The figure in the doorway did not move. It simply stood, a silhouette of profound stillness against the deepening twilight, its presence sucking the warmth from the air and leaving a void of chilling silence in its wake. The ancient power that radiated from it was not the aggressive, crushing force of Carlos, but something older, deeper, and saturated with a melancholy so profound it felt like a physical weight.
Kael's knuckles were white on the hilt of his sword. Nea held the scrolls like a shield. Akero's fingers twitched, time itself coiling around him like a serpent ready to strike.
"Identify yourself," Kael's voice was a low, dangerous growl, cutting through the tension. "Now."
The figure shifted slightly. A hand, emerged from the folds of dark robes and slowly pushed back the hood that obscured its features.
The face that was revealed was not that of a monster. It was an old man's face, etched with lines of deep weariness and an eternity of regret. A long white beard fell over the dark fabric of his robes. But it was his eyes that held them—an intense, ogorcen gaze, dark and piercing, that seemed to see straight through them into the echoes of their own fears.
"My name," he said, his voice a dry rustle, like parchment being turned in a tomb, "is Alabaster. Once, I was known as a Tracer of Shadows. A servant of the one you call the Unknown."
At the admission, Kael took a threatening step forward, but the old man—Alabaster—did not flinch. He raised his empty hands in a gesture of weary surrender.
"I have not come to fight. I have come… to atone." His gaze swept over the open chest, the scrolls in Nea's arms. "I felt the disturbance when you breached the wards around this place. When you read the words we thought were lost. I have been waiting for someone to find them. For someone who might understand."
"Understand what?" Akero asked, his voice steady despite the tremor in his soul. "That you served a destroyer?"
A sad, hollow smile touched Alabaster's lips. "I served a man who was lost long before he became a destroyer. You believe you know what the Unknown is. You do not. The being you fight… he was not always what he is today."
He took a slow, deliberate step into the chamber, giving them a wide berth. His movements were silent, ghostlike.
"He was one of the Guardians," Alabaster began, his voice taking on a rhythmic, storytelling quality, as if reciting a long-memorized elegy. "The Six Pillars of Balance. Each held a fundamental force of existence in check. He was the sixth. The Warden of the Threshold, charged with guarding the boundary between life and death itself. His true name… has been erased. Deliberately. Even in the scrolls you found, it speaks only of five."
The trio exchanged glances. The history they had just read was already being rewritten.
"I was not merely a servant," Alabaster continued, his ogorcen eyes distant, seeing a different time. "I was his ally. In the battle against the Society of Light. And I was present… when it all began to unravel."
Nea found her voice, soft but unwavering. "The Society of Light… who were they?"
"They were his brothers and sisters. His fellow Guardians." Alabaster's gaze fell on each of them, ensuring they felt the weight of the revelation. "Serin, the Lady of Dawn – she who could summon light from even the darkest of places. Yvaris, the Teacher of Truth – keeper of knowledge and the sealed worlds. Kaelion, the Voice of Fire – master of the war flame. Mirieth, the Keeper of the Heart – the shield of innocence and spiritual balance."
He paused, and a profound sorrow filled his features. "And Tharos, the Sword of Light – the first among them, their leader. And the Unknown's closest friend, before the schism."
The name 'Tharos' hung in the air, a monument to a lost golden age.
"What happened?" Akero pressed, the pulse in his source beating in time with the old man's story.
"The Warden began to fear the very threshold he guarded," Alabaster explained, his voice dropping to a whisper. "He saw the entropy, the inevitable decay of all things. He came to believe that true balance was a lie, and that only by seizing control over the cycle of life and death—by achieving a form of absolute immortality—could he 'save' existence from itself. The others… they argued. They pleaded. They tried to reason with him. He saw them as blind fools, clinging to a dying world."
He closed his eyes, the memory clearly painful. "And so the war began. Guardian against Guardian. The Society of Light against their fallen brother."
