The ruin had sealed behind them like jaws clenched over secrets it had no intention of sharing. Not clean ones. The air hung thick with ash, bitter on the tongue and warm like it had come straight out of something's last breath. It settled on their shoulders and in their lungs, left their coats looking dusted with old regrets.
Verek stood still. His back to the others, eyes fixed on the ruin like it might open its mouth and swallow them again if he blinked. His jaw was tight, locked so hard it hurt. He didn't like how the ruin still felt present. Like it was watching from just beyond the wall of skin and stone. He could still feel the heat on his neck.
Ezreal held the yellow shard in both hands like it might vanish if he breathed too hard. It pulsed. Not bright. Just enough to remind them it was alive. The rhythm wasn't his—it wasn't anyone's. It beat like the land itself, old and angry, trying to stitch its own wounds shut while something kept ripping them open.
"Where do we go from here?" Caylen asked. His voice came out hoarse, cracked down the middle like wood under strain. The cuts on his arms were still raw, and the wind kept finding them.
Ezreal unfolded the queen's scrolls. The parchment looked wrong now—like it had been peeled off someone's skin. Kaelith's bloody handprint was still faint across the edge. Verek watched him unfold it like a priest reading the last rites.
"North," Ezreal said. "Ironreach, then on to the Silver shard."
Dax was quiet, squinting at the mountains in the distance. "Metallic shards don't chase you," he said. "They watch. That's worse."
Verek's voice cut in low. "Let them watch. They'll learn we don't flinch."
Caylen gave a crooked smile without warmth. "That valley wanted us dead. Felt personal."
"It wasn't a trial," Verek said. "It was a warning." He turned west, toward the bruised line of sky over Phokorus. Smoke still drifted up from the tree line. "This isn't about winning. This is what's left when we've already lost something."
Ezreal rolled the scroll up slow, eyes flicking back to the shard. "Malarath's ahead of us. We move fast or not at all."
No one disagreed.
That night, they camped under trees that bent too much to the east, as if something had whispered lies to them for years and they'd believed it. The bark was charred and the leaves hung limp, not even pretending to live. The fire crackled too loud, hissed like it didn't want to burn at all.
Verek sat alone at first. Sharpening his blade, checking the edges out of habit, not hope. The yellow shard flickered in Ezreal's hand. The light didn't move with him—it pushed against him, like it was still deciding if he was worth acknowledging.
Ezreal spoke, not lifting his eyes. "Every shard we find... we wake something. And now it knows our names."
Verek kept his gaze on the steel. "Then we give it something it can't forget."
Dax didn't look up. "Steel won't be enough. Not for what's waiting."
"No," Verek said. "We'll need worse. People who don't break. Secrets sharp enough to cut back."
Caylen shifted his weight, jaw tight. "They don't just hold power. These things remember. And when they wake... the stuff they carry with them wakes too."
When dawn came, the mist over Ironreach coiled low and thick. The mountains looked like they'd been yanked out of the earth by something blind. Jagged. Crooked. Nothing about the path ahead looked built by hands that cared about symmetry or sanity.
Ezreal traced the map with one finger. "Silverspire's ahead. It used to be a sanctuary. Now it's a question with teeth."
Caylen spat into the dirt. "Knights, riddles, mirrors. Always mirrors."
Dax checked his gauntlet, tightening a strap. "Metallic shards twist your head. They don't fight you—they convince you to do it yourself."
Verek's voice came low. "Then we remember who we are. Together. We forget that... it wins."
Signs of the war bled into the trail behind them—farmland gone to rot, broken fences, silence where livestock should have been. Phokorus burned on the edge of memory, and Queen Kaelith's throne sat quieter every day. Vargus Ironcrag had moved his armies out of the north, and every bird that came back brought worse news.
"If we don't stop this," Caylen said under his breath, "there won't be a realm left to save."
They reached Silverspire's ruins by twilight. The ridge wrapped around it like a fist. Verek stepped into the entrance first. Sword low. Every step like walking into a memory that wasn't theirs.
The Spire didn't rise. It folded. Corridors ran sideways. Stairs led nowhere. The walls watched, and the stones hummed when touched.
Inside, the mirrors whispered. Caylen found one that showed him failing, bleeding out in the snow, his past dragging him down by the throat. He reached toward it without thinking. Ezreal pulled him back hard before the glass turned to rot.
The deeper they moved, the more the place pressed in. Doubts stuck like sap. Regrets echoed louder. Guilt had a shape here.
Verek said nothing, but his eyes kept scanning corners. The weight behind his ribs never lifted. He felt it twisting, testing, pulling at the seams. "Keep walking," he muttered. "Stay real."
At the heart of the Spire, the air sharpened. Silver light poured from cracks in the stone. The shard sat in the center, humming low.
But something else was waiting.
The guardian rose from the floor like stone taking a breath. Its wings arched out, scarred and hollow. Wounds bled starlight. Its gaze hit like a truth no one wanted to hear.
"You seek what is broken," it said. "You carry stolen pieces like prizes. Prove yourselves—or be nothing."
The tower shifted. The ground folded in. Reality fell apart. They were inside something else now. A question with no safe answer.
Dax faced himself—older, covered in blood, smiling like he'd won something. Every swing he made landed, but each one left a mark on him too.
Caylen ran through ghosts—familiar voices crying, accusing, loving. Every face wore his. They knew his name, and they knew why he hated hearing it.
Ezreal stood alone in a room with a hundred mirrors. His mother. A dragon. His younger self, scared and smiling. The whispers didn't yell—they just knew exactly where to push.
"You don't want to save them. You want to be needed. What happens when they don't?"
He started to fall.
Then Verek appeared in the doorway. Dirt on his boots, blood on his sleeve. He looked real. Solid. Like he'd never left the world at all.
Ezreal looked up and remembered.
Caylen. Dax. The tower. The shard. His own heartbeat.
"I'm not clean," Ezreal said. "Not chosen. But I'm still here."
The tower cracked. The light changed.
Dax dropped to one knee, gasping. Caylen stumbled out, face pale but steady. Verek stayed upright. Sword at his side. Eyes on the guardian.
The creature dipped its head.
"Not perfect. Not pure. But whole enough."
Light spilled from its chest, curling like smoke, and left the silver shard behind.
Ezreal stepped forward, then stopped. Looked to Verek. "You should carry this one."
Verek walked up and closed his hand around the shard.
It didn't fight. It didn't welcome him either. It just accepted.
The light hit hard—not pain, not peace. Just weight. Like he'd picked up a story that wasn't finished yet.
He didn't let go.
Outside, the wind had turned sharp. The stars looked meaner.
Caylen looked back at the tower. "It let us leave."
"No," Verek said. "It gave us a chance. That's all."
Ezreal watched Verek carefully. His face looked older—not in years, but in loss. "The world's coming apart."
"And we're the ones holding the last thread," Dax muttered.
Verek turned down the path without a word. The shard pulsed once. Then again.
Behind them, the ruin sighed back into silence.
Ahead, the dark stretched wide and waiting.
And under the skin of the world, the rest of the shards began to wake.