The temple breathes.
Not wind—breath.
Every column exhales dust and memory as I walk deeper, a single torch bleeding light through the carved mouths of forgotten gods. The mark on my wrist—the one the relic burned into me—still throbs like a second heartbeat. I keep my hand pressed to it, pretending it doesn't pull me forward.
When I reach the antechamber, the air changes. The floor is slick with condensation, yet heat rolls from the center altar where a pool of black water churns in silence. I smell iron. Blood—fresh. Someone else is here.
"Looking for absolution, thief?"
His voice curls out of the dark like smoke. Kael.
I hadn't heard that name in years.
He steps from the shadows wearing the crest of the royal guard I once betrayed. His face is thinner, eyes harder, but that same small scar runs through his lip—my knife had left it there the night I escaped him.
"Redemption isn't what I came for," I say, though the tremor in my voice betrays me.
He circles me slowly. "Then why answer the temple's call? You of all people should know it demands more than courage. It demands surrender."
The torchlight flickers; every god-mask on the walls seems to grin wider.
"I came for the fragment," I whisper. "Nothing else."
Kael's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Lies are still your sharpest weapon."
He lunges, steel flashing. I meet him halfway, blades crossing with a cry that splits the chamber. The sound echoes forever. Sparks scatter across wet stone; his strength drives me back until my heel touches the pool's rim. One misstep and I'll drown in that black mirror.
Then the mark on my wrist burns white-hot. The water moves.
It rises—not in ripples, but in the shape of hands. They grasp Kael's sword arm, wrench it aside. He gasps as his blade vanishes beneath the surface. For a heartbeat the pool shows his reflection—a perfect, terrified copy—and then it drags him under.
"Seraphine!" he chokes, reaching for me.
I reach back. I shouldn't. But guilt is stronger than fear.
Our fingers touch—and something tears through me. Every memory of him floods my mind: the night we met, the betrayal, the kiss I never forgot. His pain becomes mine. The pool releases him only when I scream.
When it's over, he lies shivering on the stone, eyes open but empty. The mark on my wrist now glows faintly red, pulsing with his heartbeat instead of mine.
The whisper comes again—soft, feminine, ancient.
"One debt paid. Nine remain."
I stagger back. "What are you?"
The water ripples. From its surface, a face forms—my own, but older, colder, crowned in light.
"You sought power. You found consequence. Every soul bound to you feeds the gate."
"The gate to what?" My voice shakes.
"To the place you once belonged."
Then the reflection smiles—and the smile is wrong. It's almost loving.
The torch dies.
When light returns, I'm outside the temple. The sky is violet, clouds dragging like torn cloth. Kael is gone. Only the faint outline of a handprint—mine—smolders on the ground.
I wander through the ruins until the ache in my wrist steadies into rhythm. The relic's pull is stronger now, dragging me east toward the cliffs where the sea eats the sun. Each step hums with power and dread.
At dusk I find a ruined shrine carved into the cliff face. The wind howls through hollow eyes of statues older than kingdoms. Someone has built a small campfire—fresh. Someone is waiting.
"Still breathing," a voice says behind me. A woman this time.
Tall, dark-haired, armor of bone and gold. Her smile is effortless.
"You followed the call too," she says. "I wondered which of us would reach the first temple alive."
"Who are you?" I ask.
"Liora." She kneels by the fire, gestures for me to sit. "Keeper of the second key. And if you're wise, my ally."
I don't move.
She studies my wrist. "It's awakened, then. That burn means you've offered blood."
"Not willingly."
"No one ever does."
Her tone is almost kind. Almost.
She tosses a vial into the fire; it erupts blue, casting her face in otherworldly glow.
"The temples aren't prisons," she says quietly. "They're veins. The old gods sleep beneath this continent, dreaming of rebirth. Each key we claim opens another artery."
"And when all are opened?"
"Then the world remembers what it's made of." She leans close enough that I smell ash and rose oil. "Power. Desire. Death."
The mark throbs again—syncing with hers. For a second our breaths mirror, and something ancient stirs between us. The same pulse, the same heat. A warning or invitation—I can't tell.
Liora's lips curve. "You feel it, don't you? The bond. The gate is waking."
I draw back. "If you know what's coming, help me stop it."
She laughs softly. "Stop it? Seraphine, you are it."
The fire flares, and her shadow merges with mine on the rock wall—two figures entwined, impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
That night I dream of the sea turning to glass. Beneath it, I see Kael's face, eyes open, whispering my name. Above me, a hand—my reflection's hand—reaches down with a blade made of light.
When I wake, the mark is no longer red. It's black.
And carved into the stone beside me are five words written in blood that isn't mine:
"The second key awaits you."