We move," Brann said, his voice low and unwavering.
Gaël got to his feet, heart still heavy with the disquieting truths from the night before. Each step felt like it deepened the turmoil within him. The Light-Drainer haunted his thoughts, an accursed weapon said to tear the very essence of Lumen from its victims. Could it be real, or was it merely another dark legend whispered to sow fear? And the abomination they were chasing... was it truly a corrupted beast, or the pawn of something far worse?
As they neared the edge of the Threshold, the ground began to tremble. A strange vibration crawled across the stone floor, slithering toward them like a serpentine shadow, barely noticeable at first, then pulsing, insistent. Like the breath of a slumbering giant.
The rock beneath their feet shuddered with a sound deep and guttural, almost... alive.
Gaël froze.
Something was crawling. Something was coming.
A black wave surged along the ground, slithering through the cracks like a living tide. Wherever it passed, the stone melted, warped, and sank, like wax beneath an invisible flame. The terrain became unstable, shifting, consumed by an ever-expanding lake of shadow.
A terrible chill climbed Gaël's spine. A fear raw and primal.
This isn't normal… This isn't natural…
The black lake stretched, inexorable, devouring walls, reliefs, perspective itself, a liquid void, ravenous and unbound.
'What… what is this?' he thought, mind feverish. 'An Hollowborn? A Monarch? Or… something worse?'
Brann stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes, dull steel grey, locked onto the darkness with a chilling intensity.
"Prepare yourselves!"
Gaël threw off his pack and grabbed his weapon with both hands, but it was already too late.
The moment Brann spoke, the corrupted ground erupted around them, shattering like glass struck by a force unseen. Gaël screamed as gravity yanked him into a dizzying fall. Chaos assaulted his senses: the wind howling in his ears, shards of black crystal slicing at his skin.
But Brann… Brann moved like a defiant whisper against the chaos. While most would succumb to the fall, he resisted it, his movements imbued with an almost unreal precision. The Umbra-weave of his cloak caught the currents, stabilizing him mid-air. With a controlled twist of his torso, he scanned the cavern's depths in the blink of an eye. Then, grazing a jutting wall with the tips of his fingers, he pushed off in a seamless arc, redirecting his momentum to land with surgical precision on a slanted outcropping.
Maera moved like a feline, graceful, precise. With a swift twist of her hips, she angled toward a sloped section of the cavern. At the last moment, she drew her blade. Steel met stone with a screech as she skidded across the incline, sliding for several meters before driving her sword into the rock, halting her descent in one controlled burst of motion. Without missing a beat, she pulled out a rope, anchored it to a jagged outcrop, and began rappelling down.
Kaien, meanwhile, was laughing mid-fall, as if the plummet were some exhilarating game of chance he was thrilled to play. He twisted into an aerial roll, catching the residual Umbra currents that distorted the air around them. He channeled that warped energy to steer his descent, executing a maneuver with almost insolent grace, his sabre humming at his side as he rebounded off a stone column, landing with the poise of a dancer.
A few meters away, Rai was diving like an arrow. Arms stretched forward, he struck the ground at the exact moment of impact. His palms lit up, and in that instant, the effect rippled out: an invisible wave, a silent yet irresistible pulse that made the air itself vibrate.
Gaël felt it immediately, the pressure shifting beneath him. The air thickened, gravity stuttered, and for a breathless second, his fall slowed, as if the world hesitated to claim him.
But it was only a pause. A single stolen heartbeat.
Then it was gone. The weight returned. He was falling again.
He had no control. Adrenaline pounded behind his eyes, his heart hammering wildly. The unseen ground below was a sentence, a looming verdict ready to shatter his body like a broken marionette.
Then something wrapped around his chest, tight, swift.
A rope. No… a tail.
Gaël felt the fall slacken once more, caught by a force that was soft, elastic, almost alive. He flipped backward, the breath knocked from his lungs, and then, his feet brushed the stone.
Nono.
Clinging to Kaien's shoulder like a spark of light amid the gloom, the small creature had launched its tail mid-air to catch him. That long, living ribbon had unspooled through the void like a celestial silk thread, grasping him, slowing him, and finally… setting him down.
With the care of an offering placed upon an altar.
Gaël remained crouched, gasping, heart racing through dust and adrenaline. He looked up, stunned, and instinctively adjusted his tricorne, which had nearly flown off during the descent.
Around him, Brann, Maera, and Kaien were already on their feet, alert, tense.
They weren't alone.
The group had landed on a vast stone platform, arched like the crescent of a sinister moon hanging above a bottomless chasm. Below, a pit of black devoured every flicker of light, an abyss so deep it felt… aware. But that wasn't what froze Gaël's soul to the marrow.
What gripped his chest with dread was the thing embedded in the far wall of the cavern: a colossal eye, unholy and alive, pulsing faintly like some vile organ. Its iris was a swirling void, laced with glowing veins that undulated slowly, like languid, waiting serpents. All around it, the black stone buckled and twisted, writhing with the agony of harboring such an abomination. Tendrils of shadow coiled outward, delicate as calligraphy, diving into the rock as though drawing strength to keep the beast imprisoned.
And that eye… was watching them.
Gaël shivered, paralyzed by an invisible weight pressing down on his shoulders, unable to look away. It wasn't just a gaze, it was hunger. A soul-thirst. Smothering. Predatory.
"Where the hell have we landed?" Gaël whispered, his voice tight and strangled.
Kaien exhaled slowly, tension etched across his face.
"Something's been watching us since the beginning…"
"It's not the only thing here," Brann said coldly.
A faint sound, a whisper, barely audible, reached them. Then a voice echoed directly in their minds, insidious and smooth, like a shadow spreading across still water:
"You have disturbed its slumber."
Gaël spun around, instinctively tightening his grip on his oversized, brutal weapon.
Standing before him was a child, delicate features, draped in a wide, flowing cloak that hid his hands completely. His skin was pale, almost translucent, laced with veins of gold and black, as if a silent, eternal war between light and shadow raged just beneath the surface. But what truly froze Gaël's blood was the third eye, half-hidden beneath a dark blemish on the child's forehead.
The figure stood still, no breath, no movement, like a vision teetering on the edge of reality, ready to vanish. And yet, the voice rang again in their minds, clear and cold as steel:
"You have disturbed its slumber."
Maera clenched her jaw, fingers tightening on the hilt of her weapon, ready to draw, but Brann stopped her with a sharp, commanding gesture.
"Don't do anything stupid. Get your chimes out. Now."
Maera held back with difficulty, her whole body tense, likely from the fear simmering just beneath her fury.
"What is that ki..."
The words died in her throat as a shape slithered out behind the child.
A serpentine shadow, graceful and menacing, moved with eerie independence, as if it were a living limb. Too large, too fluid to belong to him… and yet too closely bound to be anything but a part of him.
Gaël's heart skipped a beat.
"…It's him," he whispered, dread creeping through every nerve. "The sentient Hollowborn."
Then the child smiled, softly, almost tenderly.
"Brann, I've missed you… little brother."