Sleep was rare for Kai now.
When he did drift into it, it wasn't peaceful.
This time, it was flame.
But not the kind that burned wood or flesh.
This flame hissed in silence, coiling like smoke around the bones of a forgotten city. Endless stairs rose into a black sky, paved with skulls whose eye sockets still wept ash.
And something waited at the top.
A throne. And on it a figure cloaked in rusted gold.
Kai tried to move, but his body felt pinned, not by force but *presence*. The weight of the being's gaze was enough to crack stone.
The figure didn't speak.
It exhaled.
And the world around Kai died.
The ashes flew, carrying words without sound:
> "Your defiance echoes, little myth."
> "I smelled your shadow before it walked."
> "But I am not the Guild."
> "I do not fear you. I wait for you."
Kai struggled to breathe. The very air scalded his lungs.
> "You think you're carving power."
> "But you're waking the old ones."
> "Let the Veil grow. Build your throne."
> "When it is complete... I will take it."
The figure lifted a skeletal hand, fingers long and rusted black and pointed at him.
The dream shattered.
Kai awoke with blood in his mouth.
He sat up violently, hand instinctively reaching for his dagger. The shadows in the Veil's chamber recoiled, alive with panic. Across the room, Ciro snapped alert.
"Kai?"
Kai didn't answer.
His chest heaved. His eyes darted across the walls as if expecting them to crumble.
Only when the taste of ash faded did he speak.
"Something found me."
Ciro approached cautiously. "What do you mean?"
"Not the Guild," Kai whispered. "Something older. Something watching."
Later that day, Felda returned from a raid deeper in the ruins.
They gathered around the map table Kai, Felda, Ciro, Solen, and Eren.
"I found something," she said, tossing a satchel onto the stone. It landed with a thud, dust spilling from the folds.
Inside: a torn page sealed in wax.
Guild-issue.
Kai unfolded it. The paper trembled in his hands not from magic, but from *weight*.
The glyphs were old. Ancient.
"'Project Seraphis,'" he read aloud.
Ciro leaned in. "That's a myth. An experimental relic "divine-tier" created during the Guild's purge years. Said to heal terminal corruption, even soul decay."
Felda nodded. "They didn't destroy it. They locked it away."
Kai's heart stopped.
He knew what this meant.
A cure.
A real one.
Something that could purge the lingering sickness in his sister's veins.
Solen raised an eyebrow. "Where is it now?"
Felda traced a circle on the map.
"Sanctified vault," she said. "Deep below the inner ring. Guarded. Forgotten. Maybe even off-record."
Eren looked between them. "So we go get it?"
"No," Kai said. "Not yet."
The dream still clung to his skin. Whatever the Hollow King was, it had *known* what he wanted before he did. And it had *smiled*.
Kai looked at the page again. There, at the bottom, scrawled in faded ink:
> "Only one may hold the Heart."
> "One life given, one light restored."
> "Equal sacrifice required."
That night, Kai stood beside his sister's bed.
She was resting better now. Breathing steadier. Felda had used her old medical smuggling contacts to secure stronger mana suppressants.
But it wasn't a cure.
Not yet.
Kai reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
His hand trembled.
"I found something," he whispered. "A way out of this."
Her lips moved slightly. She was dreaming.
He leaned closer.
"I'll save you, Ara. I swear it. Even if the world burns behind me."
But the echo of the Hollow King rang in his mind still
The Veil had changed.
Ever since the encounter with Wraithborn, those who lived in its shelter looked at Kai with something more than awe — it was fear, yes, but laced with something sharper.
Expectation.
To them, he was no longer just the killer of monsters.
He was the **maker** of something new.
They began calling him "Shade" not just as a name… but as a title.
Kai hated it.
Because he was starting to believe it.
---
Two nights after the dream, Kai called his core team together in the Veil's eastern chamber — the old water regulator room that Solen had converted into a meeting sanctum. It smelled like metal and dried herbs.
On the table: three maps, one Guild surveillance crystal, and a box of runes wrapped in chain.
Felda leaned forward. "The sanctified vault lies beneath the old Sanctum Cathedral. I know the layout — I used to train there."
Kai raised an eyebrow. "You were a Guild acolyte?"
She looked away. "For a year. Before I learned what they did to people like us."
Ciro frowned. "We're trusting the person who ran from the same system we're trying to burn?"
"I didn't run," Felda said coldly. "I *survived*. There's a difference."
Solen grinned from his seat. "How touching."
Kai silenced them with a glance.
"We need a scout," he said. "A small team. No magic. No Guild signatures. Just eyes."
Felda tapped the map. "There's an old reliquary tunnel here. They sealed it with silver, but the locking runes are centuries old. I can break them."
"I'll go," Eren said.
"No," Kai replied. "You're known. Too many patrols remember your face."
Eren's jaw clenched. "Then let me—"
"You're not expendable," Kai cut in.
It was quiet for a moment.
Then Kai turned to Ciro. "You and Felda. Two others you trust. In and out. No fighting. If you see something strange don't engage. Just mark it."
Ciro nodded once. "When?"
"Tonight."
Hours later, beneath a sickly yellow moon, the scout party slipped into the reliquary entrance a crack in the wall of an old Guild chapel buried beneath rubble. The air was thick with spores and silence.
Felda moved first, fingers brushing old glyphs on the wall.
"Still active," she whispered.
Ciro covered her, watching the tunnel behind them.
The further in they went, the stranger it became.
The walls were lined with bones not buried, but *grown* into the stone, as if the structure itself had consumed bodies over centuries. Light flickered unnaturally, dancing against no source.
Then they reached the outer chamber.
A black door, bound in pale silver.
No handle. No seams.
Just an inscription.
> *Only one may hold the Heart.*
> *Equal sacrifice required.*
> *Entry cost: memory or life.*
Felda stepped closer, her breath catching. "This… wasn't here before."
Ciro's eyes narrowed. "It changes."
"Or something's *changing it.*"
She turned, pulling out a whisper crystal. "We report back. This is bigger than—"
A sound.
Behind them.
Ciro drew his blade.
From the tunnel came a figure. Cloaked. Silent. Masked.
Not Guild. Not Veil.
Something else.
It spoke with no mouth.
> "Leave this place, insects. The Heart is not for you."
Felda stepped back. "Who are you?"
The figure tilted its head.
> "One who remembers what Seraphis cost."
> "You would trade death for cure."
> "You would shatter the balance."
Ciro's grip tightened. "Balance of what?"
The figure didn't answer. Instead, it *stepped back into the wall* vanishing like smoke sucked into stone.
Felda stared.
Ciro touched the silver door. "We're not the only ones hunting."
Back in the Veil, Kai was waiting.
When Felda and Ciro returned, their report was grim not just the door, not just the magic.
The *guardian*.
Kai turned the whisper crystal over in his hand, replaying the echo.
> "You would shatter the balance."
"What does that mean?" Eren asked.
Felda shook her head. "It means the Heart of Seraphis is protected by more than wards. It's protected by **doctrine**. Maybe even by the world itself."
Kai stood silent.
The words of the Hollow King came back to him:
> Build your throne. When it is complete… I will take it.*
Not a threat.
A **promise**.
And the Heart it wasn't a simple relic.
It was bait.