The wind didn't blow here.
That was the first thing Leon noticed as he and Mira crossed the final ridge overlooking the chasm. No birds. No clouds. No sky.
Only silence—and the spiral of broken stars beneath their feet.
"This is the place," Mira said quietly. "The Starbreak Fault."
Leon's gaze swept the horizon. What should have been land simply… ended. As if someone had sliced the world in half and left behind nothing but falling light.
Fragments of reality hovered in midair—ruins of temples, shattered obelisks, staircases that led nowhere. And at the center of it all, floating over a swirling vortex of blue and black:
**A Gate.**
No doors. No frame. Just a circular rift suspended between worlds, pulsing with power that didn't belong in this realm.
Leon's ring began to glow.
Mira noticed. "The Seraphis mark?"
He nodded. "It's reacting."
"Then that's it," she said, pointing to the Gate. "The entrance to the Sky Below."
Leon raised a brow. "Sky Below?"
Mira nodded. "It's not under us. It's inside."
He frowned. "Inside what?"
She looked him dead in the eyes.
"Inside your soul."
—
They stepped forward, one foot onto the shattered platform that jutted out over the abyss.
Immediately, Leon felt pressure—not from gravity, but memory. The space around him distorted, bending with whispers in languages he didn't recognize but somehow understood.
Mira lit a lantern with spiritfire.
It flickered blue, then red, then silver.
"The veil is thin here," she said. "Time doesn't flow the same. Don't think in minutes or hours. Think in intentions."
Leon kept his hand near his blade.
The Gate loomed closer.
And then they were inside.
—
The world shifted.
He stood on a plain of obsidian glass. Above him: a ceiling of shifting constellations. Below him: infinite void. Gravity ceased to function. Direction had no meaning.
Mira appeared beside him, slightly translucent.
"Projection," she said. "We're not fully here. Only the soul crosses."
In the center of the void stood a monolith—massive, cracked, yet pulsing faintly with white fire. Symbols crawled along its surface like veins. Some matched the sigil from Leon's ancestral chamber. Others pulsed with the word:
**Seraphis.**
Leon approached.
The monolith responded.
A ripple surged outward, passing through him like a bell tone through bone.
And then—
A voice.
Not male. Not female. Not human.
**"The first fragment returns. The flame forgets. The name remembers."**
Leon clenched his fists. "What am I?"
The monolith flickered.
**"You are the vessel. The flame. The blade unsheathed before time bled."**
He stumbled back.
"Vessel…?"
Mira steadied him. "It's downloading into you."
"No," Leon whispered. "It's waking inside me."
Another pulse.
Leon's vision blurred.
And suddenly he stood—not in the void—but atop a burning throne, stars falling behind him like shattered embers.
His hands were soaked in gold light.
His enemies knelt in chains of shadow.
At his feet lay a symbol carved into bone:
**The Eye That Watches Flame.**
He gasped.
Back in the void, he collapsed to his knees.
Blood trickled from his nose.
"You saw it," Mira said, crouching beside him.
He nodded. "They feared me."
"They still do."
He looked up. "That's why the Inquisitors came. Not just to erase me."
"To erase what you could wake," Mira said.
The monolith dimmed.
But not before releasing one final message.
**"Three seals. One path. Find the Tear Beneath Stone."**
Then silence.
—
They awoke with a start outside the Gate.
Leon sat up instantly, chest heaving.
The pendant at his neck glowed faintly—and then shattered.
Mira's eyes widened. "The resonance chain broke."
"Then someone knows," Leon said. "Someone on the other side felt it activate."
They both turned toward the ridge.
In the distance, thunder cracked.
But no storm followed.
Only a shadow moving beneath the clouds—winged, massive, and alive with flame.
Leon stood.
"I think the sky… is falling."
—