The road did not forgive them.
By midday it had turned to mud thick enough to steal boots, the road carved deep by wagons that no longer came this way. Rath walked ahead of the others, hood low, sword quiet at his side. The forest thinned into low scrub and dead grass, land worked hard and abandoned harder. Fence posts leaned like tired men. A shrine lay toppled near the road, its wooden idol split clean down the middle.
Lyessa stopped beside it. "That was tended," she said. "Not long ago."
"Everything is," Edrin muttered. "Until it isn't."
Rath said nothing. He felt it again, the pull. Not sharp. Not urgent. Just present, like a hand on the middle of his back, guiding without pushing. He hated how familiar it was becoming.
They reached a rise by late afternoon. Beyond it lay a wide valley dotted with smoke. Too much smoke, Too steady.
Edrin shaded his eyes. "Village."
"Or what's left of one," Lyessa said.
Rath scanned the ground. Tracks. Horses. Boots. Too many to be a raid, too organized for bandits.
"King's men," he said. "Not Halvar's."
They approached carefully.
The village had been built along a shallow stream, stone foundations with timber frames, fields stretching outward like ribs. Now the fields were trampled, the stream red-tinged and slow. Bodies lay where they'd fallen. Some in armor, most not. Doors hung open. Smoke drifted from a single building near the center.
A chapel.
Lyessa swallowed. "No bells."
Rath stepped into the street. His boots stuck briefly, then pulled free with a soft sound he didn't want to name. The village was quiet in a way that wasn't natural. No flies. No crows. No dogs barking at strangers.
Something had chased everything living away.
They found survivors in the cellar beneath the chapel.
A dozen of people, pressed together in the dark, eyes wide and hollow. When Rath lifted the trapdoor, a man lunged for him with a pitchfork, hands shaking.
Edrin knocked it out of his hands.
"Easy," Edrin said, raising both palms. "We're not soldiers."
That word broke something.
A woman began to sob. A child screamed until another hand clamped over his mouth. The man's pitchfork clattered to the floor.
Lyessa crouched, her voice low and steady. "Who came?"
"Red cloaks," the man said. "Black suns stitched on them."
Edrin grimaced. "Halvar."
"They said the land was tainted," the woman sobbed. "That our god had failed. They burned the old shrine and told us to kneel."
Rath's jaw tightened. "And when you didn't?"
"They killed the priest," the man said angrily. "Then the rest started screaming"
"From fear?" Lyessa asked.
"No," he said. "From the ground."
Rath felt the pull twist.
"What came up?" he asked.
The man shook his head violently. "Not a demon. Not like the stories. It spoke like a man. Like it knew us."
Edrin cursed under his breath.
"It walked through fire," the woman said. "The soldiers couldn't stop it. It didn't kill them. It just… looked at them. And they turned on each other."
Rath straightened.
"Which way did it go?"
The man pointed east. Toward the hills.
Of course.
They left the survivors food and water, though Rath knew it wouldn't be enough. Lyessa pressed a charm into the woman's hand, one that glowed faintly before dimming.
"It won't stop what's coming," Lyessa said softly. "But it might keep you unnoticed."
They moved on.
The hills rose fast, stone breaking through soil like bone through skin. The pull sharpened there, no longer subtle. Rath's head ached. The brand burned beneath his clothes, hot enough that he could smell it.
That night they made camp in the lee of a rock outcrop. No fire. No talking above whispers.
Edrin finally broke. "That thing in the village. That wasn't just some loose horror."
"No," Lyessa said. "It was called."
Rath stared into the dark. "By me."
Silence followed.
Lyessa shook her head. "No. You're not a summoner."
"I don't have to be," Rath said. "Not if the curse does the calling."
Edrin stared at him. "You're saying this is spreading because you exist."
"I'm saying it knows where I am," Rath replied. "And it's testing how loud it can be."
Sleep came badly. When it came at all.
Rath dreamed of chains again, but this time they weren't binding anything. They were being laid. Across roads. Across villages. Across the island itself. Each link stamped with a symbol he didn't recognize, but felt in his bones.
When he woke, Lyessa was already up, staring at the hills.
"They're opening," she said.
Rath followed her gaze.
Cracks lined the slopes ahead, faint but unmistakable. Some smoked. Others glowed dull red, like embers under ash.
"That's not natural," Edrin said.
"No," Lyessa replied. "That's pressure."
They didn't make it far before the ground trembled.
Not an earthquake. Too focused, too deliberate.
Rath raised a fist. "Down."
