The winds howled louder the closer they came to the Verge.
By the third day of travel, the ground itself had changed coarse, uneven, and covered in strange vein-like patterns pulsing faintly beneath the soil. Trees twisted like coiled serpents. The sky above this place never held still.
They weren't alone.
Camps stretched across the foothills leading to the Shattered Verge's entrance. Dozens no, hundreds of adventurers had answered the call. Tents in every color. Banners from forgotten guilds and rising mercenary houses. The scent of oil, steel, and anticipation hung heavy.
Even Tessan, ever-grim, let out a low whistle. "Never seen this many before…"
Ryall nodded. "No one's here for scouting. They came for war."
The next morning, a bell rang out across the valley. Once. Twice.
A wooden platform had been constructed overnight near the rift's edge—where the shattered ruin pulsed like an open wound, reality distorting around it. The Verge.
A robed woman, face veiled in golden cloth, stepped forward.
"The Shattered Verge will be open for the next ten days. All adventurers are permitted entry, but only parties of five or more may proceed past the Third Echo Chamber. Be warned: this ruin is ancient. It does not recognize our laws. It does not forget."
"Glory awaits. Or silence."
With that, the expedition began.
Kael and the others entered through the northern breach one of the five entry points discovered by scouts.
They weren't the only ones.
Alongside them, several elite parties moved with precision. Whisperborn mages surrounded by floating glyph-wards. Veilborn warlords bearing blessed armor. One team carried a caged beast made of bone and fog.
Kael said nothing. But his eyes were locked ahead. His breath calm. His hands still gloved tightened around the haft of his weapon.
They descended into the unknown.
Far from the light and noise of the adventurer's gathering, deep beneath the trade tunnels of Sarn Vosk, a single candle burned.
The Black Union had assembled.
They did not wear colors. Their faces were hidden, but their presence was unmistakable. Men and women who once owned slave sectors, vanished names erased from public history. They had not forgotten.
And they had a mission.
"The Verge brings too many eyes. We operate cleanly," one said.
"The last marked targets have been erased. Except for one."
"The boy?"
"Yes. Him. Kael. We end it here. Before others begin to ask."
A sharp-clawed figure stepped forward her body cloaked in oily shadow, a Marked, one of their reaper-hunters.
"Give me two days. I'll bring his head."
Elsewhere, atop a broken ziggurat in the southern wastes, another group prepared.
The Fangs of Silence.
They were not mercenaries. They were fanatics. Believers of the First Fracture, a lost cosmological event buried by time and fear. Where monsters were not born, but freed.
And the Verge… it whispered to them.
"The ruin is waking. There's something deeper inside," their leader said—a bald man tattooed with runes no scholar could translate.
"Do we wait?" one asked.
"No. We corrupt it. Let the ruin bleed out its monsters. The Crowned World will suffer and we will rise."
In the midst of it all, Kael took one step deeper into the ruin's shadow.
Unaware.
Unseen.
And watched.