Velhallow had always creaked under its own weight.
Old buildings slouched like drunks. Stone arches groaned in the wind. The city's bones were tired, and Rin had always heard them. But now?
Now they were whispering to him.
As he walked the ash-stained street, cracks followed in the cobblestone. Hairline fractures. Barely visible.
But he could hear them.Like glass under pressure.Like the world was holding its breath.
The Girl with the Thorned Bell
She saw him first at dusk.
A girl with short silver hair, skin the color of duskwood bark, and a bell around her neck—wrapped in black thorn-vines. She stood by the edge of the ruined fountain square, humming something that didn't sound human.
She wasn't startled when Rin passed.
"You smell like things that shouldn't be," she said softly.
Rin stopped.
He hadn't heard her approach. That alone was strange.
"What do I smell like?" he asked, one brow raised.
"Time. Breaking. Iron screaming. A name that forgot itself."
Her eyes—deep violet—studied him like scripture.
"You'll kill this city," she said, not accusingly. "But only after it kills itself first."
"Who are you?"
"Someone who died already," she smiled. "Call me Lira."
Then she vanished—no blink, no puff of magic. Just… gone.
Back in the Warlords' Quarter
Rin returned to the old winehouse where Varn, a two-faced ganglord, had dared to put a bounty on his head. A message was needed.
He walked through the front gate—unarmed, uninvited.
Thirty men stood inside. Crossbows. Axes. Enchanted halberds. Their laughter died when they saw Rin. One man raised a spell—
And his head twisted backward, bone-first.
No one saw Rin move.
The others backed away, but it was too late. The Law of Collapse had begun to activate.
It wasn't flashy. Not fire. Not thunder.
The room itself began to fail.
The walls bent like paper under heat. Wood snapped before being touched. Support beams imploded, sucking inward like lungs gasping for vacuum.
"This place offends the balance," Rin said, voice low. "So it falls."
Varn tried to beg. Rin didn't hear it.Or didn't care.
The entire winehouse folded in on itself.
When it was over, only dust remained—coated in whispers and bloodless corpses.
Witnesses & Rumors
A beggar boy across the street saw it happen. He didn't scream. He just ran. Ran until his lungs gave out. The next day, twenty new rumors bloomed in the gutters:
"He brings entropy."
"He's a Lawbound now."
"The cursed child has awakened."
And somewhere beneath the city, in a stone cell beneath black glass, a chained creature opened one eye.
"Kael'Zar…" it hissed. "You return too soon."
Rin, Alone
Back atop his favorite roof, Rin sat cross-legged, arms folded.
The glyphs were quiet now.The city was not.
Guards were searching for him. Cults were praying to him. Sorcerers were studying ripples in magical fields and losing their minds.
And Rin?
He just stared into the sky, watching stars blink out, one by one.
"That girl," he whispered. "Lira. She saw something."
He closed his eyes. The glyphs pulsed once.
Far beneath the city, the second fragment stirred.