They crouched as the earth split ahead of them. not wide, not yet, but enough for something to push through. A hand, clawed and gray, gripped the edge and pulled.
Then another.
This demon was smaller than the one on the road, but faster. Leaner. Its face was almost human, stretched wrong, eyes set too close, mouth full of needle teeth.
It smiled when it saw Rath.
"Bearer," it croaked. "You walk louder now."
Rath drew his sword. "You shouldn't be this far up."
The demon laughed. "You broke the rules first."
It lunged.
The fight was short and vicious. Rath met it head-on, steel biting deep. The demon moved like it knew his timing, its claws scraping sparks from his blade. It hissed when he cut it, not from pain but recognition.
Rath Charged tried to slice it's arm off but he can't seem to hit it, and then without even noticing, Edrin said
"Lyessa, You're bleeding"
Lyessa replied with worried confusion "What is that on my arm?!"
It was like something went inside her.
Rath started to focus all of his energy into sending that thing back to the world below, he realized he knows his timing from his curse, Rath started to fight like a idiot to confuse it.
Clang!, Clash!, Clank!, Clink!
He was fighting like he would if he was just a boy... and it was working.
When Rath finally drove it back into the crack, pinning it against the stone, it spat blood and grinned.
"He's watching," it said. "Not yet. But soon."
Rath leaned closer. "Then tell him I'm not kneeling."
The demon laughed, its body collapsing into ash that blew away on a wind that hadn't been there a moment before.
The crack sealed behind it.
Edrin stared. "That thing talked like..."
"Like it knew him," Lyessa said while putting a piece of her teared clothing on her arm. "Because it does."
Rath sheathed his sword with shaking hands.
This wasn't escalation.
This was recognition.
Far away, deep below stone and fire, something listened- not to Rath's defiance, but to the way the world bent around him now. The way doors opened without being touched. The way demons spoke his name without being taught.
The board was set.
And the piece had finally realized it was being played.
The hills did not let them leave quietly.
They pressed on eastward, skirting the sealed crack where the demon had risen, but the land itself seemed reluctant to release them. Paths curved when they shouldn't. Slopes steepened without warning. Once, Rath was certain they had been walking downhill only to find themselves climbing again, lungs burning, boots slipping on shale.
"Either we're lost," Edrin said between breaths, "or the world's lying."
Lyessa didn't answer. She had gone pale, her fingers stained with chalk and ash from symbols she kept drawing in the dirt, only to smudge them out again. Each time she did, she glanced at Rath, then quickly away.
Rath felt the pressure build with every step. The pull was no longer a hand at his back, it was a hook set deep in his chest, tugging with patient insistence. He could resist it, still. That was the lie the curse told him. It never dragged. It waited until resistance became exhaustion.
They reached a shelf of stone overlooking a narrow valley just as dusk bled into night. Below them, a single road cut through the dark like a scar, flanked by standing stones half-swallowed by earth. Old markers. Pagan, by the look of them. No king's sigil. No crown.
Lyessa stopped dead. "This is a crossing."
Edrin frowned. "Doesn't look like one."
"It doesn't want to," she said. "Crossings hide when they're not in use."
Rath felt it then, a hum beneath the stone, faint but steady. The same rhythm he felt through the sword when blood was near. When doors were close.
"What crosses here?" he asked.
Lyessa swallowed. "Prayers. Promises. Things people swear and shouldn't."
Edrin gave a humorless laugh. "So a road for fools."
"Yes," she said softly. "And for kings."
They descended into the valley.
The air grew thick as they approached the stones, heavy with the smell of damp earth and old smoke. The standing stones formed a loose circle around the road, each etched with symbols worn nearly smooth by time. Rath recognized none of them, but the curse stirred, attentive.
Someone had been here recently.
Boot prints marked the dirt, many of them. Soldiers, by the weight and spacing. They led straight through the circle and vanished on the far side.
Edrin crouched, touching one of the prints. "Halvar again?"
Lyessa shook her head. "Different make. Different march."
Rath studied the stones. "One of the others."
Six kings. Six crowns. Six different gods, each claiming dominion over some corner of Sumaria. And each, now, moving.
A sound drifted from ahead. Low voices. Metal on leather.
Edrin looked up sharply. "Camp."
They crept closer, keeping to shadow.
A small force had made camp just beyond the stones. twenty men, maybe more. Their armor was dark, polished to a dull sheen. No bright colors. No banners flying. Only a standard laid flat near the fire: a white crown pierced by three nails.
