The rain fell in slow, deliberate sheets, drumming a relentless rhythm against the broken bones of the city. Ravenglen — once a citadel of radiant towers and whispered marvels — now lay swallowed in rot. Fog crawled through the streets like a living thing, curling around half-sunken homes and toppled statues, erasing what was left of a proud memory.
Somewhere deep in the heart of this dying place, a figure emerged from the mist. His cloak, soaked through, clung to him like a shroud. Pale hair clashed against the night, trailing damp over his shoulders, and a thin scar etched across his left cheek, reaching dangerously close to his nose — a line carved by old violence. He walked with silence, not hesitation, his eyes fixed forward, aglow faintly in the lanternlight with a dull silver sheen.
Vaylen, last of the line that once guarded secrets older than Ravenglen itself.
He crossed the fractured causeway leading toward the cathedral — or what remained of it. Time had hollowed the once-mighty structure. Its steeples leaned, its stained-glass windows shattered, and ivy crawled up its outer skin like veins returning to the earth. Yet beneath the ruin, the bones of something sacred — or cursed — endured.
Vaylen stopped before the warped entrance. Beneath his cloak, secured to a leather strap around his neck, the amulet pressed against his chest — cold, weighty, and alive in a way no stone should be. It pulsed at times. Reacted. Remembered.
He touched it through the cloth.
Not far from here, in a time now buried, there had been another relic. A book old beyond reckoning. It had vanished during the fall — stolen amid blood and betrayal. Vaylen had spent half a lifetime chasing whispers of it, but tonight was not about that. Tonight was about remembrance.
The cathedral's great doors had long since buckled, one collapsed inward, the other barely hanging. He stepped inside, greeted by the scent of dust, wet stone, and something more—something wrong.
The silence inside was oppressive, not merely the absence of sound but the presence of something buried beneath it. A silence that watched.
He moved slowly, boots brushing broken glass, splinters, and ash. Streaks of something dark — long since dried — stained the floor near the pews. The walls still bore faded murals: saints with halos cracked in half, and beasts lurking behind thrones.
His breath misted as he passed through a cold spot in the air. Not just chill — unnatural.
A light blinked into existence ahead of him. Not firelight, but something paler. A soft, blue flicker, floating mid air. Then it pulsed. Then it took shape.
The specter of a child, hovering inches above the stone, materialized slowly, as if struggling to return to this world. Her eyes were dark voids, her dress torn at the hem, and her skin translucent and shimmering like mist over a lake.
"You wear his amulet," she whispered, voice like wind through a crypt.
Vaylen's hand didn't go to his weapon. He didn't flinch. He only watched.
"I do," he answered.
Her head tilted. "Then you are cursed too."
"That was decided a long time ago."
The girl's figure flickered — momentarily a shape of fire and bone, then back again. "The seal weakens. The chains are cracking. You'll hear them soon — screaming."
She drifted backward, further into the cathedral, then vanished as if swallowed by the stone.
Vaylen waited a moment. The pulse of the amulet against his chest had grown faster.
He stepped deeper into the ruin. Broken altars lined the nave. At the far end stood a stairwell that spiraled downward into the crypts — untouched by light.
The chanting began faintly. Distant, hollow. Words in a language he didn't speak, but one the amulet responded to, vibrating faintly against his skin. He paused at the edge of the stairway.
He could turn back.
But turning back would mean letting go. Of family. Of honor. Of truth. And he had given too much to do that.
So Vaylen descended.
Each step was a breath held too long. The air thickened, dampened, closing in around him like hands on a throat. As he reached the crypt floor, the chanting stopped — abruptly, like a door slammed shut.
He moved through the corridor of ancient stone and alcoves, his candle illuminating fragments of murals along the walls: towers split in half, men with limbs too long, saints weeping black blood.
Then he saw it.
The remnants of a summoning circle long since faded, charred into the stones. A shattered altar at its center. And the markings— matching those etched on the amulet.
He knelt, brushed his hand along the ancient carvings, and felt it — a memory not his own.
Fire. Screaming. Betrayal. A last stand.
Before he could absorb more, a sound — low, guttural — echoed behind him. Something moved. Not just footsteps. Crawling. Wet.
He turned slowly, candle trembling in his hand.
From the dark emerged a shape — grotesque and wrong. Limbs bent at odd angles, mouth split open far too wide, eyes like sunken pits leaking black fluid. It clawed toward him, dragging a mangled leg behind it. It wore the remnants of a cleric's robe.
A man, once.
Vaylen drew the thin blade at his side, steel whispering against leather. No war cry. No taunt. Just resolve.
The creature hissed, then lunged.
The past was coming back — piece by piece — and it was angry.