They moved away from the others without another word.
Down the long hallways, away from the soft lamplight and quiet murmur of the Order's upper floors.
Only when they reached a narrower stairwell, its stone steps worn smooth by centuries of tread, did the representative finally speak again.
"My name is Varos Deyne," he said, voice low and sure. "I serve as the Head of the Callestan Branch of the Order. Under direct appointment by the High Curate in the Sanctum of Reprieve."
He paused, glancing at Koda to ensure the weight of that title was understood.
"I was meant to meet you at the capital," Varos continued, stepping steadily downward, cloak trailing behind him like a shadow. "There, in full ceremony and in full council, we were to explain… everything."
His boots tapped against the ancient stone with each step.
"But time has been stolen from us, Koda."
His voice didn't rise, didn't tremble. But it sharpened like a blade.
"Our enemy moves faster than we calculated. Faster than any of the projections could foresee. And so…" Varos's mouth twisted, not quite into a frown. "Certain truths must be passed to you now, before the opportunity is lost entirely."
They descended one flight.
Then another.
The walls grew closer. The light dimmer.
No windows. No murmuring voices. Only the cold breath of the stone around them.
At the end of the second stairwell, Varos led him to a narrow shaft—no more than two men wide, lined with slick iron rails and a crude lift made of thick, knotted rope and reinforced wood.
Koda hesitated as Varos stepped easily onto the platform.
A lift this deep, hidden away beneath one of the most fortified cities remaining to the Guide's name? Whatever lay at its bottom wasn't meant for the casual traveler—or even the average Order officer.
Varos gestured for him to follow. "Come. Quickly."
Koda stepped onto the platform.
With a smooth pull of a side lever, the lift lurched once—then began its slow, grinding descent.
The light from above faded almost immediately, swallowed by the narrowness of the shaft.
They passed row after row of heavy, rusted iron rungs embedded in the walls, long disused. There were no torches. No glyphs to mark the way. Just the low moan of the lift cables and the endless descent downward.
Seconds stretched into minutes.
The air grew colder.
Denser.
The scent of old parchment and damp stone clung to the back of Koda's throat.
He lost all sense of the city above—the muffled clatter of carts, the distant calls of merchants, the rhythmic patrols of the shield-bearers.
Gone.
It was like being lowered into the marrow of the world itself.
He wondered, not for the first time, if they were descending into something he wouldn't walk back out of.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime compressed into a heartbeat, the lift shuddered to a stop.
A short hallway stretched before them—simple stone walls, polished smooth not by artistry, but by endless passage.
Varos stepped forward.
Koda followed, every footstep stirring echoes too loud for such a still place.
Ahead, a wide archway opened into a massive chamber.
A library.
Or at least, it looked like one at first.
Shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, laden with scrolls, bound ledgers, parchments so old their edges had curled in on themselves like dying leaves. The smell of ink and vellum was thick here—a living thing.
But it was not like any library Koda had ever known.
Only two figures moved among the endless rows.
They wore plain robes of dark gray, hooded low so that their faces were lost to shadow.
One carried a bundle of scrolls with careful precision, setting them onto a worktable.
The other moved slowly down an aisle, fingertips brushing the spines of tomes as if counting them.
Neither spoke.
Neither looked up.
Neither acknowledged their arrival.
Varos led Koda to the center of the vast room, where a heavy circular table waited, carved from a single slab of stone so dark it seemed to drink the surrounding light.
He turned to Koda then, his voice still low but now carrying an unmistakable gravity.
"They are Vowkeepers," he said, nodding slightly toward the two figures. "Sworn to this place. Sworn to secrecy."
He paused, letting the weight of that settle.
"They cut out their own tongues the day they took the Oath of Silence."
Koda's stomach twisted, not from horror, but from the cold clarity of it.
These men had given up speech, the most basic human tool, for duty.
Forever.
Varos let that linger for a breath before continuing.