Lyessa's breath caught. "King Varric."
Edrin grimaced. "The quiet one."
Varric of the southern reaches. No grand speeches. No crusades. A king who paid in coin and secrets, who let others bleed loudly while he listened.
Rath watched the men. They were tense. Alert. Not celebrating a victory. Not mourning one either.
"They're waiting," he said.
As if summoned by the words, a horn sounded once from the road beyond the camp. Short. Controlled.
The soldiers moved immediately, forming ranks without panic. A path opened through them as a figure approached from the dark.
Not a king.
A priest.
He wore layered robes stitched with the same crowned sigil, his head shaved, his face marked with thin lines of ink that caught the firelight. In his hands he carried a staff capped with iron bands.
Lyessa stiffened. "That's not one of Varric's."
The priest stopped at the edge of the firelight and planted his staff in the dirt.
"We are close," he said calmly. "I can feel it."
One of the soldiers shifted uneasily. "Sir, the men-"
"They will hold," the priest said. "They always do."
Rath's skin prickled.
The priest's head turned slowly. Not toward the stones.
Toward Rath.
"You can come out," the priest called. "There's no hiding from this place. Not tonight."
Edrin cursed under his breath, already drawing his sword.
Rath stepped forward before either of them could stop him.
The priest smiled. "There you are."
Lyessa hissed, "Rath-"
"It's fine," Rath said. It wasn't. But the pull had gone still, like a held breath.
The soldiers tensed as he emerged, weapons half-raised.
The priest lifted a hand. "No. Not him."
Rath stopped a few paces away. "You're not here by chance."
"No," the priest agreed. "We were sent."
"By Varric."
"Yes." A pause. "And by something older."
Rath felt the brand burn.
"What do you want?" he asked.
The priest studied him openly now, eyes sharp with curiosity rather than fear. "Confirmation."
"Of what?"
"That the curse walks," the priest said. "That the stories are true."
Edrin snapped, "Stories don't split villages open."
"No," the priest said mildly. "Men do. Stories just tell them where to start."
Rath's grip tightened on his sword. "You felt it too."
"Yes," the priest said. "The door. The pressure. The attention."
Lyessa stepped forward despite herself. "You're using this place."
The priest inclined his head. "We're observing it."
"For what?" Rath demanded.
"For signs," the priest replied. "For who will break first."
Rath laughed once, sharp and humorless. "And if it's me?"
The priest's smile thinned. "Then the south will be ready."
The air shifted.
The standing stones hummed louder now, their worn symbols glowing faintly. The ground vibrated underfoot, not enough to knock them down, but enough to remind them where they stood.
"You shouldn't be here," Lyessa said. "None of you should."
"And yet," the priest said, "here we are."
He turned his staff slightly, tracing a symbol in the dirt.
The ground answered.
A crack split the road behind him, smaller than the others Rath had seen, but cleaner. Controlled. From it rose a shape wrapped in smoke and ash, humanoid but wrong, its limbs bending at angles that made the eye ache.
The soldiers did not react. They had seen this before.
"This is not an attack," the priest said calmly. "This is a demonstration."
Rath felt the pull surge, furious now, desperate.
The demon lifted its head and spoke in a voice like grinding stone.
"Bearer," it said. "You are late."
Rath stepped forward, rage cutting through the pressure. "I didn't come for you."
The priest's eyes widened slightly. "Interesting."
The demon shifted, confused. "You feel… different."
Rath raised his sword. "Good."
He moved before the priest could react.
Steel met smoke and bone, the impact ringing out sharp and loud. The demon shrieked as the blade cut deep, its form unraveling under the force of the strike.
The soldiers shouted. The priest staggered back, staff clattering.
Rath pressed the attack, driving the demon back toward the crack, each blow fueled by fury and clarity both. This wasn't instinct now. This was choice.
The demon screamed. not in rage this time, but in fear.
"He sees you," it cried. "You can't-"
Rath finished it with a brutal downward cut, cleaving through its core. The demon collapsed into ash, the crack snapping shut behind it with a sound like a door slamming.
Silence crashed down.
Smoke drifted. The standing stones dimmed.
The soldiers stared, some in awe, some in terror.
The priest looked at Rath with something like reverence.
"So," he said softly. "It's true."
Rath turned on him. "You bring demons to roads and call it observation."
The priest spread his hands. "We prepare."
"For what?" Edrin demanded.
The priest's gaze flicked between them, then settled on Rath again. "For the moment the door opens wide."
Lyessa whispered, "You're helping it."
