The chains didn't hurt.
Not yet.
They just reminded him of the weight he no longer carried.
Dren Mako walked with his arms bound behind him, escorted by six guards through a city that felt too alive to be stone. The cuffs on his wrists weren't steel or tech — they were something stranger. Fused crystal? Grown alloy? They pulsed faintly every few seconds, syncing with his heart.
Each time they did, he felt his lightning dim just a little more.
The guards moved in silence. Their armor gleamed in the midday light, layers of curved bronze plates etched with spiral inlays and dark silver lines like veins. Masks hid their faces — smooth, expressionless, reflective.
Behind him, civilians whispered.
Dren kept his eyes forward.
The road beneath him shimmered.
Not like polished stone — like glass. It reflected the sun, but not harshly. Beneath it, Dren saw flowing shapes. Not movement. Not light. Roots. Glowing faint blue and purple beneath the surface, like the entire city was grown from a network of veins buried in the bedrock.
He stumbled once. The guards didn't slow. One nudged him forward.
His boots dragged slightly. He was still hurt — ribs throbbed, shoulders strained. But the worst part wasn't pain. It was clarity.
He was seeing everything.
The city was beautiful.
Towering spires curved like pulled glass, translucent at the edges, crowned in green-leafed terraces. Water ran along the edges of balconies in trickling streams. Hanging gardens wept golden pollen over stone courtyards. Everything pulsed faintly — not electrical, but alive.
The kingdom was alive.
And it was watching him.
Statues lined the procession road. Not of men. Not exactly. Tall figures — part human, part winged beast — cloaked in robes of carved smoke. Each held a spear downward. Each had no face, only a smooth stone disc where eyes should have been.
Dren didn't trust them.
Then he saw the mural.
Painted across the side of a towering domed structure, faded from sun and time, was an image that made him stop walking.
The guards shoved him forward — but he stared as he passed.
The mural showed a figure descending from the sky, wrapped in flame. Not fire, but light. Yellow. Crackling. The figure slammed into the ground in the center of a screaming crowd. At his feet lay something shattered — maybe a creature, maybe a god. Over his shoulders — wings of light.
Beneath the mural, one word, written in curling runes.
He didn't know the language.
But somehow, it read:
"Ashborn."
The guards didn't explain.
He didn't ask.
He kept moving.
They passed a plaza where children ran barefoot through arcs of light that sprang from the floor. Water rose from the center in perfect spheres, hovering before cascading into sculpted channels. Elderly figures sat on curved stone benches, watching him with unreadable expressions. Some made signs with their fingers. Others simply looked away.
No one cheered.
No one threw stones.
But the message was clear:
He did not belong.
The road curved gently upward, toward a massive structure built into the side of a silver-gray hill — not a palace, not a fortress, but something in between. Pillars shaped like twisted vines held up a vast archway carved from smooth amber stone. Banners hung down, each one bearing a symbol that resembled a rising eye over a cracked circle.
The guards pushed him through the arch.
A breath of cool air met his face — rich with dust, oil, incense.
The city fell behind.
And inside…
Judgment waited.
The chamber was colder than the rest of the city.
Not from temperature — from design.
The hall curved inward like a vast shell, walls carved from layers of polished gray stone fused with veins of living rootglass. It rose into a dome overhead, where crystal braziers floated in silent orbit, casting soft white light across the floor below. The room didn't echo. It absorbed sound, like it had been carved to hear without being heard.
At the center stood a raised platform of interlocking hex-stone, half-covered by a twisting lattice of transparent metal — a containment ring. Dren stood inside it, still cuffed, with nothing but space between him and the towering throne ahead.
It wasn't a throne of gold or opulence.
It was carved from petrified wood, grown into shape and polished smooth. Runes lined the armrests — alive with faint pulses of red and silver.
And seated within it was the voice of this place.
Not a king.
Not a queen.
A Judge.
They wore no crown — only a long mantle of folded silk and root-armor woven together. Their face was uncovered, expression stone-still. Sharp cheekbones, dark eyes, hair braided back with metal rings. Ageless. Cold.
They looked at Dren like someone would look at a burned book — once sacred, now ruined.
"Remove his bindings," the Judge said.
The guards hesitated. One stepped forward and unclipped the cuffs.
Dren didn't move.
The Judge leaned slightly forward. "You are not what we expected."
Dren coughed once, blood still faint in his mouth. "I rarely am."
