Smoke still lingered in the chapel ruins, drifting like lost memories through broken rafters. Kael stood with Ashrend still drawn, its edge glowing faintly. Around him, the corpses of the cultists twisted into bone and black sludge, already dissolving into Veil ash.
Lyra and Darric arrived moments later, breath caught between urgency and dread.
Lyra's eyes locked on Kael's. "What happened?"
Kael sheathed Ashrend slowly, turning to the man he had saved. The survivor—mid-thirties, gaunt, wrists torn from struggling against cult chains—trembled, half-kneeling beside a broken pew.
"They were summoning a Voice-Eater," Kael said. "A full one. Not a fractured shade."
Darric cursed beneath his breath. "Here? This close to the borderlands?"
"No," Kael corrected. "This close to me."
By morning, the man was talking.
His name was Veran, once a scholar from the Archivehold near Hollow Spire, now a ghost of himself. He had been captured for knowledge — not power.
"The cult knew of the Mark," he said, staring at Kael as if he were more myth than man. "They spoke of a convergence. They called you 'The Veil's Chosen…' but not as their enemy."
Kael's jaw clenched.
Veran's gaze drifted to the bandage on Kael's arm, where the Mark occasionally pulsed with red.
"They worshipped it," he said softly. "Feared it. Said it was… the key to waking the Sovereign-Below."
The room fell still.
Lyra's hand hovered near her sword hilt.
"The Sovereign-Below?" she repeated. "What is that?"
Veran's voice dropped to a whisper.
"A god… or a ruin of one. Buried beneath the Hollow Spire. Sealed when the first Sovereigns turned against their own creation. They feared its hunger, so they wove the Veil to keep it trapped."
"And the cult?" Kael asked.
"They believe the Mark can unseal it."
Later, as the sky began to darken again, Kael walked alone. His crimson cloak caught the wind, torn and scorched at the hem. He stood at the edge of the ruined village, looking eastward — toward Hollow Spire, the mountains, and beyond.
Lyra found him there.
"You're not sleeping," she said.
He didn't look at her. "I don't dream when I do."
A long silence. Then Lyra stepped closer.
"You've changed since the battle. Since you touched the Spark."
Kael didn't respond right away. Then:
"I felt it… something beneath me. Watching. Waiting. Like it knew I'd be the one to set it free."
She searched his face. "Would you?"
"No," he said. Then, after a beat, "I don't know."
She didn't push further.
Instead, she asked what he hadn't told the others.
Kael exhaled, slow and tired. "The Mark reacted when I killed the Voice-Eater. It didn't just burn. It rejoiced."
That night, Veran attempted to escape.
Kael caught him outside the village, near the edge of the Veilscarred forest. Veran dropped to his knees when Kael emerged from the mist, blade in hand.
"I'm not your enemy," the scholar pleaded. "But they'll come for you. They already know you're awakening."
Kael stepped closer. His voice was low.
"Tell me where they are."
Veran's eyes darted. "They move constantly. But their next rite… they spoke of the Hollow Spire again. Something sleeps beneath it."
Kael raised Ashrend.
Veran froze. "Wait—please. I've told you everything!"
Kael stared at him, eyes burning red beneath his hood. Then he spoke.
"Then run. And don't ever stop."
He turned and walked away, leaving Veran gasping in the dirt.
Far away, in a hidden black keep deep within the Veilscar, a priest of rot and silver fangs kneeled before a pool of blackened water.
From its surface, an image flickered — a crimson figure wreathed in fire, standing alone atop blood-soaked stones.
The priest hissed.
"The spark is forming.
The Sovereign stirs.
Soon… the Brand shall awaken."