The spire groaned again, louder this time. Not just some old stone creaking under its own weight—no, this was deeper. Something alive in the bones of the place, old weight trying to shift up from under centuries of silence. Dust spilled from the ribs of the vaulted ceiling in thin, slow threads.
Beneath the cracked banners and the shattered archways, Verek Solheim walked into the wrecked court of Phokorus. Rain slicked off his shoulders, his cloak heavy and dragging like it didn't want to come with him. He moved like someone who had once held fire in his hands and hadn't yet figured out what to do with the frost living under his skin now.
He didn't say anything right away. Didn't need to. His silence filled the room louder than most men's shouting.
The guards standing near the throne's edge shifted, not back but to the side, like maybe that would be enough. Their armor clinked together like they were trying not to be noticed. That tight, nervous sort of deference people offered to saints gone feral. Or gods who hadn't stopped bleeding.
Ezreal stood waiting at the base of the vestibule's ruined arch, arms crossed, the light behind his eyes colder than the storm outside. They stared at each other for a breath too long. Neither moved.
"You should be locked away," Ezreal said, flat.
Verek's voice had taken on a different weight lately. Like gravel being stirred slow in the gut of a collapsing mountain. "You still think those shards are the threat? You're watching the fire, but you're missing the smoke. They're not the danger. They're the latch. The thing inside them... that's what wakes when we pretend we know what we're doing."
Ezreal's fists curled. Not raised, but tight, like he was holding something sharp inside. "You gave Malarath the first one. Don't talk to me like you're still clean."
Something twitched in the air between them. Not a full spell, just the bones of one, muscles flexed on instinct. Verek didn't move. Just walked past, slow, deliberate.
"I gave him nothing," he said. "He took it. Because I thought I could end this without another pile of corpses. That was the mistake."
Dax stepped into his path, wide-shouldered and braced like a boulder that knew how to hit back. His bracers still carried soot stains from the last fight. "So that's it, then? You show up now, and we're supposed to forget what you let happen?"
Verek paused, studied him. "You think I came for the shards?"
Caylen's voice came from behind, dry and clean as a cut. "No. You came to convince us to use them."
That got a reaction. Verek turned, slow and worn thin. His eyes had once been bright, all hammered bronze and firelight. Now they looked rusted. Not dulled by time, but by the kind of weight that builds behind the eyes when you've seen too much of something you couldn't stop, and knew it.
"You think this is still a war," Verek said. "It's not. It passed that months ago. What's out there isn't conquest. It's preparation. Torvald and his lot aren't marching to win. They're trying to break the latch from the outside."
Caylen crossed his arms, body angled like he was expecting to get hit. "Then why the battering rams? Why the siege engines?"
"Because the egg isn't ready," Verek said. His voice softened at the edges, not gentle, but worn. "They're feeding it. Every soul that burns out there, every scream, every collapse—it turns the city into a ritual. The egg's not waking on its own. We're the ones waking it."
Ezreal blinked once. A slow, tight blink. Then turned toward the vault door like something behind it had whispered.
The stone was warm. Not forge-warm. No sharp heat. But the kind of heat you got from a body breathing in the dark, close enough to fog up your skin.
Verek stayed still.
"I'm not here to take anything," he said. "I'm here to offer the only thing Malarath can't control."
Tarrin, half a step behind, spoke now. His robe was torn near the hem, soaked from some storm the rest of them hadn't seen. "You?" he asked. "You're the Morning Star. You've leveled cities for less. And now we're meant to believe you're the cure?"
Verek met his eyes. "No. I'm the blade he couldn't break. That's why I'm still here."
Ezreal didn't turn back. "Why now?"
"Because the rhythm changed," Verek said, stepping closer to the vault, not touching it, just close enough to feel the pulse under the stone. "It's syncing with the ley lines. You feel that hum in the stone? It's not noise. It's a countdown. Malarath's using the city like a tuning fork."
The silence that landed after that felt strained, thin and stretched like a thread about to pop.
Caylen didn't move, but his voice came through like steel scraping brick. "Then you tell us how to stop it. But if you lie—"
"I won't," Verek cut in. "And if I do, you'll know. You always did smell rot first."
Ezreal stepped back from the door. Walked back slow, like his boots weighed too much. "We use you," he said. "But we don't trust you."
"I wouldn't either."
Dax made a low sound in his throat, a half-laugh that never made it to his mouth. "This is the dumbest thing we've ever agreed to."
"Which," Caylen said, "is saying something."
Tarrin shifted his weight, looking between all of them. "So what do we do?"
Ezreal turned to Verek. "You said you could stop the sync. Show us."
Verek didn't hesitate. He walked up to the seal and put one palm to the stone. His fingers splayed out, pressing against the warmth. His eyes closed.
A faint light bloomed under his hand. Not fire. Not spark. But a thin shimmer, like starlight cracked and leaking out of a stone wall. It pulsed. Then again.
And the warmth behind the vault… dimmed. The rhythm slowed, stuttered for a beat.
Caylen sucked in a breath. "That's working."
Verek's brow had already started to bead. "Not for long. That trick cost me decades. If we want it to hold, I need help."
Ezreal gave a nod. "Then we get you help. Dax—find Kaelith. If she's still upright, she'll know how to lock this down. Caylen, take Tarrin. Scrape up every mage still breathing. I don't care if they're drunk or halfway turned to salt, we need them casting."
"And you?" Dax asked.
Ezreal glanced at the vault. "I'm staying right here. If the pulse shifts again, I want to be the first to know."
Verek opened his eyes. "If it shifts again, it won't knock—it'll tear through every brick in this place."
Ezreal didn't flinch. "Then we break it before it breaks us."
Caylen lingered a little longer. "If we pull the shards—"
"We scatter the lock," Verek said. "The egg might survive. But the thing dreaming inside it won't finish hatching."
"But if we botch it," Dax added, "we're handing Malarath a god with teeth and no leash."
Verek didn't argue.
The three of them turned and headed out fast, bootsteps echoing against wet, broken tile.
And behind them, behind the thick, rune-buried steel of the vault, the egg waited. Its pulse had calmed, for now. But the pause wasn't sleep.
It was listening.
It had learned something new.
It wanted more than blood this time. It wanted belief. Will. Something deeper.
Worship.
And out beyond the gutted city walls, through smoke and ash, another horn sounded.
Not Torvald's.
Not Ironcrag's.
It sounded older.
Something else had heard the rhythm shift.
And it was coming.