Ash still lingered in Kael's breath as the expedition rumbled forward. The sky above Glimmer Cradle was unusually clear, tinged with violet hues of a rare celestial convergence. The rest of Virelia was crumbling, starving, scrapping over ruins — but here, something waited, still untouched.
Five Outpost 9E operatives trudged ahead with steam-walkers and high-pressure thermal drills. Rehn had not come himself — too valuable, too wary. Instead, he'd sent Lt. Sorin Vael, a rigid tactical man with little patience and less imagination.
Kael walked at the rear, watched more than welcomed. His Hollowbrand had begun to pulse again. Not in pain. In... rhythm. A slow, magnetic beat aligned with something buried under Glimmer Cradle's rockskin.
It calls.
It remembers you.
By midday, they'd descended into a cavern revealed by a landslide. At its center: an ancient barrier—smooth, seamless stone—inked with molten threads that shimmered and pulsed faintly.
No tool could touch it. No scanner mapped it. No one could explain it.
"Pre-Fall?" one of the techs whispered.
"No. Older," muttered Kael.
Sorin turned sharply. "You think you know what this is?"
Kael didn't answer. His hand hovered near his Hollowbrand.
The wall sang.
It wasn't sound. It was resonance — harmonic pressure against his bones, like a forgotten note struck perfectly after centuries of silence.
His Hollowbrand flared. Blinding. A burst of unlight surged through him and into the barrier—
—and in that instant, the world disappeared.
Kael stood in a vast obsidian void where stars floated like lanterns tethered to nothing. Before him loomed a titanic door of godstone, its surface carved in spiraling runes and strange geometry that defied depth.
In the center of the door: a sigil. His sigil.
And a voice, not his own, but layered with thousands:
"One of Three. Chosen by the Hollowbrand.
The seal is memory. The key is sacrifice.
The world will not open for light. It opens for pain."
Kael screamed as his body burned with mirrored memories — not just his own, but echoes of all past bearers of the Hollowbrand — warriors, children, kings, beasts, and… something else.
He collapsed, gasping, the ground cracked beneath his feet in a perfect spiral. The barrier shimmered and... retracted. Not shattered. Not broken.
Accepted.
The expedition stared in silence.
"What the hell are you?" Sorin whispered.
Kael said nothing. His breath smoked in the cold air, and his pupils still held the shape of the Sigil.
Unknown to the others, what Kael had done was not simply activation. It was resonance recognition — the first of three locks placed by the ancient gods who had sealed something inside the world. Something too powerful or too real to die.
Only Hollowbranded — rare individuals touched by the World's Will — could resonate with such locks.
And even among them, only three Keys could open the true door.
Kael was one.
But somewhere out there… the other two had begun to stir.
Beneath Glimmer Cradle, as Kael stepped through the now-receded barrier into a corridor lined with silent statues and echo-slick walls, a last flicker of light etched itself into the air behind him:
The first barrier has opened.
The World begins to wake.