The glow from the chasm pulsed like a malevolent heartbeat ancient, aware, and watching.
Evren stumbled back as the earth trembled beneath them. A gust of wind howled through the trees, carrying whispers, soft and indecipherable at first… until they sharpened into a voice he knew was impossible.
"Evren…"
He whipped around. That was his mother's voice.
"Evren…"
But she was dead. She'd died long before he'd ever met Kaelion.
Kaelion caught his wrist in a firm grip. "Do not listen."
"You heard that?" Evren asked, panic clawing up his throat.
"Yes," Kaelion said, his voice dark. "It is not her. It is the gate. It remembers. It feeds on memory."
Lioran was staring down into the abyss, tears streaking his grimy cheeks. "I see my brother," he whispered. "He's calling for me…"
Kaelion yanked the boy away from the edge. "Do not look. Do not listen. That is how it lures you in."
"What is it trying to do?" Evren demanded.
"Break you," Kaelion said. "Before it ever lets you inside"
The ruins finally came into view a colossal structure half-swallowed by roots and the weight of centuries. A marble door stood at the center, cracked and weeping shadows.
Carved into it were three names.
Evren. Kaelion. And one neither of them recognized Aelric.
"Who is that?" Lioran asked.
Kaelion's eyes narrowed to slits. "I do not know. But that name… it should not be here."
Evren stepped closer. The moment his palm met the cold stone, it flared with gold light, and the whispering ceased. For a single, blessed moment, there was peace.
Then came the scream.
It echoed from inside the ruins inhuman, tortured, a sound of pure agony.
Evren turned to Kaelion. "We don't have a choice anymore, do we?"
Kaelion unsheathed his blade, the steel singing in the heavy air. "No. We are already pieces in its game."
The doors groaned open on unseen hinges, grinding against the stone floor.
The gate had accepted him.
The air inside the ruins was colder than death.
It was more than temperature; it was a crushing, unnatural silence that made each footstep echo like a thunderclap. The walls were covered in ancient glyphs that seemed to shift and writhe at the edge of their vision.
Evren kept close to Kaelion. "The walls are moving."
"They are watching," Kaelion replied, his eyes hard as flint.
Lioran paused at a doorway where a single candle burned with a steady flame, though no one had lit it. "There's magic in here I don't recognize. It's old. Wrong."
Then came the footsteps.
Soft. Barefoot. Approaching from the darkness ahead.
Evren drew a sharp breath as a figure emerged from the shadows. It was a boy no older than thirteen, with long lashes and an innocent face. His clothes were worn, his feet dirty, but he smiled with a kind of light that had no place in this tomb.
"Are you lost too?" he asked, his voice soft as a prayer.
Kaelion stepped forward, instantly placing himself between the boy and Evren. "Who are you?"
The boy tilted his head, a bird-like gesture. "You can call me Aelric."
Evren froze.
That was the third name carved into the stone outside.
But… how?
The boy walked up to Evren and gently took his hand. "You feel warm. You're real. That's nice."
Evren didn't pull away. Something in the boy's eyes felt honest. Gentle.
"I've been waiting a long time," Aelric said. "They left me here."
"Who did?" Kaelion asked, his tone guarded.
Aelric's smile faded. "The ones who opened the gate. But they weren't like you. They weren't kind."
Evren looked at Kaelion, his decision made. "We're taking him with us."
Kaelion hesitated, his gaze sweeping over the boy. "He is bound to this place."
"I don't care."
Lioran knelt to the boy's level. "You want to come with us?"
Aelric nodded, a flicker of hope in his ancient eyes. "I'd like that."
And so he followed them, barefoot and quiet… but Evren couldn't shake the feeling in his chest, a cold certainty that something fundamental had shifted the moment Aelric took his hand.
They walked for hours, deeper into the ruins, their torchlight a fragile defiance against the consuming dark. Aelric walked in the center of the group, humming a soft, old lullaby that none of them recognized.
Evren glanced at him from time to time. There was something hauntingly sweet about the boy, his presence a calming balm. But the question scratched incessantly at the back of Evren's mind How long has he truly been here?
Kaelion didn't say much, but Evren could feel his watchfulness. It wasn't suspicion, but a distant, grim protectiveness, as if he'd failed someone once before and would not allow it to happen again.
Aelric turned suddenly and looked at Kaelion. "You have a heavy heart."
Kaelion's eyes narrowed slightly. "That is not something you say to a prince."
"I didn't mean it badly," Aelric said quickly. "It's just... I can feel it. You carry things that hurt."
Kaelion didn't respond. He just walked ahead, his silence more telling than any reply.
Evren knelt beside the boy. "You're... special, aren't you?"
Aelric smiled, a fragile thing. "I don't know. I just feel things. Always have."
Lioran whispered from the back, "This place is getting stronger. The shadows... they're starting to whisper."
