The Veil felt colder tonight.
Not in temperature, but in the way it breathed. The air had weight. A tension coiled just beneath the surface of everything. Every whisper between sentries, every glance in the dark tunnels, carried the same question no one dared voice aloud.
What price would Shade pay for the cure?
Kai stood on a crumbling aqueduct that overlooked the central artery of the Veil. From this height, he could see the rows of makeshift structures, the flicker of enchanted lamps, and the people moving like ghosts through the gloom. Some of them were training. Others were tending to the wounded. And many were simply watching him from afar.
He could feel it.
The shift.
He had crossed a threshold the moment the name Heart of Seraphis passed his lips. Before, they followed him because he was strong. Because he gave them a place in a world that tried to erase them. Now, they looked at him like something else. Something not entirely human. Something that might one day turn around and demand something they were not willing to give.
He did not blame them.
He would feel the same.
"You're not blind to it, then," said Felda softly, her voice behind him as gentle as wind brushing stone.
He turned slightly, watching her approach across the broken tiles. She wore a long cloak tonight, runes woven faintly along the hem. Her hair was tied back, face sharper in the silver-blue light of the Veil.
"They're afraid," she said.
Kai nodded.
"Afraid of the relic. Of what it means. Of what it might take to reach it."
"And of what you'll become to get there."
He looked down at the people again. Some were huddled by a fire, passing around old rations like sacred offerings. Others sharpened weapons that would never win against what truly hunted them.
"I have to try," he said.
Felda stepped beside him. "I know. But they'll follow you into darkness, Kai. Just be sure you're not becoming the thing they fear more than the Guild."
He didn't respond.
---
The war room was lit only by Solen's glyphs tonight. A slow pulse of golden ink floated over the map table like drifting stars. The map itself had changed since last week. It now included sketches of Cathedral tunnels, revised movement patterns from the inner patrols, and the known position of the Sanctified Vault.
Solen was already talking when Kai entered.
"The western spillway has the least magical interference. It connects to a purification cistern that was converted into a reliquary chamber during the last purge era."
Felda frowned. "That was sealed three decades ago."
"Yes," Solen replied. "But not collapsed. And the wards they used back then can be unraveled. They were built for permanence, not resistance."
Ciro leaned over the map, arms crossed. "How deep?"
"Fifty meters down, two separate vault rings. One active. One buried. If the Heart is there, it's in the buried one."
Kai traced the route with his eyes. It led through maintenance shafts, down into rot-infested tunnels, past where even Guild purifiers refused to tread.
"Who goes?" he asked.
Felda answered first. "I will. I've walked those tunnels before."
Ciro added, "And me. I can handle the locks."
Kai nodded.
"I'll come with you," Eren said.
Kai looked at him. The younger man had grown sharper these past weeks, his eyes harder, movements more precise. But there was still something in him that hesitated at the threshold between shadow and steel.
"No," Kai said.
Eren's jaw tightened. "You don't trust me."
"I trust you to protect the Veil while I'm gone."
"That's not the same."
"No," Kai admitted. "It's not."
Eren said nothing else.
---
They entered the spillway tunnel just after dusk, when the surface streets above were thick with fog and the inner city guards were changing posts. The tunnel was narrow, carved of old stone, lined with the remnants of rusted piping and drained mana conduits. The air was damp. The silence absolute.
Felda led the way, her rune-lantern dim enough not to trigger old wards. Ciro followed with a pack of tools clutched tightly under one arm, the other holding a short blade drawn from his sleeve.
Kai came last.
The air grew thicker the deeper they went. There was a smell, something beneath rot and mold, something older. It reminded him of bones left too long in dark soil.
Eventually, they reached a chamber.
It was massive. Circular. The stone was smoother here, the carvings ancient and unfamiliar. At the center floated something unexpected.
A mirror.
Not glass. Not metal.
Something between.
It hovered silently, unbound by chains or glyphs, its surface black and rippling.
Kai stepped closer.
It did not reflect him.
Instead, it showed a man he had not seen in years.
Darius Kain.
Bloodied. Hollow-eyed. Alive.
Once, Darius had fought beside Kai. Once, he had fallen during a failed Rift dive. Kai had assumed the Rift took him. But here he was, staring through the mirror, as if across dimensions.
Darius's mouth moved.
"You followed the echoes too," he said. His voice sounded distant, frayed at the edges.
"You found the door. The Hollow remembers. It never forgets. And it will never forgive."
The image flickered.
"You think the Heart will save her. You think you can hold it. But it is not a gift. It is an exchange."
Then he vanished.
The mirror cracked once, a thin line spidering across its center.
Felda drew her weapon. Ciro backed toward the wall, hand on a glyph stone.
Kai didn't move.
Solen's voice cracked through the comm-crystal pinned to Kai's shoulder.
"We've got movement near the secondary access. Not Guild. At least three. Too quiet for patrol. Not Veil. They're coming fast."
"How long?"
"Five minutes, maybe less."
Kai stepped back from the mirror.
"Then we hold."
