The Silence Beneath the Cathedral
They didn't speak for hours.
The sphere at the center of the city pulsed slowly, like a massive, sleeping heart. Kael sat beside one of the crumbling columns, watching it with wary eyes. The Darksword had gone still, its hunger quieted—for now.
Elarin paced the cathedral perimeter, her boots echoing softly against the ancient marble. The Keeper stood unmoving, her face turned toward the ceiling that wasn't there, eyes glowing faintly with some private horror.
Kael finally broke the silence. "You called it a World-Ender."
"I didn't call it that," the Keeper said. "The stars did."
Elarin stopped pacing. "So, what happens if the Gate touches it?"
The Keeper turned to her slowly. "It won't be 'if'. It will be when. And when it does… this realm folds inward. Everything we've ever known becomes an echo in someone else's nightmare."
Kael's fingers tightened around the hilt of the Darksword.
"Then we don't let that happen."
The Blood That Burns the Moon
That night, Kael dreamed—but not of memories. Of warnings.
He stood alone in a field of ash. The moon above him wasn't the moon at all, but an eye. Massive. Watching. Bleeding.
The wind whispered in the voice of the Herald:"You are not a warrior. You are a doorway."
In the dream, Kael looked down at his hands and found blood—not his own, but the sword's. It pulsed under his skin, rippling like a second heartbeat.
Then came the child.
A little girl with black eyes and silver braids. She took his hand.
"She's coming," the child said. "The one who sleeps in screaming."
Kael woke with a gasp.
Across the cathedral, the Darksword was hovering in the air—glowing. Whispering.
And the sphere at the center of the room?
It had cracked.
The Flame That Remembers
At dawn, they inspected the fracture.
Elarin circled the sphere, muttering incantations beneath her breath. She touched it with one bare hand—and pulled back with a scream.
"What did you see?" Kael asked.
She didn't speak for a long moment.
Then, quietly: "My mother. She's been dead for ten years."
Kael frowned. "It showed you your past?"
"No," the Keeper said. "It showed her future. What she'd become if the world ended."
Kael swallowed hard.
"It's reacting to the sword," the Keeper added, looking at Kael. "It recognizes what you carry. What you are."
"I'm not anything," he snapped.
"Not yet."
The City Begins to Wake
It began as a tremor.
Then the towers started humming.
The City of No Doors, which had stood still for centuries, began to pulse—like it had a heartbeat of its own. Walls rearranged themselves in silence. Streets that hadn't existed an hour before now stretched endlessly into dark.
Kael watched it all in growing dread. "Why is it moving?"
"It's preparing," the Keeper said.
"For what?"
"To be found."
Elarin paled. "The Gate?"
"No. Worse," she whispered. "The things that serve it."
A piercing sound cut through the air. Sharp. Almost metallic. A scream—but not human.
And then came the knock.
It echoed across the city.
Someone—or something—was trying to enter a city that had no doors.
The Thing That Walked Upside Down
They didn't see it at first.
Just a shape. A distortion in the corner of their eyes. Crawling sideways along the outer cathedral wall, upside-down, limbs bending wrong.
Kael drew the Darksword.
The shadows recoiled at its light—but the thing didn't.
It dropped from the wall and landed silently. It had no face, only a vertical slit where a mouth should be. Its arms stretched too far. Its robes were stitched from human skin.
"What is it?" Elarin breathed.
The Keeper answered flatly, "A Seeker."
The Seeker opened its mouth—and began to laugh.
Not from its throat. From everywhere. The ground. The sky. The columns. The sword.
It lunged.
Kael met it with steel.
The Battle Without Sound
The moment the blade struck the Seeker, the world fell mute.
Kael couldn't hear his breath. Couldn't hear the clash of steel. Couldn't hear Elarin's spells, though her mouth moved furiously.
The Seeker fought like smoke—twisting through gaps, breaking bones by suggestion. It touched Kael's side, and suddenly, he forgot his own name.
But the Darksword remembered.
It surged with a pulse of anti-light, carving a scar into the Seeker's chest. The creature hissed—not in pain, but in amusement.
"You are late," it whispered in Kael's head. "She is already waking."
The Seeker raised a hand to Kael's face—and suddenly, Kael was in a different body.
A child's. Running. Screaming. Watching his village burn under violet fire.
"No," Kael grunted.
He struck again. The sword howled.
And this time, the Seeker bled.
The Word She Spoke
When the Seeker died, it did not fall.
It folded.
Its limbs snapped inward, its flesh compressing into a single, writhing sigil on the floor. Elarin quickly scrawled a containment rune around it. The symbol pulsed once—and then went still.
Kael was shaking. His hands. His breath. His soul.
The Keeper kneeled beside the symbol, frowning. "It said she is waking."
"Who?" Kael asked.
She looked up at him grimly.
"The Sleeper. The Gate's child."
"The girl from my dream."
The Keeper blinked. "You've seen her?"
Kael nodded.
"She's real," the Keeper said. "And if she wakes fully, we lose everything."
"Then we stop her."
"No," the Keeper said softly. "We protect her."
The Dream in Chains
That night, the city dreamed through them.
Kael tossed in his sleep, muttering words he didn't know in languages no one had spoken in ten thousand years. Elarin wept. The Keeper did not sleep at all—she simply sat and bled slowly from her palms.
The sword hovered beside Kael's bedroll, whispering secrets only he could hear.
In his dream, Kael stood before the Sleeper.
She was a child. Maybe twelve. Sitting in the center of a great void. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't awake.
"I don't want to wake up," she whispered.
"You don't have to," Kael said.
"But the sword does," she replied.
And then the void cracked.
The March of the Forgotten
They woke to drums.
Far off. Getting closer.
Kael stood at the cathedral gates, watching black figures descend from the ridgelines—thousands of them. Armor rusted. Faces gone. The Forgotten Army.
"They served the Gate in the last war," Elarin said softly. "Before Velamir sealed it."
"They're dead," Kael muttered.
"No," the Keeper said. "They're empty. That's worse."
The City of No Doors began to shift again.
Not in fear.
In invitation.
The city was choosing sides.
Kael stepped forward. "We hold them here."
Elarin stared at him. "All of them?"
Kael drew the Darksword. "Until the Sleeper wakes… we don't fall."
The Storm Without Sky
The battle began at dusk.
The Forgotten surged into the city in silence. Not a war cry. Not a sound. Just endless, marching death.
Kael stood atop the steps, blade burning black. Elarin cast ward after ward, her magic blazing across the sky like starlight. The Keeper whispered to the stones, calling old ghosts to rise.
The clash was chaos.
Kael moved like a man possessed. Every blow from the Darksword carved not just flesh but memory. The Forgotten howled as pieces of their stolen lives unraveled with every strike.
But they kept coming.
Ten. Twenty. A hundred.
And then, they stopped.
Because she arrived.
The Sleeper Opens Her Eyes
She stood at the edge of the cathedral, barefoot, her white dress soaked in something too red to name. Her eyes glowed silver-blue, her braids streaked with starlight.
"The Sleeper," the Keeper whispered.
Kael lowered his sword.
The Sleeper blinked slowly.
"You came," she said.
And Kael realized, with a jolt of horror—
She wasn't talking to him.
She was talking to the sword.
The Darksword trembled, rising in his hand like it remembered her.
"I missed you," she whispered.
The world began to collapse inward.