Kael woke with a start. The air was cold—damp and heavy like a soaked sheet. He rose slowly, his eyes still blurred with sleep, and then stopped.
Everything around him had changed.
Mist covered the ruins like a supernatural veil, thick and silent. The broken columns, once visible in the moonlight, were now just flickering shadows. The damp stone floor seemed to dissolve beneath his feet, as if the world were being devoured by something that was not part of nature.
He blinked a few times, trying to dispel the numbness in his mind—but the strangeness refused to go away.
"Exelia?" he called, his voice echoing muffled. Almost swallowed by the fog.
Silence.
"Liora?!"
Nothing. No footsteps, no breathing, no response.
Kael stood up straight, his hand automatically reaching for the hilt of his sword. His instincts screamed that something was wrong. Very wrong.
