They came to the Vale under gray skies.
What had once been a village was now a field of rotting beams and half-collapsed stone walls. Charred prayer flags clung to splintered poles. Crows, too bold and too many, scattered only when Alric stepped forward with blade drawn.
Maela tightened her grip on the shard. "It happened here."
"What did?" Konrad asked, scanning the wreckage.
"The first fracture. The records say this is where the Veil was breached. Where something... crossed."
Alric muttered, "Then we should be moving faster."
They advanced, boots crunching over broken pottery and bones. Every house was gutted. No sign of struggle, no belongings left behind—just emptiness, as if life had been vacuumed out of the place.
Near what used to be the town square, they found it.
A circle of blackened earth. Symbols scorched into the stone—concentric rings, overlapping glyphs, and a jagged slash through the center.
Maela knelt, tracing the outermost curve with trembling fingers.
"This wasn't a fire."
"Then what?" Alric asked.
She didn't answer. Her eyes had gone distant. Listening.
Suddenly, the shard in her hand pulsed.
That night they stayed in the remnants of a chapel, its roof gone and its altar cracked. Konrad watched the perimeter while Alric tried, for the third time, to make a flame catch. The damp wood refused him.
Maela sat in silence, eyes fixed on the shard in her lap.
"I saw them again," she whispered.
Alric looked up. "Who?"
"The ones from the vision. The eyeless man. The city without a name. But this time... there was a woman. Standing on a bridge made of fire, holding a blade of light and ash."
Konrad turned. "What did she say?"
"Nothing. But she looked at me—through me. Like she knew who I was. Like she was waiting."
By morning, the wind had shifted. It carried a sour, metallic tang. Not blood—older. Rust, perhaps. Or regret.
They moved north toward the hollow hills.
Maela led now, her stride sure. The shard had started to hum low, like a heartbeat through the stone. Alric didn't like the way she held it—so close, like a lifeline.
Konrad whispered, "She's changing."
"She's waking up," Alric replied.
They reached the mouth of a crevice. The path narrowed into a gash between two ridges, the rock walls slick with condensation and veined with old runes.
They descended.
As they stepped deeper, the air grew thick. Whispers echoed off the walls. Not voices—memories. Impressions. Fears.
Konrad stumbled.
"What did you see?" Maela asked, steadying him.
He shook his head. "My brother. Drowning."
"You don't have a brother," Alric said.
"I did," Konrad replied. "Before the fracture."
They said nothing after that.
At the base of the crevice was a pool. Perfectly still, glowing faintly from within. It reflected not what stood above it, but scenes that shifted with every blink—battles, lovers, deaths, things yet to come.
Maela approached.
"Don't," Alric warned.
But she knelt. Touched the water.
The vision took her.
A great wheel turning in the void. A spire splitting the sky. The woman on the fire-bridge, reaching out—not in welcome, but warning.
Maela gasped and fell back, eyes wide.
"She's not waiting," she whispered. "She's guarding."
"Guarding what?" Konrad asked.
"The other side."
Suddenly, the shard screamed.
It dropped from Maela's hand and rolled into the pool. The light exploded—violent and hot—and the walls trembled.
Then, silence.
The pool was gone.
In its place stood a stairway descending into utter darkness.
Alric exhaled. "I think we found where the story gets worse."
Elsewhere, far from the Vale, in the high towers of Ebron, Lady Vael poured over old manuscripts. Symbols matching those from the basin, from the village, from the fracture.
Her Whisperer entered.
"They've reached the Withered Vale."
"Good," she said without looking up. "Then they're nearly ready."
"For what?"
She smiled, cruel and tired.
"To fail."
Back at the crevice, Alric stood at the stair's edge. The air was cold—unnaturally so. Below, the steps twisted into unknown black.
He looked to Konrad. "You don't have to follow."
"You already know I will."
To Maela. "Are you strong enough?"
She didn't answer.
She lit a torch and stepped into the dark.
The others followed.
Behind them, the pool shimmered once… and vanished.
TO BE CONTINUED…