"You fell from the edge of the fire sky, brought ruin to a merchant tier, and radiate pulse-energy in a pattern we haven't seen in seven generations."
Dren said nothing.
The Judge gestured, and from a side alcove, two figures emerged — scholars, or perhaps lore-keepers. One carried a stone tablet with glowing lines; the other held a mask.
It was round. Simple. With two slits for eyes and a faint golden line down the center.
Dren tensed. He'd seen that mask once before — in the grove.
The Judge watched him.
"This was recovered near the edge of the broken forest. Do you recognize it?"
Dren's jaw tightened.
"I burned what wore it."
The two scholars froze.
The Judge said nothing for a long moment. Then:
"So the Creator is dead."
Dren didn't respond.
The Judge waved a hand. The scholars withdrew.
"You understand," they said slowly, "why we cannot let you walk freely."
"I didn't ask to," Dren replied.
"Others have come before. None like you. But we remember the signs. The descent. The light. The… disruption."
A silence fell. One of the guards near the wall stirred.
The Judge stood slowly, their mantle trailing across the steps.
"You carry a mark we thought extinct. We believed it had passed with the final age. But your energy matches the one who came before."
Dren's breath caught.
The Judge descended the steps — not quickly, not ceremonially. Just with weight.
They stood before the barrier, face inches from the invisible ring.
"We had a name for him," the Judge said.
Dren's heart beat harder.
"Ashborn."
The word vibrated.
"He came during the Ninth Collapse. He burned the Titan tide from the northern ridge. He disappeared before he could answer for what he was."
Dren's voice was quiet.
"That wasn't me."
"No," the Judge said. "But you glow like him. Your energy sings the same way. We cannot ignore that."
They stepped back.
"You will not be executed."
Dren blinked. "Why not?"
"Because you are either the last echo of something greater… or the first fracture of something worse. And either way—"
The lights dimmed slightly.
"—we are not ready to lose another piece of the truth."
Dren said nothing.
"You will be held. Observed. Studied."
"For how long?"
The Judge's eyes narrowed. "Until the city stops dreaming of your face."
The cell wasn't made of bars.
It was made of stone that pulsed.
They walked him deep beneath the judgment hall, past winding stairwells carved in spirals and vaults with no visible doors. No light came from torches or bulbs — only from the roots laced into the walls, glowing with soft green and blue veins. The guards didn't speak. They didn't need to. The silence said everything.
Dren counted the turns. Six left. Nine right. Then a downward spiral that never seemed to stop.
And then… the chamber.
The door sealed behind him with no click, no hiss. Just a fold — stone parting like water, then closing again.
The walls were smooth. Pale gray, laced with glowing thread-like tendrils. The floor was warm. The ceiling low. It smelled faintly of moss, wet copper, and something older.
It was alive.
Not in the way cities were alive. This wasn't mechanical. This wasn't magical. This cell breathed.
Dren stood in the center and let the silence press in.
He wasn't bound now.
No cuffs. No chains.
But he knew he wasn't free.
He exhaled slowly and sat down in the center of the floor.
Lightning ticked along his spine — faint, like static dancing across nerves. His body was still wrecked from the fall. The fight. The flight. His ribs ached. His shoulder buzzed with phantom pressure where the Titan's grip had nearly crushed it.
But beneath all that… his power stirred.
He opened his hand. Sparks curled between his fingers, delicate, quiet. He flexed, and the light arced from one fingertip to the next.
The cell responded.
A line of rootlight in the far wall glowed brighter — not threatening. Mirroring.
He stood.
Raised his hand.
The glow followed him.
He took a step toward it.
The wall didn't move.
But something behind it did.
Thm.
A pulse. Low. Internal. Not just sound — pressure in the stone.
He stepped closer.
He laid his hand against the surface.
And the cell exhaled.
A wave of cold air passed through the floor. The lights flickered. His lightning surged involuntarily. Sparks crawled up his arm, crackling into the wall.
Images slammed into him.
Not memories. Not dreams. Sensory flash.
• A tree, wide as a temple, struck by blue flame.
• A man falling from the sky, arms spread, cloaked in light.
• A screaming Titan, bound in chains of red crystal.
• A temple below the earth… pulsing, waiting.
He stumbled back, heart racing.
The wall dimmed. Returned to stillness.
He blinked. "What the hell was that…"
Then he heard it.
Not a voice.
Not out loud.
But inside the walls.
"You were marked… before you fell."
He spun.
Nothing. No one. The chamber was empty.
