Stone That Remembers
They walked for hours with no sense of direction, only the echo of footsteps and the whispers that clung to the broken walls of the City of No Doors. The ground was dry and cracked, but the air was thick, as if it carried centuries of grief in its breath. Even the Darksword, usually an impatient storm in Kael's spine, had gone quiet. That scared him more than anything.
Elarin pressed a hand to the side of a collapsed archway. "This city... it wasn't just lost. It was buried. Someone tried to erase it."
"And failed," muttered Kael.
Behind them, the Keeper walked barefoot. She never made a sound. Her long cloak trailed ash and dust, yet remained untouched. She didn't speak much after the World-Ender vanished into that ruinous storm of violet light. She simply pointed. And they followed.
"The stones are speaking," she said now.
Kael turned. "What?"
"The city remembers," she murmured, placing her palm flat against the wall. "And it wants to be remembered."
The wall beneath her hand trembled — not crumbling, but shifting. A single symbol carved itself into the surface, glowing faintly red.
A name.
Nyethar.
Kael frowned. "Is that a place?"
"No," the Keeper said. "It's a warning."
The Heart of Silence
The closer they drew to the city's center, the more reality seemed to warp. Buildings stretched impossibly high, yet cast no shadows. Doors opened into brick walls. Windows looked out into pitch-black voids. A cat sat perched on a windowsill for what felt like hours — unmoving, unblinking, and somehow never breathing.
Elarin stopped suddenly.
Kael caught it a second later — the silence.
Not the normal kind.
This one was deep. It wasn't the absence of sound. It was the devouring of it. His own breath vanished in his ears. The scrape of his boot made no sound. Even the hum of the Darksword — gone.
He clutched the hilt instinctively.
"Don't speak," the Keeper said, mouth unmoving.
The message came into Kael's mind directly — as if transmitted from thought to thought. The silence wouldn't tolerate sound. And if sound was made, the city would hear them.
He looked around.
Statues lined the street now. Dozens. Hundreds. All different races. All different expressions. All turned to stone mid-motion.
Kael didn't need to ask what had happened.
The Screaming Vault
They descended a narrow staircase hidden beneath a shattered fountain — a spiral of decayed stone and whispering shadows. Kael counted his steps. Sixty-seven down.
Then came the vault.
A door of smooth obsidian, its surface reflecting nothing. No latch. No lock.
Just a single carved symbol: the Darksword itself.
Kael stepped forward.
The blade, almost on its own, reacted — humming back to life in a sudden jolt that sent a gust of pressure outward. The door shimmered… then melted inward, warping as if afraid.
Inside the vault was a chamber of mirrors. Not literal ones — but polished, silvered walls that showed things. Not reflections.
Kael saw himself — blood-soaked, eyes pitch black, sword buried in Elarin's chest.
He recoiled.
She gasped. "What did you see?"
He didn't answer.
Because she hadn't seen it.
She saw something else entirely. Her hand trembled on the wall. "No. That's not... that's not real."
The Keeper didn't enter. She remained at the door.
"This chamber shows the scream you fear most," she said. "The one truth that would break you."
Kael backed away. "Why would anyone build this?"
"To prepare." Her eyes narrowed. "Because if you cannot face your scream, you will not survive what lies below."
The Chainless Dead
Past the mirror chamber, they found the pit.
It was carved into the city's true foundation — the bones of something colossal. A spiral hole, lined with rusted chains thicker than Kael's waist. And on those chains, bound skeletons writhed slowly, still alive in some forgotten magic.
"The Chainless Dead," the Keeper whispered. "They once ruled this world."
"They're dead," Kael muttered.
"They're waiting."
Kael peered over the edge. "What are they waiting for?"
The Keeper stared directly at him. "For the blade to come home."
Suddenly, the Darksword sang. No hum. A voice.
A scream.
Kael stumbled back, clutching his ears. Elarin screamed beside him. The Keeper didn't move.
The scream was not sound — it was memory. Of war. Of fire. Of children burning. Of him, standing among corpses, laughing with power he couldn't control.
Kael dropped the blade.
And the pit awakened.
The Crownless King
A roar echoed up the spiral, louder than anything they'd heard since entering the city. Bones snapped. Chains cracked. The Chainless Dead began to pull themselves up.
One by one.
The Keeper turned. "You dropped the blade."
Kael shook. "I— I didn't—"
"It doesn't matter. Pick it up."
He grabbed the Darksword again, and it shivered in his hand — angry, hungry. No longer obedient. But it obeyed enough.
The first of the Chainless Dead crested the ledge — a skeletal form wrapped in cloth, with a crown of broken iron on its head.
"No doors," it said. Its voice rattled like dried leaves. "No end. No master."
Kael raised the blade.
"Leave," he said. "Or die again."
The skeleton's jaw dropped open in something like a grin. "We never died. You did."
And then it lunged.
Ash and After
The fight was not fair.
Kael swung the Darksword, and it roared in his hands — slicing the first two dead things to ash. But more came. Dozens. Hundreds. The Keeper raised her arms and fire burst from her sleeves, incinerating entire stairways.
Elarin summoned wards, walls of light that shattered on contact but slowed the horde.
Kael fought like something possessed — or perhaps, finally set free.
Each time the blade struck, memories not his own flooded him. Memories of other wielders. Of warlords. Of tyrants. Of saviors.
One memory lingered.
A woman with silver eyes, holding the sword... and dropping it into the sea.
"Is that what I'll become?" he whispered.
The Darksword said nothing.
The last of the dead fell, smoke trailing from its shattered skull.
And then there was silence again.
The Keeper stood by the pit, breathing softly.
"They weren't trying to stop you," she said. "They were trying to warn you."
"Warn me of what?"
She looked at the spiral hole. "That going further means losing everything."
The Decision Beneath the World
Elarin touched his shoulder. "We don't have to keep going."
Kael met her eyes. "Yes. We do."
He walked to the edge of the spiral, sword still hot in his hand. Below, deeper than they'd yet gone, he saw it.
A throne of black flame.
A being sat upon it — not dead, not alive, but something remembered by the earth.
It raised its head.
And smiled.
Kael's heart froze.
The Keeper stepped forward, finally uncertain.
"That's not supposed to be there."
"What is it?" Kael asked.
"A mistake," she whispered. "Or maybe the beginning."