"Every word in this place is recorded by hand. Every scrap of knowledge guarded. Nothing spoken leaves these walls unless permitted by the highest seats of the Order."
He turned, resting one gloved hand against the edge of the great table.
"And now, Koda," he said, "so will you guard this knowledge."
The stone table stood at the heart of the vast chamber, surrounded by endless rows of scrolls, ledgers, and ancient tomes.
It hummed faintly beneath Koda's fingertips, a quiet, imperceptible vibration—like the steady thrum of a heart too deep to hear.
Varos Deyne watched him closely, his expression unreadable.
"You are standing," he said quietly, "in one of the grand record halls of our world."
His gaze swept the shelves, the robed Vowkeepers moving silently through the towering archives.
"There are others like it," Varos continued. "Hidden beneath the great cities, woven into their very bones."
He raised a hand, ticking off names as if counting stars.
"The Sanctum of Reprieve," he said first. "The capital. The largest, most complete record hall known to the churches and the Order. Every divine decree, every major shift in the world's balance—recorded there."
Koda nodded slightly. He had heard whispers of it. The heart of the Order's knowledge.
Varos went on.
"Callestan," he said, voice tightening. "The most heavily fortified fortress among our strongholds—here lies the deepest, most carefully guarded record hall. Knowledge that could not simply be protected—it had to be buried."
His hand drifted over the dark table's edge.
"Oria," he said, a shadow flickering across his face. "Your birthplace. It houses a minor hall below its city—a chamber smaller, less grand, but no less important for those called to its depths."
He turned, pacing slowly around the table, the edges of his cloak brushing the stone.
"And to the west," Varos said, "near the coastal borders, another minor hall watches the tides—a gate between what was and what may yet come."
He stopped, facing Koda once again.
"There are others," he said. "One on each of the other five livable continents, carefully hidden beneath the skin of civilization. Each tied to the Eternal Guide. Each holding pieces of our true history—pieces that must never be lost."
The air grew heavier in the long silence that followed.
"But what you are to see," Varos said, his voice a whisper of steel, "did not come from here."
He gestured, and one of the Vowkeepers—his face hidden by his hood—approached, carrying a thick bundle wrapped in black silk.
Varos took the bundle with reverent hands and laid it upon the table between them.
"The records you will read today were transferred directly from the Sanctum of Reprieve. Pulled from the High Library itself. Sealed under decree of the High Curate, guarded by seven wards, and entrusted into my hands until your arrival."
He pulled back the silk.
Scrolls. Parchments. Ledgers older than any Koda had ever seen.
Their seals bore not just the marks of the Churches, but symbols Koda didn't recognize—sigils carved so deep into the wax they seemed to claw at the parchment beneath.
Varos met Koda's eyes.
"These are records of the gods themselves," he said, voice low. "Accounts of what they uncovered… and feared… about the disaster now looming over humanity."
He stepped back from the table, hands clasped behind his back.
"You must understand them," Varos said.
"And you must understand them quickly."
The parchment was rough under Koda's fingers.
He hesitated only a moment—just long enough for the weight of what Varos had said to settle behind his ribs like a second heartbeat—before he unrolled the first scroll across the black-stone table.
The ink shimmered faintly, etched with something more than simple dyes—lines and sigils older than common language, layered atop one another like scars atop skin.
As the parchment flattened under his hands—
The world shifted.
He didn't fall.
He didn't move.
The world simply went dark.
The chamber, the scroll, Varos, the silent Vowkeepers—all gone in an instant.
Swallowed whole.
Koda opened his mouth to call out, to will himself back into reality, but there was no air, no sound, nothing but a pulling sensation deep behind his eyes, deeper than thought.
And then—
Light.
It seared into existence, blinding and brilliant, so sudden it stunned his senses.
He blinked—or thought he blinked—and when the pain cleared from his sight, he was somewhere else entirely.
