The road west sloped away from Phokorus like the city was trying to cling to something it had already lost. The land beyond was no one's kingdom—cracked scrub, broken teeth of rock, fields split by old burns that never healed right. Ghost terrain. Verek walked ahead, hands clasped behind his back, silver-blonde hair pulled back but wind-tossed anyway. His boots made no more noise than thought.
He hadn't spoken in miles.
Behind him, Caylen was muttering to himself again, thumbing the corner of the artifact tucked into his satchel. The scroll looked like nothing—a fussy noble writ with gold ink and a wax seal, something a self-important magistrate might flaunt at a dinner party. But when they were alone, it moved. Lines of light shifted underneath the skin of the parchment, curling west, always west.
Dax sniffed the air like it had insulted him. "City stank's behind us, but something else is riding this wind."
"Less incense," Caylen murmured, voice gone flat. "More iron. Like metal left in blood."
"They're afraid," Ezreal said. He was near the back, but his voice cut through. "Right to be."
The wind changed. Not loud. Not sudden. Just a breath that didn't belong. Verek stopped without announcing it, his head turning slightly. He tasted the change before anyone else did—iron dust, sealed earth, that strange pressure in the air that meant something buried wanted out.
"We're close," Ezreal said behind him, but Verek didn't turn. He already knew.
"How close?" Dax asked, half a hand on his weapon.
Caylen tipped his head to the breeze. "Feels like a drumbeat about to snap tight. We're standing on the skin."
They crested the ridge, and the world dropped away.
Below was a valley that didn't exist on any map—certainly not Ezreal's, which had glowed with such smug certainty until now. It wasn't empty, but it didn't feel lived-in either. Stones jutted like broken teeth, rimmed around what might've been a keep or just a trick of rock and time. The angles leaned wrong, like the horizon had bent to make room for something that didn't fit.
The map in Ezreal's satchel pulsed faintly. A red point blinked right over the ruins.
Verek stepped forward, voice quiet but not soft. "It's in there."
Caylen dropped to a crouch beside him, scooped up a handful of dirt, sniffed it like a bard pretending to be a tracker. "Smells wrong. Like a forge that cooled too fast. Bitter smoke and regret."
"Red shard," Dax muttered. "Fire, wrath. Break-everything kind of energy."
Ezreal nodded. "So the place guarding it... should repel whoever wants it most."
Caylen raised an eyebrow. "Hotheads. Battle junkies. Sound like anyone we know?"
Dax didn't blink. "Sounds like me."
The air tightened, thick in the lungs. Not heavy with hate—just... waiting. The way an old predator might wait, still and coiled, judging if what walked into its den was worth pouncing on.
They didn't speak as they descended.
The path wasn't carved. It wasn't even deliberate. Just the memory of a road pressed into earth by something heavy and long gone. The stones bore strange grooves—some wide enough for a hand, others scarred with claw marks or carved symbols that looked like writing but stuttered halfway through.
Caylen ran his fingers across one. "Writing's half-formed. Not old, just... unfinished."
Ezreal stepped in, gaze sharp. "No. That's intentional."
Dax spat into the dirt. "So it's a trap."
"Invitation," Verek said, and the word settled like stone. "For someone who won't ask questions."
The gate of the ruin tilted inward, one half caved in, the other too clean, like someone had cut it yesterday. Inside, the keep didn't obey the rules of sane architecture. Rooms leaned, swallowed one another. A staircase climbed, then twisted back down into its own ribs.
"This place is wrong," Caylen muttered, shaking his head.
"It's a test," Dax said, stepping in without hesitation. "For people like me."
Verek followed. The others came close behind. There was no sense in pretending they could face this alone.
The moment the last boot crossed the threshold, the chamber behind them sealed. No slam. Just a sound like a door deciding you didn't deserve a second chance.
The first chamber was round and wide and too still. Seven swords stabbed into the floor. None of them matched. Some rusted, others gleamed. Each from a different era, or maybe different stories entirely.
Caylen spoke first, voice low. "It's a choice."
Ezreal looked at Dax. "Pick."
Dax didn't argue. Didn't posture. He walked to the plainest sword of the lot—a chipped blade with no crossguard and a leather-wrapped grip that looked like it had seen three wars and regretted all of them.
"This one."
He pulled it free.
The floor buckled. Not violently—just a deep protest that rumbled under the skin.
Ezreal's hand went to his gauntlet, light flaring along the ridges.
"Brace," Verek said.
But nothing fell. The quake passed. The wall ahead split open, slow and smooth.
Dax stared at the sword like he expected it to bite him. His knuckles were bone-white on the grip.
They kept moving.
The keep didn't lay traps in the usual way. It judged. Each room twisted logic just enough to press down on the mind. One room echoed with screams from nowhere, timed to their breath. Another filled with mirrors, and not the fun kind—these showed what you'd become if everything you feared got the last word.
Verek's reflection stared back at him with stars burning out in its eyes and a voice too loud for his mouth. He watched it for a second longer than the others before walking on.
By the time they reached the final chamber, they looked like they'd crawled out of someone else's nightmares. Sweating, scraped. Dax had a shallow cut under one eye. Caylen's hair stuck to his face, pale with something like shock. Even Ezreal looked rattled, mouth pressed in a line too tight for words.
The shard hovered above a broken altar, red as melted glass. It pulsed, not with warmth, but the cold rhythm of something that knew fire from the inside out.
Ezreal stepped forward.
As his hand neared it, the air seized. Tight. Like something invisible was suddenly watching through all their eyes.
"You are not ready."
The voice came from the walls, curling and dark, like smoke that could bite.
Caylen flinched. "What the hell—?"
Dax raised the sword. "Show yourself."
Ezreal didn't move his hand. "It's not here to be guarded. It's here to be earned."
Verek stepped forward now, shoulders squared. "Then let it see us."
Shadows bled from the cracks in the stone, crawling up like spilled oil. They thickened near the altar until they took shape—tall, faceless, wrapped in smoke. No armor. Just long limbs, eyes like coals, and a silence that pressed on their thoughts.
"You carry no right," it said.
Verek met its gaze. "We carry responsibility. That'll do."
The thing lunged.
The room came alive.
Flame burst from the altar. Ezreal drew his sideblade, wards flaring as he pivoted. Dax ducked under a streak of heat and slammed shoulder-first into the thing, blade out. Caylen flung a burst of harmonic light into the smoke, his voice cracking on the final note.
Verek didn't cast. He raised his hand and turned it, fingers twitching like they were turning pages only he could see. The fire bent. Just slightly. Enough to open a window in the chaos. His other hand snapped forward—arcane sigils flashed white-blue in the air and anchored the shadows down like stakes.
"Strike the spine," he called, voice cutting through the roar.
Dax obeyed.
The blade—still plain, still dull—bit into the smoke-thing's core.
It shrieked. Not a scream, but a sound of something being unmade.
Then silence.
The shard pulsed once. And dropped.
Verek caught it.
It burned, but he didn't flinch. He turned it in his palm like a scholar examining a rare stone.
"Let's go," he said.
No one argued.
And behind them, the ruin began to collapse. Not violently. Just a slow folding inward, like it had done its job and no longer needed to exist.