The air got colder as they left the cracked, lifeless ground of the Flats behind. Not the sharp, biting cold that snaps at your face, but a slow, creeping chill that settled deep, sneaking into bones and marrow like old guilt you can't shake. Verek was the first to notice it—not just the cold, but the quiet behind it. The kind of silence that feels like a weight pressing in on your ribs, like something buried too long clawing its way out.
The trees came next. Not the soft, welcoming kind that hum with birdsong and dappling sunlight, but tall pines with bark blackened like burnt paper. Their roots twisted and curled like arthritic fingers clutching at the soil with desperate strength. The deeper they went, the more it felt like the forest had been holding its breath for a century, waiting.
"Feels like we're walking between two worlds," Ezreal muttered, rubbing at his arms, his knuckles pale where the cold had bitten in.
Caylen moved ahead, boots light on the carpet of damp needles, posture tight like a drawn bow. "This place... it doesn't like trespassers," he said, voice low and wary.
Dax let out a dry breath, hand lingering near the hilt of his sword, ready. "There's no birds. No insects. Not even the buzz of life. Just trees... and silence."
Verek didn't answer. He didn't need to. The forest spoke plenty on its own. He moved in the middle of the group—not because it was some command or habit, but instinct. His presence was steady, grounded. A tether keeping the rest from falling apart. The silence here wasn't just empty. It was active. Like it was listening.
The forest pressed in harder the further they pushed. Light filtered down in sharp, choking slats, breaking through fog and dust in jagged lines. The air smelled of damp bark and something older—something like mildew on a forgotten book, or the breath of something waiting too long in the dark.
Then they broke into a clearing. There it stood: an old stone temple, half-swallowed by moss and roots greedy with age. Vines crawled up crumbling pillars, thorns digging deep into the ancient mortar. Symbols danced along the stones in looping lines that seemed to shift whenever you blinked—like they wanted you to look away so they could slither somewhere worse.
Verek stepped forward first. The others stiffened but held back. His fingers brushed one of the runes, skin rough and callused dragging over stone carved with memory. The rock pulsed beneath his touch, slow and deep, like the heartbeat of something too big for its body. For a moment, the air shimmered, as if the forest blinked.
Then the figure appeared.
A woman stepped out from the shadow between two pillars. Her form was draped in a veil that shimmered like water and moonlight, her face hidden beneath it. But her presence rippled cold and strange through the space.
"Knowledge is a blade," she said, voice sharp and soft all at once, like silk hiding a knife. "It carves through flesh and illusion. Will you dig deeper? Or stay blind beneath the surface?"
Verek's voice came steady, low and calm. "We've come too far to look away now. Open it."
The temple opened, not with noise or motion, but like an idea forming all at once inside their heads.
Inside, the air thickened. The walls bled illusion—not dreams, not memories, but something rawer. Thoughts they didn't remember thinking. Words they hadn't dared say aloud. Every step twisted the path; rooms bloomed out of impossible angles. Time folded in on itself. Space frayed at the edges.
Ezreal saw the people he'd failed. A city burned beneath a sky split by dragonfire, and he was the one who gave the order to hold. Faces screamed in silence. He tried to turn away, but the flames clung to him.
Dax found himself standing in a field of bodies—soldiers he had led, trained, promised to bring home. One by one they rose. Their mouths moved soundlessly, but he knew exactly what they were saying.
Caylen was in a courtroom, but he was both judge and accused, and the sentence came in the voice of his dead brother. A hundred verdicts. A thousand truths edged with guilt.
And Verek—he saw himself at the edge of a village long gone. Wind howled through hollow homes. His hand rested on a child's shoulder, promising survival. Then the child was gone, taken in the darkness that followed. He'd never found the body. Never forgave himself for the choice he made.
They staggered forward, silent, breaths caught in their throats, hands trembling. The temple didn't lie. It only showed.
They reached a chamber where the air stood still. In its center stood a pedestal carved from stone too smooth to be natural. Resting on it, the White shard—quiet, glowing like a moon veiled in winter fog. But in front of it stood another figure.
It was neither man nor woman. Its face shifted beneath a veil of light and dark. It did not move. It simply was.
"To take this shard," it said, "you must answer with clarity. Justice alone is tyranny. Mercy alone is madness. When the world burns and the scales tip, what do you choose?"
Verek stepped forward. The others fell silent behind him.
His voice was low, guttural, and honest. "We choose truth. Not the kind that spares us. The kind that ruins us. The kind that makes us better if we survive it."
The figure regarded him long and unreadable. Then it nodded once and vanished like a breath released.
Verek reached for the shard. His fingers closed around it. The weight hit like a blade laid flat against his spine. Cold. Clear. Honest. It didn't hum like the others. It didn't pulse. It simply was.
When they left the temple, the light had changed. Not brighter. Not warmer. Just real. Solid. Honest.
Caylen looked back once, brow furrowed. "That place didn't just test us. It made us confess."
Dax rolled his shoulders, like shaking off cold water. "Every shard pulls something out of us. Rips something open. I just hope we don't run out of pieces."
Verek didn't answer. His eyes stayed on the trail ahead, but his mind still sat in that stone chamber, in the dark, weighing what had been said. What had been seen.
The White shard glowed faintly in his pack.
Far to the east, in a chamber of marble and starlight, Queen Kaelith Serpantwind ran her fingers across a map veined with fresh fractures. Her lips pressed tight.
"Vargus is gone," she said, mostly to herself. "Vanished without a fight. That isn't like him."
Her steward shifted, uneasy. "There are whispers. The Fey Queen has returned. She moves fast."
Kaelith looked up. Her eyes were glass, cold and sharp. "If Aelwryn controls the mountain clans, winter won't wait."
She turned to the window, where storm clouds churned far off.
"Then we cut first. Before she sets the board."
Back in the forest, the party moved slower than before. Not tired, just heavier.
Ezreal looked up at the sky, lips tight. How many fragments of the Dragon queen now? Each one a weight of a trial. Each one a scar.
And Verek, walking at the front, felt every one of them like iron rings tightening around his spine.
The world felt like it was holding its breath.
But none of them dared say what it was waiting for.