The deeper they went, the quieter the world became.
No insects. No echoes. Just the steady rhythm of boots over stone and the faint pulse of the ruin's old breath. Something in the very walls felt strained as if the place was remembering pain.
"We're close," Elira murmured, stopping near a half-collapsed corridor. "This next vault was sealed by something unnatural. The Whisperborn who charted this place never broke it."
"Let me guess," Ryall said, blades already in hand. "We're gonna be the lucky ones."
Tessan crouched and ran his fingers over the floor. It was cracked blackened in streaks. As if heat and rot had fought here and neither won.
"No magic residue," he said. "But something passed through. Heavy."
Kael stayed near the back. The scythe hadn't reacted since the last battle, but his body still felt raw like it was adjusting to something it didn't ask for. The shadows no longer whispered, but they curled tighter around his limbs now, as if waiting.
Drev was the first to move forward.
He slid along the wall and pointed. Embedded in the center of the next chamber's door was a glowing wound thin, almost like a scratch in the air itself, but pulsing faintly.
Kael blinked. "What is that?"
"Elira called it an Ethereal Wound," Ryall said. "Some kind of scar in the world. Magic flickers around it. Aura bends."
"Time stutters, too," Drev added. "You might feel sick when we pass through."
"And on the other side?" Kael asked.
"Unknown," Elira said simply.
They circled around the wound. As Kael drew close, his shadow dragged behind him not as a shape, but as threads. The scar seemed to react to it, pulsing faintly as if tasting what he was. He looked away.
Drev signaled. They pushed the door.
The vault opened.
Beyond was a low chamber, shaped like a broken heart. Pillars tilted inward, and blue symbols pulsed along the floor ancient, slow, and dim. There were statues here, half-buried in dust. Soldiers in armor. Priests with no eyes. Things that once prayed but now only waited.
"What's this place?" Ryall whispered.
"Resting chamber," Elira said. "But not for people."
That's when they heard it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Water?
No—aether. Condensed and liquified. Dripping from the cracks in the ceiling. The droplets shimmered mid-air, never touching the floor.
Kael reached toward one instinctively. His shadow twitched.
And one of the statues moved.
It wasn't subtle. Its arm shifted, fingers tightening around a blade it had once sworn to. Then another statue twitched. Then another.
Drev hissed, backing up. "Wards are activating."
"They're guardians," Elira said. "And they don't like us being here."
Kael stepped back, shadow curling.
But this time, Ryall was already in motion. "Time to break bones!"
The fight started fast.
Ryall danced across the room, daggers slashing into cracked stone joints, forcing the guardians to falter. Tessan charged with brute force, slamming his plated arm into one of their legs, knocking it flat. Drev darted between the others, striking at the backs of knees and necks with fluid silence.
Kael raised the scythe. Shadows pooled beneath him raw, instinctual. Not spells. Not techniques. Just power trying to become form.
One of the guardians charged him.
He sidestepped, barely, and let the scythe swing.
It didn't cut.
It tore.
The guardian shuddered as its chest opened not bleeding, but unraveling into tendrils of smoke and broken essence. Kael stumbled back, eyes wide. "I didn't mean to-"
"Don't stop!" Elira called out, launching a pulse of compressed aether at another statue. It staggered.
Kael hesitated… then swung again.
The shadows obeyed.
Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But with the cold edge of something ancient trying to surface.
When the last statue fell, cracked into dust and pieces, they were all breathing hard. The aether in the room had grown thicker like whatever lay beyond this vault had stirred.
"That wasn't a defense room," Tessan muttered, wiping blood from his cheek. "That was a memory. This place is remembering its old guards."
Kael didn't speak. His hands were trembling not from fear, but from the echoes of power that weren't his... and yet were.
Drev pointed ahead. "The next level opens through there."
A sealed arch stood in the wall, carved with runes in a language none of them recognized.
Elira stepped forward, brushing her fingers over them.
And they glowed in response.