The priest did not deny it.
"We all choose sides eventually," he said. "Some of us just choose early."
Rath stepped closer, close enough that the priest could see the blood on his blade, the tremor in his hands.
"If you summon another," Rath said quietly, "I'll kill you before it finishes crawling out."
The priest studied him for a long moment, then nodded once.
"Fair," he said. "We have what we came for."
He signaled the soldiers. They began to withdraw, disciplined even now.
As they passed the standing stones, the priest paused.
"When the kings meet," he said over his shoulder, "they will ask about you."
Rath didn't answer.
The camp emptied. The fire died. The valley fell quiet again.
Edrin let out a breath he'd been holding. "That was a mistake."
Lyessa nodded. "They've marked you."
Rath stared at the road ahead, at the stones that had watched it all without judgment.
"They already had," he said.
Far below, where chains once lay and doors once held, something stirred, pleased not with the violence, but with the clarity. Rath had stepped into the game with open eyes.
And that, more than blood or fire, was what it had been waiting for.
The valley did not return to silence all at once.
It settled slowly, like a beast lowering its head after deciding not to strike. The standing stones dimmed to dull gray, their ancient symbols once again indistinct, as if ashamed of having stirred. Smoke from the dead fire thinned and drifted east, carrying with it the scent of iron and something older. something that clung to the back of Rath's tongue no matter how deeply he breathed.
Edrin wiped his blade clean on the grass and sheathed it with a sharp motion. "That priest wasn't bluffing," he said. "They are preparing."
Lyessa knelt near one of the stones, her fingers hovering just above its surface. She did not touch it. "So are the gods," she murmured. "And so is what waits beneath them."
Rath stood apart, staring down the road the soldiers had taken. The pull had eased again, retreating into a low, constant pressure behind his sternum. He knew better than to think that meant anything had ended.
It never ended. It only changed shape.
"We need to move," he said. "Now."
They left the crossing before the moon reached its peak, taking a narrow trail that cut away from the road and climbed into higher ground. The path was little more than a hunter's track, half-choked by brush and loose stone. Rath welcomed it. Roads had begun to feel like invitations.
They traveled until exhaustion forced them to stop.
The camp they made was poor. No shelter beyond a cluster of boulders, no fire, no comfort. Lyessa warded the perimeter with what little she had left, charms cracking or dimming as she placed them. Each failure drew a tight breath from her chest.
Edrin noticed. "You're burning through them fast."
Lyessa nodded. "They don't like being this close. Whatever pressure is building… it's not just from below anymore."
Rath looked up. The sky was cloudless, stars sharp and cold. "Above, too?"
"Yes," she said. "The gods don't like competition."
Sleep came in fragments.
Rath dreamed again, but this time there were no chains.
He stood on a field of black glass beneath a sky split by fire. Figures lay scattered around him. Winged, broken, burning. Above them all stood a shape of blinding light, wings spread wide, a crown hovering just beyond its grasp.
You would rule them? a voice thundered.
The shape looked down at Rath and smiled.
I would save them.
Rath woke with a gasp, hand clawing at his chest. The brand burned, not hot, but cold. Like ice pressed into bone.
He sat up, breathing hard.
Lyessa was already awake, watching him from across the camp. "You saw it again."
Rath nodded. "Different."
She hesitated. "Did you see him?"
Rath didn't answer right away. He stared into the dark, at the spaces between the stones. "I don't think he wants to hide anymore."
Morning brought bad news written in the land itself.
The trail they'd been following simply ended, swallowed by a long, fresh crack that cut across the hillside like a wound. Steam curled up from its depths, carrying the same wrong-sweet smell they'd encountered before.
Edrin kicked a stone into it. They never heard it land.
"That wasn't here last night," he said.
"No," Lyessa replied. "But it was coming."
Rath crouched at the edge. The pull twisted sharply downward, hungry now.
"They're mapping me," he said.
Edrin frowned. "Who's 'they'?"
Rath stood. "Everyone."
They skirted the crack as best they could, but it forced them farther north than intended, into territory Rath recognized only from rumor. The land here had been fought over for generations claimed, lost, reclaimed, abandoned. Old battlefields layered atop older ones. Bones beneath bones.
They found the first sign of it near noon.
A gallows stood crooked beside the road, its beam cracked but still upright. Three bodies hung from it, swaying gently in the breeze. Soldiers, by their armor. Not long dead.
Lyessa covered her mouth. "Their eyes-"
Gone. Burned out clean.