As if summoned, a wind blew through the corridor, snuffing out their torch.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Evren gasped and instinctively reached out Kaelion's hand found his in the pitch-black, their grip tight.
"I'm here," Kaelion whispered, his voice an anchor.
Then they heard Aelric giggling. But it wasn't cruel it was soft, like the chime of glass bells.
A second later, the boy's body began to glow with a soft, silver luminescence.
"You don't need torches when you've got me," he said, grinning.
Evren blinked in the newfound light. "You're... a lightbearer?"
Aelric shrugged. "I guess. I just didn't want you to be scared."
The ruins trembled slightly, and somewhere behind them, stone crumbled.
Kaelion pulled Evren close. "Let's move. We are not safe standing here."
And with the glowing child lighting their path, they walked forward deeper into the ruins, deeper into the unknown.
None of them realized that the further they walked with Aelric, the more the ruins began to change around them.
And not all change was for the good.
They walked in silence, the only sound their footsteps and Aelric's faint hum.
The silver glow from his skin bounced off the cracked stone walls, revealing ancient symbols that now pulsed with a faint, answering light.
Evren noticed them first. "These markings weren't glowing before."
Kaelion narrowed his eyes. "They are responding to him."
Aelric didn't seem to notice. He was humming again, eyes wide with wonder as he skipped a little ahead. "This place feels familiar... like I've dreamed it before."
Evren reached out, touching one of the glowing symbols. He flinched as a vicious chill shot up his arm, yanking his hand back to see frost crawling along the edges of the stone.
"Stop touching things," Kaelion muttered. "Something is not right."
As they reached a vast circular chamber, the air grew thick and heavy to breathe. In the center stood an altar long-abandoned, smothered in ivy and etched with runes. Around it, statues of hooded figures lined the walls, each one eerily missing a face.
Aelric slowly approached the altar, his gaze distant. "They used to come here," he whispered. "The ones in masks. They said I was... chosen."
Kaelion's voice hardened. "Chosen for what?'
Aelric didn't answer. Instead, he reached for the altar.
Evren moved fast. "Aelric, don't-!"
But the boy's small hand landed on the cold stone.
A flash of blinding white light burst through the chamber, throwing everyone back with concussive force.
When the light faded, Aelric stood perfectly still, his eyes glowing with an unearthly white radiance.
A deep, resonant voice echoed through the chamber a voice that was not his own.
"He has awakened. The gate will open. The bloodline has returned."
The ground shook violently. Kaelion pulled Evren to his feet, his glare fixed on the transfigured boy.
"Aelric," Evren called gently, stepping closer.
The glow in the child's eyes faded. He blinked, disoriented, then turned to them with a look of profound sorrow.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered, his voice small and broken. "I think... I'm not supposed to exist."
And then, from the darkened corridor behind them, a scream echoed long, high-pitched, and unmistakably, terrifyingly human.
Something else had awakened.
The scream tore through the ancient halls, and every instinct in Kaelion screamed danger. He stepped in front of Aelric without a second thought, shielding the boy as the sound reverberated again closer this time.
Evren unsheathed his dagger, his body coiling into a fighter's stance. "That wasn't just a scream. That was a warning."
The chamber dimmed as a thick, greasy fog rolled in from the passage behind them unnatural, reeking of decay and old magic. The glowing runes on the walls flickered and dimmed, as if afraid.
Aelric trembled, his silver light guttering. "They're coming for me. I messed up. I wasn't supposed to touch the altar."
"You didn't mess up," Evren said, grabbing his small, cold hand. "We'll protect you."
Kaelion's expression was a mask of cold fury. "Stay behind us."
A shadow moved in the fog, then another.
Evren squinted, trying to make out the shapes. "That's no. Those are people."
Not people.
Figures emerged from the mist, cloaked in rotting robes and wearing bone-white, featureless masks. They didn't walk. They glided. And the way they stared silent, hollow was like being watched by the dead.
Kaelion stepped forward, his hand crackling with contained flame. "One warning."
The figures did not stop.
In a burst of raw power, Kaelion launched a wave of fire that roared across the stone floor but the flames split, diverting around the hooded beings like water around a stone.
"They're immune?" Evren hissed.
"No." Kaelion's eyes were sharp with realization. "They are not fully here. They are echoes."
One of the masked entities lifted its hand.
A bolt of black energy, cold and silent, ripped through the chamber. It hit the wall behind them with a blast that sent shards of stone flying like shrapnel. Evren dove, covering Aelric with his body as Kaelion lunged forward with a roar, his blade a silver arc in the gloom.
Steel met shadow, magic met death.
And through the chaos,Aelric stood frozen, his eyes locked on the lead figure, his lips trembling around a whisper.
"I know him," the boy breathed, his voice thick with a terror that was centuries old.
Kaelion gritted his teeth, slashing through a mist-form attacker that dissolved into smoke. "You what?"
"That mask," Aelric whispered, pointing a shaking finger. "He was there... in my dreams. The one who told me I was born to die."