Something had gone wrong with the air. Not just off—wrong. Like it was trying to hum, but the song had melted. The sound rolled low and sticky, vibrating behind Verek's ears like fever dreams catching fire in a church bell. Each note warped, sour and thick, the way milk smells when it's sat too long in heat. The moss along the corridor walls curled in tight, like it was flinching from a bad touch. Even the glowing plants—usually so proud in their faint shimmer—seemed to shrink back, tucking themselves into crevices with a nervous kind of intelligence. The stones beneath their boots began to seep something foul. Thick, yellow, oily stuff that slid between the cracks and pooled like sweat from the marrow of something ancient.
Then it arrived.
A shape peeled itself out of the shadows with a crawl that didn't involve moving. Limbs floated forward in slow jerks, too long and bent in places that didn't make sense. It was like watching someone stretch a body made of wax over invisible bones and then forget where the knees should go. Bits of old ceremonial robes clung to its form, tattered silk twisting as if caught underwater, drifting with every breath the thing didn't take.
The skin—or whatever passed for it—looked stretched too thin. Glossy, colorless, and pulled over blue veins that pulsed like they'd been stitched on after the fact. Nothing about it looked alive, but it didn't look dead either. It hovered in that uncanny space between remembering life and pretending not to miss it.
And the face. Gods, the face wasn't a face at all. It was liquid—mirror-slick and spinning slow. No features. Just a surface that caught things it had no business showing. A child's laugh—too clear, too bright. A last breath that hung in your throat long after it should've passed. A crown snapping in two, buried in mud, forgotten by time and ungrieved by history.
Then the voice came. Not a voice anyone could hear with ears. It just pressed itself into their heads. Cold. Loud. Familiar in the way trauma is.
You will suffer unformed. Welcome.
The corridor buckled like ribs pulled too tight around a scream. The walls clenched inward. The floor flexed underfoot, then snapped back like a spine cracking after too many years of bending wrong. Then it all jerked loose at once, like the world had tried to blink and got stuck halfway.
It lunged.
But not with limbs. Not physically. It dove through them, through whatever kept their minds tethered upright. Verek's thoughts tilted sideways, as if gravity suddenly picked a different direction to obey. The ceiling broke apart, then stitched itself back together in reverse. A staircase unfurled from the air and immediately scattered into moths, which turned to ash before hitting the ground. Glyphs on the wall burst into life, pulsing deep red, sticky and raw, like open wounds still trying to scab over.
Dax was already in motion. He didn't think—just roared from someplace buried deep in his ribs and charged, fists swinging wild. But the air around the thing didn't bend. It rejected the blow. The moment his knuckles got close, something shifted. Dax crumpled, limbs folding wrong. No impact. Just an invisible slap that took the fight out of him like a rug yanked from under a man already off-balance. He hit the ground hard. The air wheezed out of him in a gasp that sounded too empty to belong to lungs.
Ezreal slid in close, shoulder to Dax's, breath ragged. "Don't fight it like it's got a spine," he snapped. His voice was sharp, clipped, panicked but focused. "Anchor it. Force it to hold shape. But don't give it anything real."
Verek was already moving. His hands worked on instinct. Staff spun in a tight arc. The air cracked like dry branches breaking under a weight. Sigils burst from the staff, bright and fast—marks of language and order, floating midair like stars on fire. They wove around the thing in jagged loops, trying to define the shape of something that refused to be shaped. The cage locked in for a second. Just a second.
Then it slipped free. Not by breaking it. Just by not obeying the rules.
It poured between the gaps like smoke refusing to be held. Then something worse happened—it laughed. Not sound. Not even breath. Just a cold feeling in their bones.
It was the kind of laugh you feel in the back of your teeth. A funeral you never went to. The second you realize no one's going to remember your name a hundred years from now.
Caylen stepped forward. He opened his mouth—and sang.
A single note. Flat. Raw. Scraped out of his throat like something chipped off a rock and sharpened against grief. "This is not your audience," he snarled, voice cracked and bright with fury. "Not your dream. Not your end."
His voice hit the creature's humming sound like bone snapping against steel. The mirror-face twitched. A ripple skated across the surface. It opened, not with light, but images. A child's sketch drawn in crayon. A scream echoing through a hollow cave. The taste of pine and blood in cold air.
Ezreal had already moved to the far wall. His fingers dug something sharp and white from a pouch—looked like bone, probably was—and he began to carve. The symbols scratched deep. Every motion sparked heat. Each line flared and caught fire like kindling. Verek followed, chanting under his breath. Old words. Ones that pulled at the walls and made the stones groan like they didn't want to listen anymore.
