The wind howled over the craggy cliffs of Lurein's Hollow, a desolate frontier town clinging to jagged rock and stubborn pride. It had once been a stronghold in the ancient wars, built upon older bones—relics of a time when Titans still walked the world.
Now, it waited in silence. A storm was coming.
Alaric stood aboard the skyfaring vessel Duskreaver, its polished hull humming with aether currents. The city had dispatched him, Lysera, and Kael under the guise of reinforcement—but Thornhollow's inner circle knew the truth.
The Voidbinders were moving.
"I've read the reports," Lysera said, studying a scroll etched with leyline patterns. "Disturbances started three days ago. Lightning storms with no clouds. People disappearing near the ruins."
"Sounds like Kael's siblings got bored," Alaric muttered.
Kael didn't laugh. "It's not mine. Storms like that… they're sentient. They're older than me. Not bound to mortal blood."
Alaric looked at him sideways. "Comforting."
They landed by dusk. Lurein's Hollow was half-abandoned—its guardposts empty, stone gates cracked from within. Yet something pulsed below the town. A deep, slow thrum like a slumbering heart.
"Something's buried here," Kael murmured, his eyes flicking toward the center of town where an ancient temple sat buried under vines and moss. "Feels like... a Forge. But not like yours, Alaric. This is colder."
"A Forge?" Lysera asked.
Alaric nodded grimly. "Not one we can use. Not yet."
They moved swiftly, navigating the abandoned streets. Townsfolk watched from behind shuttered windows. Children didn't play. Even the dogs were quiet. The air was thick with something unspoken.
It was Lysera who noticed the first anomaly.
"These runes—on the stones." She knelt near an old boundary marker. "They're not defensive glyphs. They're containment seals."
"Sealing what?" Kael asked.
"I think this town was built to hold something in."
Before they could investigate further, a scream ripped through the night.
A gust of wind slammed into them, laced with violet lightning. Alaric was already moving, blades drawn from his cloak in a swift motion. Kael responded in kind, calling a bolt from the sky that cracked the earth, revealing darkened bones in the soil.
They weren't alone.
Figures stepped from the broken temple—cloaked, their eyes glowing with voidfire. At their center was a figure draped in shattered priest-robes, a mask shaped like a broken moon over its face.
"You're too late," it hissed. "The Crucible beneath the Hollow stirs again. And we shall unseal the Titan Forge."
What followed was chaos.
Kael hurled lightning in arcs that tore through rooftops, forcing the voidspawn to scatter. Alaric lunged forward, Stone Core shaping the ground, pinning enemies with jagged spikes while Fire Core ignited his blades, searing flesh from bone.
Lysera's spear was a blur of silver and precision. She moved like wind—silent, merciless.
But the priest didn't fight. He chanted.
The earth trembled. The ground beneath the temple fractured.
From the cracks rose something ancient—not a creature, but a construct, a sentinel left by a forgotten Titan, rusted but reawakening.
"A Titanwatcher," Lysera breathed. "It's reacting to the Crucible…"
Kael stepped forward, stormlight coating his arms. "Then we stop it before it finishes booting up."
Alaric's eyes gleamed. "Or we learn why it was sleeping."
By dawn, the battle had ended. The priest had vanished—his final words burned into Alaric's memory.
"You protect a world built on corpses. The Forge will burn them clean."
The construct now lay inert, its final activation sequence halted by Lysera's aether disruption spell. But the Hollow was changed. Something deep below stirred now. Something vast.
As they regrouped, Alaric turned toward the cracked temple doors.
"We need to go deeper."
Lysera nodded, but her voice was tight. "Whatever's buried here—it's not meant for us."
Kael said nothing, but thunder rumbled faintly behind him.
And far away, Maeryn watched through a shard of voidglass, her lips curling into a cold smile.
The bait had been taken.