The air in the ruined Hall of Seekers was thick and dry, tasting faintly of ash.
Dust motes drifted like slow snowfall through broken shafts of red light streaming from the stained-glass windows. Every color seemed wrong here...muted, bleeding into the endless crimson glow beyond.
Aria's breath came in short bursts. Her pulse hadn't slowed since they'd leapt through the gate.
The silence pressed on her ears until even her own heartbeat sounded too loud.
Kael tested the nearest door, but the warped wood didn't budge. "It's sealed. Whatever happened here… it's not recent."
Finn crouched beside a crumbling statue of a Seeker, brushing away debris from its base. "This place feels… dead. But not empty." His gaze flicked to the shadows between the pillars. "Like something's watching."
Lyric was already scanning the chamber, her fingers tracing invisible runes in the air. "It's not just a ruin. It's an echo. The walls are holding a memory, a very bad one."
Quinn's eyes swept the room like a hawk's. "If this is the Hall, then either we've been thrown forward in time, or…" He hesitated, his voice low. "…we've crossed into a different layer of the realm entirely."
The Shard in Aria's palm pulsed faintly, as though recognizing the place. She swallowed hard.
Not when. Where you must begin again. Eira's words rattled in her skull.
They began moving down the central aisle, footsteps muffled on the cracked mosaic floor. The once-proud banners hanging above them were little more than tatters now, swaying in an unseen wind. Each bore the crest of the Seekers faded almost beyond recognition.
Aria slowed beside one of the fallen banners. She touched the frayed cloth, and a faint spark leapt into her skin. Images flashed in her mind Seekers standing proud in this very hall, their laughter ringing beneath sunlight that streamed through pristine glass. Then the vision twisted. Shadows poured in like a tide, swallowing the light. Screams echoed, and the scene went black.
She stumbled back. Kael caught her arm instantly. "What happened?"
"Nothing," she lied, still feeling the echo of those screams in her bones.
Then came the sound.
A faint, deliberate tap-tap-tap, echoing from deep within the hall.
Everyone froze.
The sound grew louder, closer like heels striking stone in a slow, measured rhythm.
"Show yourself," Kael called, his voice carrying through the hollow space.
The tapping stopped.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing. Then, like mist condensing into form, a figure appeared at the far end of the aisle, a woman cloaked in layered black and violet, her face hidden beneath a deep hood. Shadows clung to her like living things, writhing against the edges of her silhouette.
Her voice was silk wrapped around steel. "Seekers… so far from home."
Aria's stomach clenched. "Saraphine."
The hood tilted, as though the woman were smiling beneath it. "You've been busy. Poking at things that should remain buried."
"What did you do to this place?" Lyric demanded, her hands already glowing with arcane light.
"I didn't do this," Saraphine replied smoothly. "This is simply… what remains, when balance is shattered." She took a slow step forward, and the shadows behind her deepened, whispering in tongues no one could name. "A warning, perhaps. Or a promise."
Kael's hand tightened on his blade. "We're leaving."
"Of course you are," Saraphine said, tilting her head. "But first… I'll take what I came for."
Before Aria could react, the air rippled and the world tore open.
---
Far from the Hall, in a place that was no place, Saraphine's shattered realm pulsed with dark life.
It was a sky of broken glass, fragments hanging weightless in the void, each shard reflecting a different nightmare. The ground beneath her was fractured obsidian, laced with rivers of pale fire. Above, jagged silhouettes of towers floated upside down, their windows glowing with cold, ghostly light.
Here, the laws of the living world bent and frayed. Every breath tasted of metal and forgotten oaths.
Saraphine stood at the center of a ritual circle carved into the black stone, the edges pulsing with runes stolen from times before history. Around her, faint shapes of lost souls whispered soldiers from a hundred dead wars, faces half-remembered, their hollow eyes locked on her.
She raised a hand, and the whispers grew into a low, unified chant.
"I call you," Saraphine murmured, her voice carrying like a ripple through still water. "Bound by oath, freed by my will. Rise to serve the Balance you once swore to protect."
One by one, the shades stepped forward into the circle. As they did, the fire in the runes flared, and chains of black light wrapped around their forms, pulling them tighter into her command.
Above her, the largest shard of broken sky shimmered revealing a blurred image of the Hall of Seekers. The tiny figures of Aria and her companions were visible, moving cautiously through the ruin.
Saraphine's lips curved faintly.
"They think they've escaped," she said softly. "But I will bring the storm to them. And when the Shard is mine…" Her gaze sharpened, voice dropping to a whisper. "…so too will the girl."
The ground beneath her feet pulsed once and the army of lost souls took a step forward in unison.
---
Back in the Hall of Seekers, the red light outside flared suddenly brighter.
Aria turned toward the shattered windows and her heart stuttered.
Shadows were moving toward the Hall. Hundreds of them.
And they were coming fast.
Kael stepped in front of her, sword drawn. "Everyone, ready yourselves."
Lyric's voice was tight. "Those… aren't living."
"No," Quinn said grimly. "They're bound."
Finn's hands began to glow, but his expression was grim. "If they reach us before we figure out a way through that door, we're not getting out."
Aria glanced at the sealed doorway Kael had tried earlier. The Shard's pulse in her hand was rapid now, insistent. She stepped toward it and the instant her palm touched the cold wood, the seal blazed with white light.
The Hall shuddered, and deep beneath their feet, something ancient stirred awake.