The air hissed. Burning magic. Searing logic. A spell that didn't just shape power—it dared power to behave.
Caylen's voice cracked again. Didn't matter. The break made it real.
Dax dragged himself upright. Blood trickled from his nose. His lip had split. His hand left a red smear where it braced against the wall. He wasn't yelling anymore. His mouth twisted into something sharp, almost smiling. "Enough."
Verek turned toward him. "Drive it," he said, breath coming hard now. "Force it down the tunnel. Keep pressure. No space for it to turn."
The creature recoiled—not in fear. It looked annoyed, like a man being shoved out of his own kitchen. Ezreal's runes locked together, snapped into place with a sound like a jaw clenching. Caylen's voice hit the same pitch. Verek whispered one final word. Soft. Old. Sharp as broken glass.
"Banish."
It didn't scream. Instead, it dragged the sound out of them. Every scar on their bodies flared hot. Every wound they'd ever buried woke up and twisted inside them. Their teeth ached. Something behind their eyes started to hum. Then, finally, the thing folded inward. It pulled itself into itself and vanished.
Gone.
Silence pressed in like wet wool.
Dax leaned back against the wall, gasping. "I hate this place," he muttered, wiping a streak of blood down his cheek with the back of his arm.
Ezreal coughed. The ash on his face smeared into a strange shape as he wiped it away. "Yeah, well," he rasped, "it hates us too. Probably means we're going the right way."
Verek looked at his own hand. He'd marked it during the ritual. Sigils meant to fade were still there. Worse, they moved. Not just flickering. Crawling. They shifted under his skin like veins learning a new pattern. He could hear it whispering now. Not humming. Words. Ones he didn't recognize, but still understood deep in his chest, like a nightmare you've had too many times to forget.
He clenched his fist and kept walking.
The tunnel kept tightening. Not physically—though it felt that way—but emotionally. The light dulled. Blue, pulsing like something trying to stay alive under glass. The air grew heavy again. Damp, like lungs full of stagnant water that still tried to breathe.
Then came the sound.
Not footsteps. Not metal. A soft chime, like wind through a broken window. Pretty in the way a smile with no warmth can be. Pretty and absolutely wrong.
The tunnel split.
To the left, the walls bent in strange curves. Ribs turning inward, spiraling toward something that didn't want to be found. The right sloped downward. Wet. Glossy. Flesh-like. Waiting.
Verek's hand flared again. This time from the floor.
"It's guiding us," he said. His voice was hoarse now. Not just from the spell. From everything. "Or pretending to."
Ezreal didn't even slow down. "Doesn't matter. We're past choosing."
They followed the slope.
As soon as they stepped on the downward incline, the light vanished. Not dimmed—snuffed. Caylen's orb went out.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Ezreal reached for the wall, hand scraping something slick. "Stay close!" he snapped.
But no one answered.
He spun.
No shapes. No shadows. Nothing.
Panic surged.
The dark slid under his skin. He reached for magic.
Pain answered.
Footsteps.
Behind him.
He turned fast.
A shape loomed. Wreathed in fire. Cloaked in smoke.
His father.
The demon-lord.
"Still running?" the figure asked.
Ezreal stepped back. The corridor behind him folded in like a wound trying to heal too fast.
"You're not real," he hissed.
The thing grinned. "Neither are you."
Elsewhere—
Verek stood on the edge of a space that didn't obey physics. A chasm opened up beneath him. Eyes blinked in the dark. One of them spoke, and it was his voice.
"You never left the Morning Star. You were never meant to."
"You are the spell."
His spellbook disintegrated. The ash whispered things he hadn't read, but somehow still knew. Names of the dead. Names of the future.
Caylen stood in a field of snow that hadn't been there a moment ago. Every flake cut like glass. His sister stood in the distance. Her eyes were wide and empty. "Why did you leave me?" she asked.
He ran.
She didn't follow.
Her image faded like breath on a mirror.
Dax woke in a field littered with corpses. All of them had his face.
His crew. His brothers.
He didn't freeze.
He screamed.
The bodies whispered back.
They remembered him.
Then—
The corridor convulsed.
Walls took one long, wheezing breath.
And the floor dropped.
They didn't fall down.
They fell inward.
No impact.
No scream.
Just space.
They landed inside something vast.
A chamber. Hollow, waiting.
Above, the ceiling burned.
Stars hung low enough to bite. Real ones. Cold and sharp and spinning. They flickered like lanterns over a sea that had no name.
And in the center of it all, the light bent.
It bent wrong.