The chasm had no mouth.
No crest. No edge. No entrance.
Only absence.
It began as a thinning in the earth—stone gone smooth without erosion, trees stopping long before the drop began, as though even their roots had chosen not to trespass. Then came the stillness. The kind that did not wait for sound. The kind that removed it.
Torian stood at the lip of the void.
Skarn crouched beside him, wings tense, his claws sunk deep into the rock, as if anchoring himself to something solid before the descent.
There was no wind. No heat. No reflection.
The Spiral in Torian's chest pulsed once. Then it dimmed, as if aware this place had never known it—had never wanted it. He touched the center of his chest, feeling the light draw inward.
"This is it," he said softly. "Ulvenmir."
It did not look like a chasm. Not from above.
It looked like the world had forgotten to finish something.
⸻
They camped that night beside the edge, though neither slept.
Not truly.
Torian sat with his back to a boulder, glider folded beside him. His fingers traced the edge of the Spiral-forged alloy Vesryn had given him—Kaelgor's tether point, still etched with flickering glyphs. The longer he stared at it, the heavier it felt. Not like metal. Like memory.
Skarn lay curled around them, massive head raised, eyes fixed on the dark below. He hadn't blinked in hours. His body remained still, but the slow tension in his muscles told Torian all he needed to know:
Even Skarn didn't like this place.
⸻
At dawn, they began the descent.
Torian strapped on the glider, but this wasn't a place for flight. The air bent sideways. Updrafts and downdrafts folded over one another like claws. The spiral glyph on his chest flickered once, then extinguished completely as he dropped from the ledge.
He didn't fall.
He was swallowed.
Skarn dove after him, wings closed tight, guiding himself by soundless instinct.
The wind was gone within the first fifty feet.
Then came the cold. Not a temperature cold. Not air.
Just absence of heat.
Even Torian's Spiral, which burned on instinct, gave him nothing now.
No light. No warmth.
He was thirteen years old again.
Alone.
Bleeding in the woods.
Running from screams and fire.
⸻
They descended for hours.
No rope could've reached this far. No beast could have flown through this thick silence. Only Skarn's strength and Torian's will kept them going. Along narrow ledges. Down vertical cracks. Across bridges of black stone that looked woven by pressure.
Then they saw it:
A faint light.
Green.
Torian paused.
"That's not Spiral," he said.
Skarn stepped forward and growled.
No echo returned.
But they kept moving.
And at last… they reached the floor.
⸻
Ulvenmir's base was vast—larger than the crater Kaelgor had left in his wake, but inverted. Where Kaelgor's wound was violence, this was a bruise. The stone beneath their feet pulsed once every few seconds—slow, rhythmic, like the breathing of a world asleep.
And in the center of it all:
A single spire of stone, smooth and unmarked, wrapped in pale roots.
At its base sat a figure.
Cross-legged.
Unmoving.
Wrapped in dark robes.
His back was straight. His head bowed. Hands open, palms up.
And in his hands burned no flame at all.
Torian stepped closer, the green glow humming faintly around them.
"You were the third," he said quietly. "You were there."
The figure did not look up.
He did not answer.
But his Spiral—so faint it could barely be seen—glowed once beneath his collarbone.
Then vanished again.
⸻
Torian dropped to one knee.
"I've come for the truth. I need your part of the seal. I know what Kaelgor was."
Still, silence.
Then the man spoke.
His voice was brittle. Dry. Like the crack of frost beneath slow boots.
"You come to the place where fire never was…
And you carry it like hope."
He looked up.
His face was weathered, hollow-eyed.
His Spiral was black.
Not corrupted.
Burned out.
"I did not forget Kaelgor," he said.
"I ran before I could watch him fall."
Torian's throat tightened.
"You were one of them."
"I was," the man said. "And because I was… I'll never light a flame again."
The man did not move.
His voice, hollow as the chasm itself, hovered between worlds. He sat beneath the pillar, surrounded by ancient roots and a thin fog of green light drifting from cracks in the floor. His eyes did not burn. They reflected nothing. Only the past.
Torian stood before him.
