The desert winds howled like voices of the damned as Kairo's party marched toward the Spine of Thorns. The landscape had shifted—no longer barren, but jagged and unnatural. Mountains twisted like broken blades, their peaks clawing at the sky.
> "So this is it," Nalia whispered, clutching her staff tightly. "The place where even dragons come to die."
Jarek grunted as he climbed over a ridge. "They say the Spine was forged from the bones of the world's first Leviathan. Its blood turned the earth cursed and wild. This is where we go if we want to tear limits apart."
Kairo stood at the cliff's edge, looking down at a valley choked in thorns as tall as towers. Lightning danced above the jagged peaks, despite no clouds in sight.
> "If power lives here," he said, "then we claim it. Or we don't come back at all."
---
By midday, they reached the entrance to a massive ravine—a living corridor of razorvine and thorn-covered roots that twisted like serpents. A stone gate stood there, cracked and pulsing faintly.
A figure waited beneath it.
It wasn't human.
Tall, gaunt, and wrapped in shrouds of black leather, the gatekeeper had no face—only a glowing white mask that floated where its head should be.
> "Many enter," it said, voice hollow. "Few return."
> "We don't intend to return weak," Kairo said boldly.
The mask tilted. "Then offer something of value… or be devoured by the wild."
Kairo narrowed his eyes. "What kind of offering?"
The gatekeeper extended a skeletal hand. "A memory. One you cannot reclaim."
Silence fell.
Then Kairo stepped forward and pressed his palm to the gatekeeper's hand.
His vision went white.
---
FLASH
He was six.
Standing in the rain, his tiny fingers wrapped around a cracked toy sword. His mother knelt in front of him, tears blending with the downpour.
> "Be brave, Kairo. One day you'll do things even the sky will remember."
Then she was gone—dragged away by armored men. He screamed, reaching, but no one heard.
And just like that, the memory began to fade.
FLASH
Kairo fell to one knee, panting. A single tear escaped down his cheek, and he didn't even know why.
> "What… did you take?" he whispered.
> "Enough," the gatekeeper replied. "You may enter."
---
Inside the Spine, the world changed.
It was alive.
Vines slithered across the ground. Rocks blinked. Trees whispered in tongues Kairo didn't recognize. It was as if the forest itself watched them.
Jarek drew his blade, his knuckles white. "Don't touch anything that breathes unless you're ready to bleed."
> "Everything breathes here," Nalia muttered.
As they pressed forward, they passed shattered statues of warriors frozen mid-scream, their bodies turned to thorned stone. One of them bore the crest of an ancient guild thought long extinct.
> "They weren't strong enough," Kairo said. "But we will be."
---
Night fell quickly in the Spine, as if time itself bowed to the will of the forest. Kairo took first watch while the others slept—if sleep was even possible in a place like this.
He sat beneath a hollow tree that pulsed with blue veins of light. The Codex rune on his arm responded, glowing faintly. He reached out to it.
> "What are you?" he whispered.
The rune pulsed once.
Suddenly, a voice filled his mind—not the Codex, but something buried deeper.
> "You seek to become more than mortal," it said. "But each step forward takes you further from what you were."
> "Then I'll keep walking," Kairo said aloud.
The voice chuckled. "Then be warned: to ascend, you must break more than chains… you must shatter yourself."
---
Far away, in a floating palace of crimson glass, a woman with eyes like galaxies sipped from a golden cup.
> "He's entered the Spine," she murmured. "So… the godslayer walks the path of thorns."
A man clad in silver armor knelt before her. "Shall I send the Ravens, my lady?"
> "No. Let him climb," she said. "The higher he goes, the greater the fall."
---
Back in the Spine, Kairo stood and gazed at the impossible stars above.
He didn't know what waited deeper inside this cursed place.
But he knew one thing for certain:
> He would not fall.