The rains had come to the Marches.
Not gentle. Not cleansing.
But thick, mud-churning, and relentless—like the land itself was trying to drown its secrets.
Auren stood beneath the cover of twisted branches, watching the torrent fall on the cracked stone path ahead. The road had split open days ago, revealing more than just rock beneath.
They'd found ruins.
Old ones.
"Not from any kingdom I know," Caelen muttered, brushing moss from an obsidian archway carved with runes no scholar recognized.
Lys knelt beside a symbol etched into the floor. "This wasn't made by man. Or not one who walked upright."
Auren said nothing. But the pull in his chest had grown sharper with every step they'd taken toward the ruin.
He'd dreamed of it long before they ever arrived.
Inside, the air was thick with silence.
Not just the absence of sound—but the presence of listening.
The group pressed forward through the darkness, torchlight casting long, shivering shadows against the strange, curved walls. No dust. No decay.
Just waiting.
"I don't like this," one of the guards whispered. "It's too… clean."
They reached a central chamber. A massive dome, walls lined with jagged glass mirrors that reflected nothing but shadows.
Auren moved toward the center.
There, half-buried in the floor, was a sphere—glowing faintly.
Blue.
His hand moved without thinking.
"Auren, wait—" Lys started.
Too late.
His fingers brushed the sphere.
A scream tore through the ruin.
Not a sound in the air—but in their minds. Everyone dropped to their knees, clutching their heads, groaning in agony.
Auren stood.
The light had flooded his veins.
His eyes burned.
He could see.
Not with sight—but memory.
A great war.
A city of crystal towers shattered under black flame.
Beings—tall, robed, eyes like shards of night sky—falling one by one to a silver spear.
And beneath them all… something buried.
A great slumbering shape, bound in a circle of broken songs and frozen time.
A voice spoke inside his mind.
"You have touched the Lock."
"Now the Gate dreams of waking."
He collapsed.
When he woke, it was dark again. Everyone else was still unconscious or groaning awake.
But the sphere was gone.
No—it was inside him.
His heart beat differently now. Slower. Colder.
Powerful.
Darien stared at him from across the chamber, eyes filled with something unfamiliar.
Fear.
"Auren," he said, his voice rough. "What did you do?"
Auren looked up slowly, hand still crackling with faint blue light.
"I think I opened a door."
Far away, in the capital's spire, the High Seer's glass cracked without warning.
And in the deepest vault beneath the Crown's sanctum, a voice whispered:
"The Lock is broken."
"He has heard the Choir's last song."