Koda stood on a paved walkway, surrounded by bright green fields broken only by stretches of dark, glittering roads. Tall trees lined the edges of the space, their leaves thick and vibrant in a way he had never seen.
And towering beyond them—
Structures.
Massive structures.
Buildings unlike anything Koda had ever imagined. They soared into the sky, glass and steel catching the sunlight in sharp glimmers, reflections dancing across the streets like scattered stars.
The world pulsed with life around him.
Creatures—no, people—moved along the sidewalks and across crossways, dressed in clothing strange and colorful. They carried strange objects in their hands, glowing with shifting colors, faces bathed in their eerie light.
Above him, he heard the roar of the wind—and looked up just in time to see a flying metal contraption tear across the sky, flashing silver under the sun.
He staggered backward, heart thundering, mind scrambling to make sense of it.
Was it a dragon?
A spell?
It had no wings. No magic aura. It was simply… mechanical. Man-made.
And yet it flew with grace.
Koda turned slowly in a full circle, his breath catching with every new sight. There were black roadways filled with metal beasts that moved without horses, rumbling forward in neat lines and flashing their strange lights. Large glass windows reflected the world back at him in distorted, shimmering images.
A thousand details assaulted him at once.
Flickering signs pulsing with symbols he could almost, but not quite, recognize. Buzzing, glowing threads strung across the streets on high poles. Strange music blaring from open doorways. Smells of roasting meats, strange sweet perfumes, acrid smoke—all blending into an overwhelming tapestry.
Life bloomed everywhere.
Children ran across small fenced-in green yards, their laughter sharp and high. Workers hauled packages into shops. Street vendors called out from shaded stalls, handing steaming food into outstretched hands.
The defenses were laughable—almost non-existent. No guards lined the doors. No barricades reinforced the buildings. These people walked without fear through their world.
Koda had never seen such innocence.
Never imagined it was possible.
A soft hand tightened around his.
Koda looked down, startled, and saw a boy's small, round fingers clutched within the soft grasp of an adults grip.
The body wasn't his.
He realized it then—he was inhabiting someone else's flesh.
The limbs were smaller, softer, unfamiliar.
His perspective barely reached the hip of the woman walking beside him—presumably the boy's mother. She smiled down at him, brushing a hand through his unruly hair with an ease that broke something in Koda's chest.
She was young. Maybe twenty-five years. Her hair was dark and braided. She wore strange clothing: soft, casual fabrics with patterns he didn't understand. No armor. No weapons.
Just life.
Just a moment of ordinary peace.
Was this real?
Had it ever been real?
They walked down the sidewalk, passing rows of tall houses lined neatly side by side. Metal beasts—cars, his mind whispered, although he didn't know how he knew that—sat quietly along the curb, gleaming in the noon sun.
Other families moved around them. Children waved from front porches. A dog barked as it chased a ball across a lawn.
There were no monsters here. No system prompts, no hovering glyphs.
Just living.
Koda's heart ached.
For what had been lost.
For what had once been.
And perhaps… for what had never even had the chance to survive.
The sky was a brilliant blue—so wide and open it almost hurt to look at.
The boy's mother hummed something under her breath, a soft song without words, as they crossed a small footbridge over a lazy stream cutting through a green park.
Koda lifted his face toward the warmth of the sun, breathing in deeply, letting the moment settle into his bones.
But as he exhaled—
The world shuddered.
It began subtly.
The air cooled.
The wind shifted.
Birds overhead, who had moments ago circled lazily, now screeched and shot away from the trees in chaotic flocks.
The mother paused mid-step, her hand tightening slightly on his.
She looked up, her brow furrowing.
Koda followed her gaze.
Above them, the brilliant blue sky rippled—like a sheet of silk suddenly disturbed by unseen hands.
And then the blue drained away.
Color bled from the heavens, pulled into swirling knots of black and blood-red clouds.
The sun dimmed, not behind clouds, but as if smothered by something thicker, something incomprehensibly wrong.
