The courtyard still smelled of ash and burning shadow.
Seth glanced at the blackened stone where the Stalkers had fallen. The remnants of their existence crumbled further with each breeze, fading until there was almost nothing left to prove they'd ever been there. Almost.
Martha shouldered her spear. "We need to go. Staying here is asking to die."
Seth didn't move immediately. His eyes lingered on the faint golden glow still clinging to the stones — the light he'd summoned lingering stubbornly, resisting the darkness. It wouldn't last, but for now, it was a small defiance.
"Yeah," he said at last. "You're right."
She gave him a quick look. "You sound like you've never done this before."
"I haven't," Seth replied flatly. "At least… not like this."
There was no time for questions. The air beyond the walls was already growing heavier, as if the death of the Stalkers had stirred something in the deeper dark. Martha hopped onto a half-collapsed ledge and dropped to the other side without hesitation.
Seth followed. His boots hit cracked cobblestone, the sound echoing faintly in the ruined street. The city beyond was a graveyard of stone and silence — leaning towers half-swallowed by vines, broken windows gaping like empty sockets.
Martha moved quickly but kept low, weaving through collapsed alleyways rather than open streets. "We're heading east," she murmured.
Seth raised a brow. "Why east?"
"Because west is crawling with things that make Stalkers look friendly. North is a dead zone — nothing survives there. And south… let's just say I'd rather die in a fight than starve in the holy territories."
Seth caught the bitterness in her voice but didn't press. "East it is, then."
They moved in silence for a while. The only sounds were the faint scrape of boots and the occasional distant groan of stressed stone. The fractured light from above filtered through in shifting patterns, never quite bright enough to banish the gloom.
It was only after they'd crossed three blocks of ruins that the voice came again.
It wasn't from Martha. It wasn't from the world around him. It was inside his mind — steady, resonant, and impossible to ignore.
My beloved son.
Seth's steps faltered for a fraction of a second.
The fragments bleed into the earth and sky. The longer they remain scattered, the more the balance breaks.
The words were heavy, settling in his chest like molten stone.
Your first path is toward the fragment of Life. It must be reclaimed before it is twisted beyond repair.
The voice faded, leaving the air colder in its absence.
Martha glanced back. "You stopped."
Seth caught up to her without answering at first. "…We need to find something. Or someone."
"Specifics would be nice."
"The fragment of Life."
Her steps slowed. "…You're serious?"
"Dead serious."
She gave him a long, searching look. "You're either insane, or…" She didn't finish the thought. "Fine. But if you're dragging me into something suicidal, I'm not dying quietly."
Seth almost smirked. "Wouldn't expect you to."
They moved on.
The eastern streets slowly gave way to what might once have been a marketplace. Stone stalls stood like skeletal ribs, their wares long gone, replaced by creeping weeds and patches of strange fungal growth. The air smelled faintly metallic.
Martha scanned the shadows between the stalls. "Keep your guard up. The smaller things like to hide in these places."
"Smaller?" Seth asked.
"You think only big monsters are dangerous? Some of the smallest can rot you from the inside before you even realize you're bleeding."
They picked their way carefully through the ruins. Twice, Martha signaled him to stop, her eyes fixed on faint shifting shapes between the stones. Seth's light flared faintly in his palm, but both times the movement faded away without incident.
It was tense, but they made it through.
Beyond the marketplace, the streets opened into a wide stretch of cracked road that led toward the faint outline of hills in the distance. The light filtering down here was thinner, the shadows deeper.
"This is a choke point," Martha said quietly. "If anything's watching us, we're about to be in its perfect killing ground."
Seth studied the road ahead, then the shadows along the sides. "I can push the light out again. Give us a clear path."
She nodded. "Do it."
He let the glow build, not in a sudden burst, but as a slow swell that rolled outward from him. The fractured street lit up in warm gold, the edges of the road sharpening as the shadows fled. It wasn't as bright as before — he was holding it steady this time, stretching it as far as he could without burning it out too fast.
They moved.
Halfway across the open ground, something shifted far to their left. A shadow detached itself from the wall and slid away into the ruins.
"Keep walking," Martha murmured. "Don't look like prey."
Seth kept his eyes forward, the glow in his palm steady. The shadow didn't reappear.
When they reached the far side of the choke point, Martha finally exhaled. "That was too quiet."
"Quiet is good."
"Not here."
They continued east. The city thinned further, ruins giving way to open stretches of ground pocked with low stone walls and the occasional standing arch. The air felt different out here — cleaner, but emptier, like sound didn't travel as far.
As they climbed a gentle rise, Seth caught sight of something in the distance. A jagged spire of black rock jutted from the ground like a wound in the earth. Even from here, it radiated wrongness.
Martha saw it too. Her grip on her spear tightened. "That's a scar. Places where the fragments fell leave marks like that. You don't go near them unless you want trouble."
"That's where we're going," Seth said simply.
She gave him a look that was equal parts disbelief and frustration. "Of course it is."
The closer they drew, the more the ground changed. Grass gave way to brittle, colorless weeds. The soil darkened, cracked like burned skin. The air felt heavier, carrying a faint hum that prickled against Seth's skin.
When they were close enough to see the base of the spire, Martha slowed. "There'll be guardians. Always are. And they don't care if you're holy, dark, or neither."
Seth nodded once. "Then we'll deal with them."
Martha shook her head. "You say that like you've done it before."
He didn't answer.
The spire loomed ahead, its surface slick with shifting patterns that seemed to move even when he wasn't looking directly at them. At its base, faint green light pulsed rhythmically — the heartbeat of the fragment within.
The hum in the air deepened. The ground beneath their feet vibrated faintly.
From the cracked earth around the spire, shapes began to rise.