Rei sat alone near the old forge's hushed edge, where molten veins pulsed faintly beneath glasslike stone.
The others had retired — Kaia among the Wildguard, Durik and Burik in quiet reunion with their father. Even the deepstone priests had pulled back, sensing unease in the echoes.
Only Rei remained.
Bread Cutter rested across his knees. Black. Dull. Sleeping.
His fingers traced the edge absently — not in thought, but in rhythm. Like a man listening for something beneath the wind.
And there it was.
A whisper.
Not in the air.
But in his bones.
"You enjoy the quiet now?"
The voice slithered into his mind like oil over glass — slow, deliberate.
"Wait until it's gone."
Rei froze.
The mark at his ribs — once just a brand, now a pulse — burned.
He clutched his side, teeth grinding, eyes wide. The world around him grew distant. Not darker — deeper.
His breath caught.
Then—
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Not outside.
Inside.
Rei collapsed to his knees.
The forge fire vanished. The stone beneath him cracked like ice. And the mountain — the real one — opened before him like a wound.
He was no longer in Druvadir.
He stood upon a plain of ashen stone — infinite, unmoving. Above, the sky was not sky at all, but a sheet of flickering riftlight — bleeding from cracks like veins across heaven.
The wind didn't howl.
It whispered names.
And then came the sound again.
Clang. Clang.
He turned.
A shape moved through the void.
Not quickly. Not slowly.
Just… inevitably.
Massive. Horned. Its hooves struck the stone with the weight of judgment. Chains slithered behind it, dragging like the laughter of the damned.
Baphomette.
He emerged from the dusk like a thought Rei didn't want to remember.
But could never forget.
The beast-being stopped several paces away, cleaver slung across one shoulder, silver eyes gleaming without light.
He grinned.
"Still breathing, Riftborn?"
Rei did not answer.
His knees trembled, but he stood.
Baphomette tilted his head, like a wolf watching a wounded thing refuse to die.
"You know why I'm here."
Rei spoke — voice cracked, dry.
"…No."
"Because you are here."
He stepped forward, the weight of his presence bending the dream-plain beneath his hooves.
"This place — the Void — it is not behind you. It is in you."
He tapped his cleaver once to the ground.
Clang.
The world shook.
From the broken horizon, a vision burst forth like a dream torn open.A rift wide as a mountain's maw split the sky with lightless flame.Orcs surged through it, clad in bone and iron, their skin marked with searing runes, their eyes glowing with Rift-born madness.They howled war songs not heard in any living age, their voices thick with hunger, echoing across a world unready.Behind them came beasts shaped for war — twisted things dragging siege-shrines, their banners stitched with flayed hide.The dragon of Druvadir wheeled in the storm, its flame broken, its scream one of confusion and pain.And at the edge of it all stood Mongrim, god-smith and final sentinel, walking toward the wound in the world, hammer raised high.Not to strike.But to seal.To give flame its shape.To give the end a name.
At his side — another.
A shadowed figure, cloaked in pain and black fire.
The First Riftborn.
Together, they struck the seal.
Stone. Flame. Blood. Frost.
Then — silence.
The rift closed.
And Baphomette, roaring, chained, buried beneath.
Rei gasped, falling to his knees once more.
The vision faded.
But the presence remained.
Baphomette crouched now, his cleaver pointed down like a judge's gavel.
"I was there, Riftborn. I watched Mongrim die. Watched your kind break themselves to bind me."
His chains writhed behind him — not angry.
Hungry.
"And now the seal crumbles. The mountain shivers. You walk free. So the question, little flame…"
He leaned forward.
"…what will you become?"
Rei's mouth was dry. "I'm not like them."
"No," Baphomette whispered. "You're worse."
He reached out — not to strike, but to touch.
One clawed finger grazed Rei's brow.
"You've seen the Rift. And yet you still breathe. Do you know what that makes you?"
Rei didn't answer.
Baphomette's smile widened.
"An invitation."
He stood tall again, cleaver resting on his shoulder.
"I want to see what you do. With the Gem. With the fire. With the fear."
He turned, walking back into the bleeding dusk.
"Will you be the key that opens the wound?""Or the lock that seals it again?"
Then, without warning—
He vanished.
And the Void collapsed inward.
Rei woke — gasping — in the forge, alone.
The fire had died. His hands trembled. The mark at his ribs smoldered faintly — like something had spoken through it.
Footsteps echoed nearby.
Kaia.
"Rei?" Her voice softened. "You alright?"
He didn't answer right away.
She knelt beside him.
"What happened?"
Rei stared down at the black sword across his knees.
"I heard the silence," he said quietly. "And now I know what waits after it."
Kaia frowned. "What did it say?"
He looked up.
Eyes rimmed with shadow. Breath shaky.
"It said he knows the Rift."
And somewhere, deep below — the Void smiled.