Zavara's voice unspooled into the tension, slow and too soft to trust, like velvet over rusted nails. "The King will hear your counsel. Come closer."
Ezreal stayed rooted. He didn't blink.
Something in the air scratched at the back of his mind, the way old hexes did before they bit. He could feel it behind his ribs—a hum, twitchy and wrong, like the breath before a spell rips loose. His gaze fixed on the throne. That crown, still perched there like it remembered what royalty felt like, had lost any gleam it ever had. Just a dead circle now, dulled by time or something meaner. It didn't even cast a shadow. But behind the King's open eyes, something moved—like heat warping the air, flickering in and out of sight.
The room dipped colder. Not wind, not draft. Just cold, like something else had started paying attention.
Then a voice leaked out from the black behind the throne. Not shouted, not even spoken like a man would speak. It just arrived. Low and slow. "The next audience… may step forward."
No one did.
No doors left open. No windows. Just the ruined hall, the bent crown, the woman in velvet, and a pressure that felt like the sea leaning on cracked glass.
Zavara stood by the throne, unmoving. Her dress spilled down the dais, dark red thick like old blood. The light off the torches etched strange patterns in her hair, symbols that didn't sit right. Her green eyes swept across them, not searching so much as weighing them one by one. She looked back to the king.
"You'll have to excuse him," she said, distant, not all the way here. "His sleep's been broken. I tried to mend it, but…"
Dax barked out, sharp as a cracked knuckle. "Mend what, exactly?"
Her fingers dug into the throne's arm. "A ritual. Divine-leaning, precise in its desperation. I was trying to keep the city from being swallowed whole."
Verek's words didn't rise, but they landed like stone pegs driven into frost. "Did it work?"
She let out a breath like she'd been holding it too long. "No. Or worse—it did, but not how I wanted."
Her gaze dropped, focused somewhere beneath the stone. "Below this castle, under the bedrock, there's more. Older things. Catacombs no one marked on a map, not even the early ones. I meant to pour light into that mess, flush it out. Heal the foundation. But the roots were already rotten. The crypts weren't crypts anymore—half-flooded vaults, swallowed temples so old even the sea forgot them."
The walls seemed to press in, quiet and close.
"One was for the Old One. The other, the Mad God. Their names have been scrubbed down to dust, their priests gone to salt and silence. But the rooms weren't empty." She stopped, voice thin now. "My ritual cracked something. Not open like a door. More like a wound."
Ezreal's brow twitched, just barely. His voice, though, stayed calm. "You woke gods?"
"No," Zavara whispered. The word barely landed. "But their blood came loose. It slides into dreams. Leaks into wells. It's in the mouths of anyone who sleeps too near the tide."
The torches spat, then stilled.
Caylen's voice came slow, stripped of its usual shine. "That'd explain the flavor. The magic here tastes... off. Like fruit that's been left too long in the sun."
"They're still bleeding," she said, voice hollow. "Their blood soaks through the stone, rides seawater, echoes in bone."
Verek narrowed his eyes. "And the King? He wasn't always like this. Did your ritual touch him too?"
She didn't meet his look. "Something crossed over. Something that doesn't blink or breathe or sleep. And it's still whispering, even when I can't hear it."
Silence followed, brittle and dry.
Dax broke it with a snort that carried no humor. "Let me guess. The sirens at the docks, those things in the cove. That's all part of this mess?"
She nodded once. Just once. "There's something under the bay. Old. Coiled. It sings to the drowned. Eats their dreams. Those sailors that come back... come back different."
Caylen didn't blink. His voice held only grim weight. "The Kraken?"
"It smelled the blood," she said. "Came for it. Like dogs come to fresh meat."
Tarrin Greystone's name didn't need saying. The weight of it sat there anyway.
Ezreal looked back to the throne, to the King who hadn't twitched through any of this. That stillness didn't feel like sleep anymore. It felt like siege.
"So what do you need us for?" he asked.
Her answer was slow, like something she didn't want to say but couldn't keep down. "I can't undo the ward. But maybe it can be steadied. There are deeper places. Places I won't go. I need people who aren't afraid of truth. Or madness."
She looked at Verek like she'd always known it would be him.
Dax's jaw twitched. "You want us to crawl down into the wound."
"I want you to see if it can be cut out," Zavara said. "Before it eats everything else."
"And if it can't?" Verek's tone stayed smooth, but the anger burned hot behind it.
"Then we'll know where the knife needs to fall."
That line didn't stir panic. It just settled. Quiet and heavy, like snow on graves.
Dax crossed his arms. Caylen rubbed at his palms like something itched beneath his skin. Ezreal didn't move, but the air around him prickled. Verek stood like carved marble, but his gaze stormed.
"The gods are bleeding under our boots," he said. "And Kings Port's choking on it."
Zavara watched him, something unreadable flickering behind her lashes. "You see it."
"I see enough," he replied, and it had the ring of iron.
Dax turned without waiting. "Then we don't stall. If there's black ahead, I want to meet it standing, not kneeling."
Ezreal followed. His voice stayed quiet, but his presence sharpened. "I need to pray. Not to gods. To whatever crawls between them."
His hands twitched. Already reaching for something that wasn't there yet.
"We'll need gear," Verek said, already halfway to the doors. "Lanterns that can hold against deep dark. Salves that don't spoil. Rations that don't rot. And Thimblewick."
Caylen let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "About time."
Zavara didn't try to stop them. Her words, when they came, felt like they came from another room. "The upper levels are still safe. For now. Gorran in the East Hall holds what's left of the good stores."
Caylen lingered, glancing at the king one last time. "And him?"
She didn't flinch. "Let him rest. He's not the king we need."
The doors opened by themselves. Light came through stained glass, the kind of light that remembered how to be holy but didn't have the strength for it anymore.
They stepped into it without fear. Just certainty.
Whatever had been pretending was done now.
Time to find the hand pulling the strings.
And cut it off.
The descent began in silence.