In moments, the sky was a violent, seething mass of crimson and smoke.
The edges of the clouds writhed like living things, shapes that refused to settle, forming and unforming so quickly the mind could barely grasp them.
A low, bone-deep rumble shook the ground beneath them—first distant, then rising, until the metal beasts in the streets rattled against the pavement.
All around them, people stopped.
Turned.
Stared up in disbelief.
Conversations died mid-sentence.
Music cut off.
A strange, suffocating silence descended, heavy and absolute.
The boy's mother knelt before him—panic flashing in her dark eyes. She gripped his shoulders tightly, speaking words Koda couldn't hear—muffled by the sudden pressure in the air.
He tried to answer.
Tried to speak.
But his mouth moved soundlessly.
The light continued to bleed from the world.
The colors—the greens of the grass, the rich browns of the trees, the bright hues of painted houses—dulled and dimmed into muted, lifeless echoes of themselves.
The only true color left was the angry, seething red overhead.
Something was coming.
Koda could feel it.
Something vast. Something cruel.
Something that had no place in a world as fragile as this.
And then—
The ground cracked.
A fissure tore through the street ahead, spiderwebbing across the concrete with a shriek of splintering earth. The metal beasts pitched and tumbled into the growing crevasse, their carcasses swallowed whole without a sound.
Screams finally broke loose.
The spell of stillness shattered into chaos as people bolted—running without direction, without plan. Some dove into buildings. Others threw themselves into vehicles, engines roaring.
The boy's mother grabbed his hand again—this time tighter, harder—and began to run.
Koda stumbled to keep up, his smaller legs struggling.
The world blurred around him—the buildings, the fleeing people, the burning sky above. A crackling roar like the tearing of the world's fabric echoed down the streets.
The last thing Koda saw before the darkness surged forward was a tower of blackness—not cloud, not smoke, not stone—rising out of the earth at the horizon, reaching toward the blood-drenched heavens.
A maw.
A hunger.
A beginning and an ending all at once.
There was no warning.
Just a pulse.
A deep, rattling wave of invisible force blasted outward from the towering black maw splitting the earth.
It wasn't sound.
It wasn't pressure.
It was everything, a shudder in the fabric of reality itself.
Every handheld device — the glowing panels in people's hands, the humming boxes in storefronts — blinked once and went dark.
Cars skidded to abrupt, uncontrolled halts, their engines dying mid-turn. Sirens that had just begun to wail cut off with strangled hiccups of static.
Above, the silver flying machines — planes, Koda now somehow understood — stuttered, veered, and then plummeted from the sky in shrieking arcs of smoke and fire.
Koda watched as one of the monstrous metal birds spun overhead, one wing on fire, breaking apart in mid-air. A deafening explosion ripped through the air as it collided with a line of small houses across the field, flattening them into rubble and flame.
Screams tore the silence apart, no longer isolated — a wall of raw terror rolling through the streets.
His mother yanked him toward her, shielding him with her body as debris and smoke washed over them.
And then, from the splintered crack in the earth—
They came.
At first, they were shadows.
Twisting, twitching shapes spilling from the darkness like swarms of ants disturbed from a nest.
But as they drew closer, the details sharpened — and the true horror bloomed.
Goblins—small, twisted things with greenish, glistening skin and too many teeth, their eyes glowing like coals.
Orcs—massive, hulking brutes wielding jagged iron weapons, their muscles bulging with unnatural force.
Kobolds—scaled, reptilian wretches, darting between the larger monsters, brandishing makeshift spears and crude, rusted blades.
Giant wolves, their fur matted with blood, their eyes wild and rabid.
Spiders, monstrous beyond comprehension, with legs as thick as tree trunks, chittering mandibles dripping with green venom.
And worse things — things Koda could barely focus on without his mind recoiling.
Beasts from nightmare.
The monsters fell upon the crowd without hesitation.
