The dark spoke first.
—Kneel.
Kael did not. The stair poured them into a chamber older than the monastery and perhaps older than the faith that had crowned it: a rotunda of black stone veined with pale minerals that drank light and sang when the wind moved. No wind should have touched such a place, and yet a slow breath circled the room, tasting them.
Serah's blade scuffed stone. "I hate this," she whispered. "I hate how much it feels like remembering."
"It remembers us," Kael said. The Mark uncoiled like a cat, pleased. Every inch of the chamber was written in the same not-language as the shadows under his skin. If he listened too long, he would understand; if he understood, he was not sure he would remain himself.
The far wall cracked white.
Light shaped itself into a figure in robes the color of cooled ash, a cowl hiding most of the face. Not a body—an apparition woven from sanctified flame. The voice that followed was calm, patient, and kind in the way old knives are kind.
"Kael of the Veilwood," it said. "Child of the forbidden lineage. You walk where only your dead have walked."
Serah placed herself between Kael and the light, knives a glittering refusal. "Prelate."
The cowl inclined. "Child of the heretic city. Serah of Graywater. You have killed four of my cloister already today."
"Five, if you count the one who chose himself," Serah said.
"Ah," the voice said, and for a heartbeat grief hollowed it. "Then six, before this ends."
The Mark shivered like a chord plucked deep in bone. "Why show yourself?" Kael asked. "Why not come with the rest of your pack?"
"Because I would speak first," the Prelate said. "Because there is a wound under your feet that our order could not close, and your blood is the salve that fits the shape of it. Because if you seal it, I will end you quickly. And if you open it, I will end everyone else."
Serah laughed, low and shocked. "You want him to fix what you broke?"
"We did not break it," the Prelate said softly. "We merely survived it. The Rift is older than our names. But we have learned this: the Shadowborn are doors. And you, Kael, are ajar."
Kael tasted iron. "Say what you came to say."
"Your Mark is bound to a pattern," said the Prelate. "Each act opens or closes a line in that pattern. You think you are choosing out of mercy or rage or love. But the Mark is counting. When the count is done, it will decide whether you are a seal…or a key."
Silence pooled between them. Serah's hand found Kael's without asking, anchoring.
"What if I refuse to play?" Kael asked.
"You cannot," the Prelate said. "The game began the day you were born." The light flickered, as if something hunched behind it shifted. "I offer this: end the wound, save what can be saved, die with your name unspat. Or run from it, and I will hunt you across every church and ruin and road until your shadow bleeds to nothing."
The breath of the chamber pressed closer. The Mark, for once, did not smile. It waited.
Kael stepped forward until cold light kissed his skin. He thought of the river's stones, the names carved down to ghosts. He thought of the penitent's eyes in the fire. He thought of Serah's hand, steady in his.
"You mistake me," he said. "I am not a seal or a key. I am a hand on the latch. And I will decide what opens."
The Prelate's light sharpened. "Then decide quickly."
The floor cracked, and the chamber tilted like a cup. From the wound below came a wind that smelled of midnight and starfall—and something else, something that tasted like his own blood.
—Kneel, the dark murmured again, almost tender.
Kael bared his teeth. "Make me."
The rotunda broke, and the world fell.