makeshift curtain – an old, moth-eaten blanket – does little to block the chill night air whistling through the shattered wall. It does even less to block the lingering smell of ash and burnt flesh. Asül sits stiffly on his stool, staring at the cold hearth. Elara sits opposite him, her face drawn and older in the flickering lamplight. The silence stretches, taut as a bowstring.
"Join them, Asül," she says finally, her voice thin but insistent.
He doesn't look at her. "No."
"They can protect you. Train you."
"I don't need their protection. Or their training." His voice is flat, the same disinterested tone he used on the hunter leader.
"You need *something*," Elara presses, leaning forward, her knuckles white on her knees. "This... silence inside you? This distance? It's a different kind of grave. Your father—"
"Don't," Asül cuts her off, a flicker of something cold and sharp in his eyes. "Don't talk about him."
"I *must*," she insists, her voice gaining strength, an edge of desperation. "You think he was cruel? Unloving? A drill sergeant screaming at a boy?" She shakes her head, her eyes distant, haunted. "He was broken, Asül. Shattered stone, not cold iron."
He remains silent, staring past her, but his jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
"He was a Demon Hunter," Elara continues, the words heavy. "Part of the Stonewall Battalion. The best. Until Kai found them." She takes a shuddering breath. "They were sheltering in caves near the Obsidian Ridge. Kai saw them. He didn't fight them alone. He called the Earth Twins."
Asül's gaze snaps to hers. The Earth Twins. Royalty. Names whispered in dread.
"Control over the surface stone," Elara whispers. "They didn't just collapse the cave mouth. They... *played* with it. Twisted the rock like taffy. Sealed it. Crushed men between shifting walls. Drowned others in sudden floods of gravel. Your father... he was the strongest. He held a section of the ceiling up. Long enough for a handful to scramble deeper into a fissure. He held it... while he listened to his friends die. While Kai laughed outside." Her voice cracks. "He held it until his muscles tore and his bones screamed. He was the only one who walked out of that tomb they made."
The silence in the hut is absolute now. Even the distant night insects seem to hold their breath. The image forms in Asül's mind, unwanted, vivid: his father, young, straining against impossible weight, surrounded by the sounds of dying men, Kai's laughter echoing. Not a drill sergeant. A man holding back hell itself, breaking under the strain.
"He carried that tomb inside him ever after," Elara murmurs. "The weight. The screams. The laughter. He couldn't love you the way you needed because the part of him that knew how... was buried under that mountain. His harshness... it was the only language the weight let him speak. He saw demons in every shadow, weakness in every hesitation. He was trying to forge you into something that *could* hold up the sky, because he knew it could fall at any moment."
Asül looks down at his hands. He sees not his own callouses, but the phantom strain of holding up crushing rock. He feels the cold silence inside him shift, tremble. A pressure builds behind his eyes, hot and insistent. He clenches his jaw, teeth grinding. He will not cry. He *refuses*. But his vision blurs anyway. He turns his head sharply away, towards the patched wall, his shoulders rigid. A single, traitorous tear escapes, tracing a hot path down his cheek. He scrubs at it savagely with the back of his good hand, a gesture of pure, furious shame.
Asül finally turns back from the wall, his face a mask of forced calm, though his eyes are red-rimmed. He meets Elara's worried gaze.
"I said I'll think about it," he rasps, the words thick. He stands abruptly, needing to move, needing to escape the weight of the tomb she just opened.
***
Outside the hut, where Balzar's ashes lay, the air *ripples* with sudden, profound coldness. Two figures step from pooling shadows beneath a half-burned hut.
A man and a woman. Gothic perfection. Skin like alabaster, hair void-black. Medieval elegance draped in velvet and lace – the man in a dark doublet, the woman in a high-collared gown.
The woman's sapphire eyes scan the ash. **"He was here, Molik,"** she murmurs, her voice frost-laced melody. **"The resonance lingers. We must be swift."**
Her companion – **Molik** – nods, obsidian eyes impassive. The woman raises her hand. Shadows coalesce, forming an ebony staff topped by an hourglass filled with pearl-white sand. She taps the staff sharply on the ash-strewn ground.
The pearlescent sand within the hourglass flows... *upwards*.
Simultaneously, Balzar's ashes swirl into life, reforming his massive, two-headed body. Bewildered, the demon shakes his heads – one weeping, one snarling weakly.
Molik lifts his hand. Shadows solidify into a chain of light-drinking metal, etched with writhing runes. He flicks his wrist. The chain lashes out, wraps Balzar's neck, and *sinks* into the flesh. Balzar roars, thrashing, as the chain vanishes, leaving only a pulsing black chain-link tattoo burned into his hide. The tattoo constricts. Balzar whimpers, falling silent and obedient.
The woman's staff dissolves into shadows. Without a word, she turns. Molik gestures. Balzar shambles obediently behind them like a monstrous hound. They step back into the shadows beneath the ruined hut and vanish. Only biting cold remains.
***
Near the Hunter Camp, The scarred leader sits in his tent, sharpening a blade. He pauses, nostrils flaring. *Molik.* The cloying decay of roses. And ozone. *Close.* But not alone. He inhales deeply, parsing the taint. One essence is weak, chaotic… Balzar's lingering chaos? The other… Ancient. Deep. A crushing weight of power. *Royalty.* A direct bloodline heir. His knuckles whiten. Raising an alarm now would be suicide against a Royal and Molik combined. *The Silent Step…* The thought is a blade of ice in his gut. *Without it… we stand no chance against that.*
Inside the hut, Asül moves towards the door, unaware of the branded demon now bound to Molik's collection, or the Royal shadow tightening around the swamp. He only feels the cold chain of his father's legacy, heavier than ever.