He stepped back toward the center of the room, eyes scanning the perimeter.
The voice came again.
"The planet remembers you. Even if you don't remember it."
Dren clenched his fists. "Who's there?"
No reply.
Just another image.
A flash.
A tower of roots beneath the city. A vault. A symbol etched in burning lines: the same lightning spiral that shimmered on his skin the night the ship awakened.
He stepped forward, reached to touch the wall again—
The cell shifted.
A new figure stood just outside the doorway — the wall had opened without a sound.
Dren turned fast, fists up, lightning sparking at the knuckles.
The figure raised a hand.
"Peace," she said.
A woman — tall, robed in muted violet and slate-gray, with a braided cord of memory-rings down one side of her face. Her voice was calm. Her eyes sharper than a blade.
"I'm not your jailer," she said. "I'm your translator."
Dren didn't drop his guard. "Translator?"
"You're not the first to fall here. But you are… different. You glow."
"Thanks," he muttered. "Heard that one already."
She stepped closer, the wall folding behind her.
"You felt it, didn't you?" she asked. "The breath of the roots. The voice in the stone."
Dren said nothing.
She studied him. "You weren't brought here by chance. The planet called to your ship."
"No one called to me."
"Not you," she said softly. "What you carry."
Dren's fingers twitched. "The lightning?"
She tilted her head.
"No. The mark beneath it."
She reached into her robe and pulled out a disc — flat, bronze, etched with spiraling grooves. She placed it gently on the floor between them. It shimmered faintly, pulsing in time with his heart.
"That symbol," she said. "It hasn't appeared in two thousand years. It belongs to a place buried far beneath this kingdom — a vault where the last echoes of the old world sleep."
Dren stared at it.
And for the first time since Khar-Tor, he felt something deeper than survival.
He felt a pull.
A memory not his own.
The woman stepped back.
"When you're ready," she said, "I'll show you the path."
The sky never touched this deep.
The woman led him through the underways — spiraling tunnels that felt neither carved nor built. They were grown, like arteries of a long-dead creature still pulsing underground. Walls of petrified bark wove into old stone. Every step down darkened the world.
Dren said nothing.
He followed.
Behind them, the city faded. No guards. No torches. Just the quiet hum of unseen life deep beneath Kireth'Vael.
She moved with purpose, fingers tracing runes on the walls that pulsed at her touch, opening silent doors of woven vine-metal. Dren watched everything. Measured it. The deeper they went, the colder the air grew — not the chill of death, but of age. Of stillness that had never been disturbed.
Finally, they reached it.
A chamber wider than any Dren had seen above. Circular, with high curved walls shaped like petals frozen in bloom. At its center: a raised platform surrounded by concentric lines of carved crystal, each humming faintly.
And in the center of that platform, embedded in obsidian glass—
A mark.
Not a symbol. Not a crest.
A burn.
Like lightning had struck this exact spot and branded the floor with its memory.
The spiral shape was unmistakable.
It matched the shimmer that had once arced across his veins.
It pulsed once.
And Dren felt his spine tighten.
The woman stood beside the entrance, silent.
"This," she said, "is where the last Ashborn fell."
Dren's mouth felt dry. "What happened to him?"
"He entered this room," she said. "And the vault opened."
She raised a hand toward the back wall, where massive interlocking plates of rootsteel and dark crystal formed a sealed gate. Faint traces of energy still flickered along its edges — like static frozen in time.
"No one has opened it since," she said. "Not even the Judges. They fear what's inside."
Dren stepped closer to the center, staring down at the burned spiral.
"It's reacting to you," she said.
"I didn't ask it to."
"Doesn't matter. You carry a resonance. Maybe from your world. Maybe from your ship. But it's waking this place up."
He crouched, ran a hand just over the mark — not touching it.
The floor vibrated faintly.
And in that second — without warning — the gate groaned.
The plates shifted a fraction of an inch.
Not much.
But enough.
Enough to breathe.
The sound echoed through the chamber.
The woman didn't move. Her eyes never left him.
"You've been drawn here for a reason, Dustwalker," she said.
He stood slowly.
"I don't follow reasons. I follow survival."
She gave the faintest smile. "Then you'll fit in perfectly with the ones who died trying to keep this world alive."
He stepped back from the mark.
Something in the gate called to him — a low pulse. It wasn't a voice. It wasn't words.
It was a feeling.
Recognition.
He didn't know this world.
But something in it knew him.
And it wasn't done waiting.