"And Tharos?" Kael asked, his defensive stance softening slightly, drawn into the tragedy.
Alabaster's eyes opened, and they were full of a haunted darkness. "Tharos was not killed in open battle. The Warden isolated him, took him aside. He offered him a place at his side, to rule over a remade, 'perfected' existence. And when Tharos refused… he did not simply kill him."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop further.
"He stripped him of his name. Of his soul. He unmade him and remade him into the first of his new, twisted creations. The first of the Shadowborn. And he named this hollowed-out shell of his greatest friend… Nyx."
A collective shudder went through the trio. The Shadowborn. The name alone was a thing of nightmares.
"The Shadowborn," Alabaster explained, seeing their horror, "are not born. They are made. The Unknown takes a living soul, and through a terrible ritual, he tears it from the cycle of life and death. He empties it, fills it with shadow-stuff, and binds it to his will. They are eternal slaves, their original selves utterly destroyed, leaving only a semblance of form and a fraction of their former power, now bent to his purpose. He seeks to create an entire army of them, to enforce his stagnant, deathless order upon all of creation. He believes it is mercy."
"And you helped him?" Nea's voice was accusatory, tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes.
"I was a fool who believed in a grand vision," Alabaster admitted, his head bowing in shame. "I saw the power, not the cost. I was there when it all fell apart. I saw Mirieth and Yvaris sacrifice themselves, pouring their very essences into a barrier of pure light to contain the Warden's corruption within their sacred sanctuary, sealing him away for a time. I saw Serin set the sky itself ablaze in a desperate attempt to purge the shadows. And I saw Kaelion…"
He looked up, his gaze settling on Kael. "Kaelion turned his fire on me. I survived only because my master shielded me. But in the cataclysm, we were separated. The sanctuary was sealed, the world was broken, and the Warden, in his rage and grief, descended fully into the monster you now call the Unknown. I have wandered since, a ghost mourning his own choices. I do not know if Serin or Kaelion still live. But if they do, they are trapped. Trapped within the Old Sanctuary, behind the very barrier their friends died to create."
He looked at them, his expression pleading yet devoid of any expectation of trust. "You have no reason to believe me. I would not believe me. But you must find them. Serin and Kaelion are the only ones left who truly understand what we face. They are the key to stopping him."
Akero studied the man— the dark robes, the eyes full of regret. Every instinct told him the story was true. The resonance he felt with the scrolls, the very energy of this dead city—it all aligned. But trust was a currency this man had long ago spent.
"Why should we believe you?" Akero asked, his voice cold. "This could all be a trap. A story to lead us to our deaths."
Alabaster nodded, accepting the doubt as his due. "It could be. But what other path do you have? More ruins to dig through? More scrolls that speak only of a war, not of the warrior? You seek to understand your enemy. To understand the source of the threat that looms over you. I have given you the truth. The choice to act upon it is yours."
He pulled his hood back up, shrouding his features in shadow once more, leaving only the glint of his weary eyes visible. "The path to the Old Sanctuary is perilous, guarded by echoes of the past and the Unknown's earliest, most powerful creations. But it is the only path that leads to the light."
Without another word, he turned and began to walk away, melting into the shadows of the ruins as silently as he had arrived.
The trio was left alone in the chamber, the weight of the revealed history crushing down upon them. The five Guardians. A friendship betrayed. The horrific origin of the Shadowborn. The possible survival of two legendary figures.
They looked at each other, a silent conversation passing between them—suspicion, fear, but also a burning, desperate hope.
"Do we follow him?" Nea whispered.
Akero looked toward the doorway where Alabaster had vanished, then down at his own hands, where the power of time itself hummed softly. "We follow the only lead we have," he said finally. "But we do not trust him. We trust nothing until we see it for ourselves."
The decision was made. Their destination was no longer a vague ruin under the sand. It was a sealed sanctuary, a prison for a god, and possibly, their only hope. The hunt for Serin and Kaelion had begun.