Koda watched — helpless, frozen in the borrowed body of the boy — as the first wave hit.
Goblins darted into a group of civilians huddled near an abandoned car, knives flashing, blood spraying.
An orc swung a massive cleaver through a cluster of fleeing workers, severing limbs, crushing bone with sickening ease.
The ground itself seemed to writhe with movement as wolves and spiders overtook the runners, dragging them down one by one in an explosion of red mist and screams cut short.
Police officers, their faces pale with terror, fired wildly with their strange metal sticks—guns, Koda realized distantly—but the magic these beasts carried in their very flesh seemed to warp the bullets, slowing them, deflecting them.
Some shots struck true — goblins toppled, kobolds shrieked and tumbled into the dirt.
But for every monster that fell, three more surged forward.
The officers were overwhelmed in minutes, buried under a tide of teeth, claws, and steel.
Order collapsed.
The boy's mother didn't hesitate.
She scooped him into her arms, sprinting into the chaos, weaving through the wreckage of cars, pushing through crowds too panicked to organize themselves.
"Find your father," she breathed — or perhaps screamed — though the words barely reached him over the roar of destruction.
They found him a few blocks down, near what must have been a grocery store. He stood in the middle of the street, wild-eyed but alive, waving them toward him.
For a heartbeat — just one — Koda felt a rush of impossible, foolish hope.
They could make it.
Together.
The sky rippled again — a deep, angry growl from the heavens themselves.
A spider the size of a house lunged from the side of the collapsed store, a limb tipped with a jagged, barbed spike shooting forward faster than thought.
The barbed leg punched through the father's chest, lifting him into the air like a broken doll.
Blood sprayed in a hot arc, splattering across the pavement.
The man's face contorted in agony—but not despair.
He locked eyes with the mother, with the boy cradled in her arms.
"RUN!" he bellowed, voice cracking with final, terrible clarity.
The spider shook him like a rag and hurled him aside.
The mother's scream was raw and wordless.
But she obeyed.
She ran.
Down the streets, past burning cars and toppled signs, dodging the snapping jaws of wolves and the clumsy swings of orcish axes.
Other families ran beside them — children wailing, fathers and mothers clutching at wounded limbs, desperate to reach somewhere — anywhere — that the monsters hadn't yet touched.
The military arrived then.
Large black trucks barreled through the broken streets, soldiers spilling out, clad in heavy vests and carrying even larger weapons. They fired in controlled bursts, the air crackling with gunfire.
It slowed the monsters.
But only slightly.
The beasts moved with a kind of brutal, mindless hunger that couldn't be easily reasoned with or broken by force alone. The magic radiating from them warped the bullets' flight paths, dulling the impact.
Still, the soldiers fought. Fought and died, trying to buy precious seconds for the fleeing civilians.
Koda's small legs pumped furiously as his mother dragged him onward, her hand bruising his wrist with how tightly she gripped him.
A wall of rubble blocked the main road ahead — a collapsed overpass, burning and twisted.
She veered into an alley, into the narrow backstreets, weaving through a maze of trash bins and half-toppled fences.
Behind them, the sounds of pursuit grew louder — guttural howls, the high-pitched keening of goblins eager for blood.
The alley opened into a small parking lot — but as they burst through the gate, three goblins were already waiting.
The mother's face twisted in grim determination.
She shoved Koda hard behind a stack of metal barrels and spun to meet the monsters.
One goblin lunged — knife flashing.
She caught its wrist mid-swing, wrenching it sideways with a sickening snap.
The second goblin stabbed her low, near the hip. She gasped — a short, sharp sound — and headbutted it savagely, sending it sprawling.
But the third—
The third goblin was behind her.
Its knife sliced clean across her throat, a thin red line blooming into a waterfall of blood.
Her eyes widened in shock—and then softened.
She turned toward Koda.
Her last act was a shove—a violent, desperate push that sent him sprawling backward into the deeper shadow behind the barrels.