Felda turned to him. "You think they're after the Heart?"
Kai's eyes darkened.
---
They had five minutes. Maybe less.
Kai moved quickly, scanning the chamber. The mirror still floated silently at the center, a hairline crack shimmering across its surface. The walls curved around them, smooth and old, no clear exits except the one they'd come through. The scent of decay was growing stronger.
Ciro pressed himself against the entrance tunnel, blades drawn, breath steady. Felda crouched near a broken pillar, preparing a quickbind rune in the stone. Kai stood still in the center, watching the mirror.
Then they heard it.
Footsteps.
No boots. No armor clinks. Just the soft scrape of flesh on stone.
And breathing. Deep, steady, unnatural.
The first figure stepped into view.
He wore no Guild insignia. His robe was stitched with red threads and covered in strange, shifting runes. His face was hidden behind a veil of pale cloth, and his hands were blackened to the wrist. Behind him, two others emerged—taller, slower, masked in bone.
They didn't speak at first.
Felda whispered from behind the pillar, "Not Guild. Not mercs either."
Kai's eyes narrowed. He could feel it. These were not ordinary hunters. Not trained assassins. They moved with ritual, not precision.
The lead figure finally spoke, voice like silk dragged over broken glass.
"You are early."
Kai said nothing.
The figure tilted his head.
"The Vault is not ready. The Heart is still feeding."
Feeding.
Ciro hissed under his breath. "What the hell does that mean?"
The second figure took a slow step forward, lifting something in their hand. It was a crystal, faintly glowing red.
"We followed the Wound," the second one said. "It brought us here."
Kai stepped forward.
"Who are you?"
The lead figure laughed, the sound thin and sharp.
"We are the Whisperers. We do not hunt the way your Guild does. We listen to what the world has hidden. And what lies behind this mirror is not meant to be found."
Kai glanced at the mirror.
It was pulsing again. Slowly. Rhythmic.
"You're here for the Heart," Kai said.
The third Whisperer finally spoke. Their voice was not male or female, but something in between. Empty.
"No. We are here to protect what the Heart protects. You think it is a cure. But it is a key. It does not open a door. It seals one."
Kai's voice was steady. "Then we're at odds."
The lead figure lowered the veil from his face.
His skin was burned, cracked, stitched with rune-lines that glowed faintly in the low light. His eyes were blank. Hollow.
"You are already claimed," he said to Kai.
Felda shifted behind the pillar.
"Careful," she murmured. "This isn't just talk. They're reading you."
The Whisperer smiled.
"We do not wish to kill you. Not yet. But the Hollow has marked you. You will open the gate, whether you want to or not."
Ciro raised a blade. "We're not interested in riddles."
The second Whisperer lifted their hand. A soft hum filled the chamber.
And then the mirror responded.
It glowed suddenly, light spilling across the room like liquid shadow.
All three Whisperers stopped.
The mirror cracked again.
And a voice emerged.
Not Darius this time.
Something deeper. Older.
"You stand before the First Lock."
The chamber dimmed. The light from the mirror darkened into a deep crimson. The walls themselves began to hum.
Kai felt it in his bones.
"This path is sealed by memory," the voice said. "One must give. One must forget. Or all shall bleed."
Felda stepped forward. "What does it mean?"
Kai's vision blurred for a moment.
He saw a memory not his own.
A battlefield.
Bodies of children.
A woman screaming his name.
Then it vanished.
The mirror pulsed again.
"Who gives?"
The Whisperers stepped back.
"This is your test," one of them said. "Give your memory, or give your life. Or take another's in your place."
Kai clenched his fists.
It was asking for a price.
Not blood. Not magic.
Memory.
The weight of who he was.
He turned to Felda.
"Can it be reversed?"
She looked pale.
"I don't know."
Ciro looked between them.
"Don't do it. You don't know what it'll take."
Kai stepped closer to the mirror.
"I don't need all my memories. Just enough to keep going."
But then the mirror shifted again.
It showed her.
Ara.
His sister.
Lying on the cot in the Veil.
Eyes closed. Breathing faint.
The mirror whispered.
"Would you give her face, for her life?"
Kai froze.
The image blurred. Flickered. Her face almost erased.
He stumbled back.
The voice spoke again.
"Or choose another. Someone with less to lose."
The implication was clear.
The mirror would accept someone else's memory.
Or life.
The Whisperers watched.
"This is how it begins," one said. "The Hollow feeds on choice. On compromise."
Felda grabbed Kai's arm.
"You don't have to choose tonight."
But the mirror was pulsing now. Faster. Demanding.
Ciro stepped beside them. "We need to go. Now."
The ground began to shake.
The tunnel behind them started to collapse.
Felda shouted, "Kai!"
He made his decision.
He turned from the mirror.
Not yet.
He would not give her face.
Not for this.
They fled the chamber as the ceiling groaned. The Whisperers remained behind, vanishing into the darkness like smoke. The last thing Kai heard as they escaped into the tunnels was the voice of the mirror.
"All doors open eventually."