Skarn watched from the shadows, his claws half-sunk in stone. Even he didn't breathe loud here.
The Spiral in Torian's chest flickered like a fading coal.
"You were there," Torian said again, quieter now. "You were one of them."
The man slowly inclined his head.
"I was called Vael," he said. "Fourth in the Circle. But not for long."
Torian stepped closer. "You broke the seal."
"I broke nothing," Vael said. "It was already breaking. I simply refused to die holding it."
His voice wasn't bitter. It wasn't defensive.
It was dead.
⸻
Torian sat on the stone a few paces away, glider folded beside him, eyes locked on the blackened Spiral scar across Vael's chest.
It didn't pulse.
Didn't glow.
It looked like a wound burned shut.
"You turned away," Torian said.
"Yes."
"You were there when Kaelgor asked to be sealed."
"Yes."
"And you left."
Vael closed his eyes.
"I believed the others would fail. So I let them."
Torian's jaw clenched. "You let your friend become a weapon."
"I let him become what he chose," Vael said. "Because I didn't believe in what we were building. Not anymore."
Silence.
Only the faint shifting of green light through the cracks.
⸻
Torian's fists clenched.
"He trusted you."
"Yes," Vael said. "And so did I. That's why I stayed out of his way when the seal collapsed."
"You could've stopped it."
Vael opened his eyes now—calm. Tired. Ageless.
"And what would that have changed?" he said. "Kaelgor would still have burned. Maybe later. Maybe slower. But the fire inside him… it was never going to go out."
Torian looked down at his hands.
The Spiral beneath his skin pulsed once—quietly.
"You don't know that."
"No," Vael said. "But I believed it. And in believing it, I made it true."
⸻
He stood now, slowly. The green light shifted around his body but didn't touch him. Even the energy here seemed to avoid the place his Spiral once lived.
"I came here to die," he said. "Not because I hated the Spiral. But because I lost faith in myself to wield it."
Torian rose too.
"Then give me your part of the seal."
Vael turned.
"I don't carry it anymore."
"You're lying."
Vael's eyes narrowed.
Torian stepped forward.
"If it burned out of you, it's because you forced it. But the part that bound you to Kaelgor—to the others—it's still there."
He reached for the Spiral-forged alloy Vesryn had given him.
It glowed.
Vael stared at it, unmoving.
"Even if it is," he said, "what would you do with it?"
Torian met his gaze.
"Finish what you couldn't."
⸻
For a moment, the chasm seemed to breathe.
The green light pulsed brighter, echoing down the chamber walls, and Torian's Spiral blazed in tandem. The air grew sharp.
Then—Vael stepped back.
And from beneath his robes, he drew a small shard of crystal—dull, fissured, wrapped in bands of Spiral script. He held it with two fingers, like a memory he didn't want to remember.
"This was once my anchor," he said. "The part of the seal they forged in my name. I kept it. Not out of hope. Out of punishment."
He held it out.
"But I can't give it to you."
Torian frowned. "Why?"
"Because it's bound by my will. And my will… is broken."
⸻
Torian didn't hesitate.
He reached forward and placed his Spiral-marked palm on the shard.
Vael flinched.
But the Spiral reacted.
The alloy in Torian's other hand surged in light. The shard in Vael's hand flickered. For the first time in decades, a trace of flame—spiral, not Verdant—rose from its surface.
Torian's voice was steady.
"You're not broken," he said. "You're ashamed. But Kaelgor needs to be stopped. And you're still one of the six."
Vael's hands trembled.
Then—slowly, painfully—he let go.
Torian took the shard.
It flared in his grip, then sank into the alloy.
Seal fragment two: reclaimed.
⸻
Vael turned away.
His Spiral did not reignite.
But for a moment… his shadow no longer looked quite so bent.
"I don't know if you'll succeed," he said.
"I don't either," Torian replied. "But I'm not leaving anyone behind."
He turned to Skarn.
"We have two," he said. "Four more to go."
Skarn snorted and stretched his wings.
Torian looked once more at the empty chasm.
And without another word—
They rose.
Into the windless dark.
Toward the light that still waited beyond.