There was no sky in Isolation.
Only stone. Damp, lifeless, eternal.
They led him down without a word. Two guards flanked him, faces wrapped in ash-dyed cloth, eyes hidden beneath hoods streaked with soot. Their spears bore etched runes, faintly pulsing with residual heat as if the Keep itself had left a trace of its lifeblood in the metal. One muttered a prayer under his breath in a tongue Eighty-Eight did not recognize, a desperate charm against what they did not understand. He did not care. He only moved, shoulders hunched, arms shackled, mind coiled tight against the tension that hummed in the very air.
The descent took minutes, or perhaps hours. Time buckled in these depths. There were no torches, no echoes — only the soft, steady hum of glyphlight that bled through the blackened walls, veins of ancient power beneath the Keep's withered skin. Every step seemed to pull him further from the world above, further from himself, until the very notion of sky, sun, or wind became a lie told by memory.
Finally, they stopped at a rusted door bound with chains thicker than a man's leg.
They did not speak. They did not explain.
The door groaned open. A living thing, the sound scraping along walls like metal teeth. They shoved him inside.
Locks slammed behind him. Bolts clicked. Silence swallowed the chamber whole. No trial. No sentence. Only a cell.
It was not cramped. But it felt impossibly close. Walls like tombstones rose from the floor, bearing the chill of graves. There was no bedding. No bucket. No trace of human courtesy. Only a shard of crystal embedded high above, glowing with a sickly, pale violet light — neither torch nor common magic, but something far colder, as if it had been chipped from the heart of the Keep itself.
Eighty-Eight stood. Breathing. Heart steadying. The mark beneath his ribs had ceased its fire, but it had not ceased its presence. It watched. Listened. Waited.
You're not done feeding, it murmured.
He clenched his fists. Nails dug into flesh, drawing blood.
"Shut up," he whispered to the nothing.
The whisper obeyed. It did not leave. It lingered, patient, hungry. Time, stripped of measurement, began to unravel. The floor froze against his bare feet. The silence screamed. He dreamed while awake, eyes open, staring into the violet shard above.
He dreamed of a city of fractured glass, of twin moons bleeding into one another. A sword buried in starlight, a boy broken on the pavement of a world long gone, a name… lost somewhere in the drift of memory.
Then came the knock.
Not on the door. On his mind.
He jerked upright. Breath caught in his throat. The mark flared faintly. The shard pulsed in answer, as though acknowledging a summons.
And then — a voice.
Not the whisper. Not the Void. Cold as ice, sharp as frostbite.
"You're the Riftborn, aren't you?"
He turned. No one. Only shadows, only stone.
"You're late."
His heart pounded, a drumbeat against the silence.
"Who…?" he whispered.
A flicker in the corner of his eye. Shadows bent and shifted. A figure formed — beastkin, vaguely humanoid, yet impossible, as if memory had warped matter itself. Not Kaia. Older. Harsher. Carved from some darker echo of the world he had lost. Her eyes glimmered like shards of frozen night.
"You carry something that doesn't belong to you, Riftborn. And soon… they'll come to take it back."
He said nothing. His lungs refused breath.
The voice spoke again, threading through his veins, sliding beneath skin and bone.
"Do you know what it is you hold, little star-thief?"
Talons dragged along his ribs. Recognition, not pain. A memory of fear, sharpened by hatred. He flinched. The voice knew him. Hated him.
"I don't…" he whispered.
"Don't lie. Not here. The Keep strips away all masks. Even the ones you wear for yourself."
He swallowed dry. "If you know what I am, then tell me."
"What you are? No. That would be too generous. Let us begin with what you are not."
The shard above dimmed, bruised violet bleeding into darkness. The air thickened, oppressive, heavy with expectation.
"You are not chosen. Not destined. Not blessed. You are not ready."
"Then why am I still alive?" His voice trembled.
"Because the root does not kill the worm that burrows. It waits. And when it has eaten its fill… it collapses."
A pause. He stared at the mark glowing faintly beneath his sternum, fists trembling, veins humming with the pulse of something ancient.
"I didn't ask for this."
"Oh, they never do."
"But ask yourself this, Riftborn: when you touched the riftlight, when it coiled around your soul like flame around dry wood… did you resist?"
Silence.
"Or did you open your hands… and beg?"
He turned away from the voice. But it was everywhere now — in the stone, in the shard, in the space between. It laughed softly, a sound like glass breaking underwater.
"You hunger. I can feel it. Even now. Beneath all the fear. All the shame."
"I've seen what it does. What it turns people into."
"And yet you keep using it. That's the part I like about you."
He turned again. Voice sharp, raw. "What do you want from me?"
"Nothing."
"Everything."
"What does the fire want from the forest?"
Throat clenched, he ground his teeth. "You're not real."
"Then why do you bleed when I speak?"
A shadow detached from the far corner. Vaguely humanoid, flickering, beastkin, but warped. Memory twisted it into something uncanny, uncanny into fear.
"Tell me, Riftborn… how many voices do you carry now?"
He stepped back.
"The whisper. The sword. The girl. The one you killed. The one you couldn't save. The one who looks at you like you're still whole."
"Shut up," he spat.
"No. Not until you do."
A pause hung, long, heavy, thick as stone pressing down.
"What are you, truly? A vessel? A thief? A godling?"
He sank to his knees.
"Or just a boy too frightened to bury his own name?" His voice cracked.
"You don't know me."
"I am you. I am the part you cast into the Rift and hoped would never crawl back. But I did. I always do."
Silence returned, settling in his chest.
No figure. No voice. Only breath — his own, uneven, ragged.
The mark beneath his ribs pulsed. Once. Twice. Then steadied, steady as a second heartbeat. The violet shard above dimmed but did not die.
He remained still. Listening. Waiting.
Far above, the chains of fate rattled once more — not as a warning, but as an invitation.
Time stretched, infinite, oppressive, and yet he felt… change. A fracture beneath the stone, a tremor in the Keep, a whisper of the Void moving like wind beneath the floorboards.
He closed his eyes, letting the pulse beneath his chest sync with his breathing. Not fear. Not hope. Something in between. The calm before storm, the eye of the hurricane.
And somewhere, deep in the unseen corners of Isolation, the shard's light dimmed, breathing in tandem with him.
Eighty-Eight, the Riftborn, alone — yet never alone — was ready.
The world above did not know he had awoken.
But it would soon.