Kael woke to the taste of ash and the smell of rain that had forgotten how to fall.
He was still in the cistern, knees in the same cold sludge, fingers curled around the now-dull obsidian dagger. The eclipse above the broken city had shrunk to a thin black crescent, a claw about to close. The seventy-two hours were bleeding out.
But something inside him had changed.
The sigil on his chest burned steady and warm—no longer the frantic flare of battle, but the quiet heartbeat of a storm at rest. When he breathed, thunder answered inside his ribs. When he flexed his torn hands, faint violet-white sparks danced between the splits in his skin.
He was not alone.
Riven stood three paces away, barefoot on the broken stone, taller than any man had a right to be in a place this low. Real. Solid. The scars from the trial still smoked faintly, but the giant looked alive. Wild gray hair moved in a wind Kael could not feel. His eyes glowed soft storm-white, and when he grinned, the cistern brightened like dawn after a century of night.
"Still breathing, Kael?"
The name landed like a hammer on steel—final, irrevocable, perfect.
Kael's throat worked. His voice came out cracked and small.
"…Yes."
Riven crouched, bringing them eye-level. "Good. Because we've got twelve hours. Maybe less. The trial's grace period. After that, the Hollowing remembers we cheated its rules, and it comes to collect."
He offered one massive hand.
Kael took it without thinking. Riven hauled him upright as though he weighed nothing.
The cistern walls trembled. Dust sifted from the ceiling. Somewhere far above, a building collapsed with a roar that sounded almost hungry.
Riven's grin faded. "First things first. You need food, water, and bandages. Then we find the next relic before Vaeloris finishes eating itself."
Kael looked down at himself: shredded feet, blood-crusted skin, rags that had once been clothes. He felt hollowed out, but the hollowness was different now—clean, like a drum waiting to be struck.
Riven followed his gaze and snorted. "You look like fresh troll bait. Lucky for you, I know where the palace kitchens used to be. Might still be something that isn't people."
He started toward the cistern's crumbling stair, then paused.
"One more thing." Riven turned back, expression suddenly serious. "You feel that?" He tapped the sigil over his own heart—identical to Kael's, only older, scarred, half-healed. "That's not a leash. It's a promise. I'm here because I choose to be. Not because the storm says so. Remember that when the world tries to tell you different."
Kael swallowed. The motion hurt.
He nodded again, slower this time.
Riven's grin returned, sharp and bright. "Come on, Kael. Let's steal some breakfast."
They climbed.
The city above had changed in the hours Kael had been gone. The black rain had stopped, but the sky still bled violet light. Buildings leaned together like dying old men, roofs sagging, windows weeping molten glass. The air tasted of hot iron and rotting meat.
Riven moved like he owned the ruins. He kicked aside a fallen gate, punched through a wall when a street was blocked, and once simply lifted a collapsed wagon off a trapped survivor—a girl no older than Kael—before setting her gently on her feet and telling her to run west before the next pulse.
Kael followed in his wake, barefoot on broken stone that should have flayed his soles but somehow didn't. Every step sent sparks skittering from his heels. People saw them—shadow-eyed scavengers, weeping nobles, soldiers with melted armor—and fell silent. Some bowed. Some fled. One old woman pressed a bruised apple into Kael's hand and whispered "StormBorn" like a prayer.
They reached the palace kitchens as the eclipse shrank to a fingernail of black.
The cellars had partially survived. Riven tore the iron-banded door off its hinges and stepped into cool darkness that smelled of smoke, spices, and old blood. Hams hung from hooks. Wheels of cheese the size of shields sat on racks. Barrels of wine had burst, flooding the floor ankle-deep in crimson that wasn't all wine.
Riven tossed Kael a wheel of hard cheese and a skin of water that miraculously hadn't soured.
"Eat fast. We've got maybe four hours before the grace ends."
Kael tore into the cheese like an animal. Crumbs fell into the first faint beard he had ever grown—he didn't care. The water was the best thing he had ever tasted.
Riven watched him with something soft in his eyes, then turned away to tear a smoked ham off the hook and devour it in three bites.
Between mouthfuls he spoke, voice low.
"Next relic is in the royal crypts. Dagger showed me when we broke the throne. There's a beastmaster down there—Sylvara of the Tempest Bloodline. She's been waiting longer than I have. But getting to her means crossing the Hollowtide when it rises again."
Kael paused, cheese halfway to his mouth.
He remembered the faces pressed against the trial's shadow-wall. Garrick. Lira. The little brother whose name he had never learned.
Riven saw the look. His voice gentled.
"They're gone, Kael. Truly gone. The Hollowing doesn't give back what it eats. Not yet. But every relic we claim, every hero we wake… we get stronger. Strong enough, one day, to make the Hollowing choke on what it took."
Kael stared at the cheese in his hand.
Then he took another bite. Chewed. Swallowed.
He met Riven's eyes.
"Show me."
Riven's grin could have lit the underworld.
They left the cellars with full bellies and new purpose. Riven carried a butcher's cleaver the size of a longsword. Kael carried the dull dagger and the first faint ember of something that might one day be hope.
Outside, the eclipse had become a black sun again.
The twelve hours were burning away.
They had a crypt to rob, a beastmaster to wake, and a city that was already trying to kill them again.
Riven clapped Kael on the back hard enough to stagger him.
"Try to keep up, Kael. The world's about to learn what happens when thunder walks free."
Together they ran into the dying light.