She mouthed something.
Run.
And then the goblins were on her.
Koda scrambled backward, tears blurring his vision, forcing himself not to scream, not to move, not to draw their eyes.
He stumbled to his feet and fled into the tangle of broken streets, heart hammering so loudly he thought it would betray him.
He didn't look back.
Couldn't.
The city burned around him.
Explosions shook the ground under his feet. Soldiers fought in bloody pockets against creatures that should have never existed.
The sky boiled red and black, monstrous silhouettes wheeling overhead.
He ran, lungs screaming for air, legs burning with exhaustion.
And still he ran.
Until, by sheer chance or cruel mercy, someone caught him.
A stranger—an older man, face weathered and hard, blood already splattered across his tattered coat.
He grabbed Koda by the arm and yanked him into a crumbling storefront just as a pack of kobolds swept the street behind them.
Koda fought—kicking, thrashing—but the man only crouched low, pressing a finger to his lips.
Silent.
Live.
When the way cleared, the stranger pulled him into the deeper ruins, past the dead and dying, past soldiers barking retreat orders, toward a battered military truck loading survivors.
There was a convoy gathering.
A small, desperate procession of vehicles, soldiers, and civilians rallying to escape the fallen city.
A refugee column.
One last chance.
The convoy rumbled through the shattered outskirts of the city.
Smoke poured into the sky in thick, suffocating columns.
Flames chewed through entire neighborhoods, devouring homes, schools, churches—everything that had once made the place a sanctuary of life.
From the back of the military truck, Koda—still bound in the body of the boy—peered through a cracked window. He watched the broken skyline recede, the towers blackened and listing, the streets writhing with distant shapes that still hunted even as the world collapsed around them.
The boy was numb.
Tears no longer came.
There was only the dull ache of survival, hammering in his chest with every shaky breath.
Soldiers sat around him, faces grim, weapons gripped tightly across their laps. Mothers held crying infants. Fathers stared hollow-eyed at the horizon. Blood stained the floor of the truck, and no one had the strength to clean it.
Still—they moved.
Still—they believed there was somewhere left to run.
The trucks roared down the battered roads, pushing northwest, aiming for the shelter of the mountains.
The Rockies.
A place still wild enough, still isolated enough, to maybe—just maybe—hold back the tide.
They had a plan, broken and desperate though it was: reach the lodges of Red Pine, a cluster of old mountain retreats deep in the woods, and regroup there.
A place to survive.
A place to hope.
For nearly an hour they moved.
The ruined city dwindled into a smudge of smoke and fire on the horizon, the buildings little more than skeletal fingers clawing at a sky still swirling with blood-red clouds.
And then—
Another pulse.
It hit without warning—no sound, no flash—just a sudden, crushing pressure that swept through the trucks like a hurricane of gravity.
The engines choked.
One by one, the vehicles sputtered, coughed, and died.
The great metal beasts rolled to a halt, tires crunching uselessly against the cracked pavement.
Silence fell over the convoy.
The soldiers moved first.
Orders were barked—sharp, efficient. Weapons checked, packs thrown over shoulders. Mothers gathered their children, fathers lifted what supplies they could carry.
There was no question.
No hesitation.
They all knew.
They would walk.
The line of survivors spilled from the dead trucks, forming a ragged column that stretched down the broken road.
Soldiers fanned out to the edges, rifles at the ready, scanning the skies and the distant hills.
No one spoke much.
There was nothing left to say.
The city burned behind them—orange and red and sickly green flames licking the smoke-soaked heavens.
It would burn until nothing remained.
Koda walked beside the stranger who had saved him, the man's hand firm on his shoulder, guiding him forward step by step.
Ahead lay the mountains.
A long, grueling journey on foot—weeks, maybe longer—through wilderness, ruin, and whatever new horrors the world might yet unleash.
But they would walk.
They would keep moving.
Because there was no other choice.