Edrin scanned the surroundings. "No scavengers. No birds."
Rath stepped closer, studying the marks on their throats. Not rope burns.
"Something took them down after," he said. "Something that wanted them to see it."
A symbol had been carved into the dirt beneath the gallows. A crude circle crossed by jagged lines.
Lyessa went pale. "That's not demonic."
"What is it, then?" Edrin asked.
"Human," she said. "A cult mark. One that predates the kings."
The road ahead shimmered faintly, like heat haze on stone.
Rath felt the pull shift, not downward this time, but forward. Urgent.
They didn't speak as they followed it.
The place they reached had once been a monastery, built into the side of a cliff overlooking a ravine. The outer walls had collapsed, but the inner sanctum still stood, its doors torn from their hinges. Blood stained the steps leading inside.
Edrin's voice was tight. "Someone's here."
Inside, they found survivors.
Five of them, huddled around a broken altar. Not monks. Soldiers, civilians, one woman in priest's robes stained dark with blood. All of them were shaking.
When they saw Rath, the woman screamed.
"No," she sobbed. "Not you. Not the marked one."
Rath froze.
Lyessa moved quickly, kneeling, speaking softly. "You're safe. He won't hurt you."
The woman shook her head violently. "He already has. He already will."
Rath stepped back, something cold settling in his gut. "What happened here?"
The woman's eyes flicked to his sword, then to his chest. "They came for sanctuary," she said. "The soldiers. The villagers. They said the land was breaking open behind them."
"And?" Edrin pressed.
"And something followed," she whispered. "Not a demon. Not an angel."
Rath felt the pull surge.
"It spoke with a thousand voices," the woman continued. "It said the gate was no longer enough. That the bearer walked free."
She looked straight at Rath.
"It said you were coming."
The ground shook.
Not a crack this time. Not yet.
A sound rolled up from the ravine outside. deep, resonant, like breath drawn through a cavern.
Rath moved without thinking, stepping between the survivors and the open doors.
"Get them out," he said to Edrin and Lyessa. "Now."
They didn't argue.
The sound grew louder, closer. Stone cracked. Dust rained from the ceiling.
A shape rose into view beyond the broken doorway, vast, indistinct, its outline blurring the air around it. Wings unfurled, not fully, but enough to blot out the sky beyond the ravine.
This was no scout. No servant.
This was a herald.
Its voice rolled across the monastery, shaking bone and faith alike.
"The door opens wider," it intoned. "The bearer walks. The fall continues."
Rath stepped forward, heart hammering. "I didn't open it."
The herald's head tilted. "You are it."
Rath raised his sword. The blade thrummed, eager and afraid all at once.
"I won't be your path," Rath said.
The herald laughed, a sound like stone grinding against stone. "You already are."
It moved.
Rath met it at the threshold.
The impact drove him back a step, boots skidding on blood-slick stone. The herald's form shifted under his blows, parts of it solid, others dissolving into smoke and light. Each strike sent pain lancing up Rath's arm, not from resistance, but from recognition.
This thing knew him.
It struck back with a wing that was not flesh but force, hurling Rath across the sanctum. He hit a pillar hard, breath exploding from his lungs.
The voice came then, not the herald's.
Enough games.
The air froze.
The herald faltered, its form flickering.
Rath struggled to his feet, vision swimming. "That's not you."
The herald turned, confused. "My lord?"
The pressure in the room doubled, then tripled. The survivors screamed. Lyessa shouted a ward that shattered mid-word.
The presence that filled the sanctum was vast, restrained only by laws older than kings and crowns. Rath felt it settle its attention on him, not with hunger, but with something like approval.
You learn quickly, the voice said, voice layered with echoes of heaven and fire. Pain teaches clarity.
Rath's teeth clenched. "Get out of my head."
A pause. Then something like amusement.
Soon, It replied. But not yet.
The presence receded slightly. The herald shrieked as if burned, its form unraveling, wings tearing apart into ash and light that scattered into the ravine below.
Silence slammed down hard.
Rath sagged against the pillar, chest heaving.
Edrin rushed to his side. "You alive?"
"Unfortunately," Rath rasped.
Lyessa stared at him, fear and awe tangled in her eyes. "He spoke through it."
Rath nodded slowly. "And he listened to me."
Outside, the ravine settled. The sky cleared.
But Rath knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that something fundamental had shifted.
It was no longer testing the door.
He was testing the man it was built around.
And Sumaria, bleeding and divided under six crowns, was about to learn what happened when a curse stopped being patient.