The horns wailed again, nearer now, the sound rattling small pebbles down the ridge. Torchlight from the valley flared in the narrow cleft behind them, throwing the ruins into a jittering, uncertain light. Every shadow seemed to breathe.
"We do not have time," Sofia snapped, sword already in hand. Her gaze flicked from the broken colonnade to the narrow path that led onward. "We cut through. Now."
Owen's hands trembled so hard his rolled parchments threatened to unscroll. He shook his head, pale with a scholar's awe and a terror that had nothing to do with ink or maps. "You do not understand. This is not just rock. This place was a conduit, older than our histories. If you step inside-"
"Inside or dead," Sofia cut him off, the choice slashed sharp as a blade. Her command carried weight, there was no room for debate. The caravan surged like a thing pushed by current. Wheels creaked, hooves scraped, packs bumped over the threshold into the circle of stones.
The moment the first wheel crossed the rim, the hum deepened. It grew from a faint vibration into something that filled the chest, as if the ground had become a giant instrument struck again and again. The air thickened, heavy as water. Sound dulled, muffled, as if unseen walls had closed in. Torches sputtered though there was no wind. Men's breaths came short and loud, then damped by the swallowing stillness.
Evelyn pressed her satchel against her chest. "It feels like something is listening," she whispered, eyes wide and raw.
Leo staggered the instant his boot hit the stone slab. The shard inside him reacted with a force that knocked the breath from his lungs. The sensation was not heat first, though heat followed, but vibration, resonance. His ribs trembled as if some vast string inside him had been plucked. The world doubled, tripled; pillars that had been warped and broken an instant before snapped into whole form in his vision. Where moss had lain, serpent glyphs flared faintly, lines brightening as if ink bled up from stone.
Memory and present folded together. He saw the ruin in two lives at once: a temple ringed with living pillars, priests in ash painted faces chanting in a voice that made the bones hurt, then a single scream that cut like lightning and the flash of a blade. He saw the same stones as they were now, half-buried and patient, and felt the weight of centuries press down with hungry expectation.
His knees betrayed him. He went to one, then another, the world tilting. The boy clung tighter to his cloak. "Leo, do not," the child hissed, fear raw and fierce.
The shard exulted, a sound that was no longer a whisper: Here. Here is ours, it crowed. This was where bargains were struck, where something was broken and bound. Open, open, and it will all return. Open and the power will be whole again.
Leo ground his teeth, trying to force the voice down. "No," he breathed, thin with effort.
A crack ripped through the circle beneath their feet. Stone split with a groan that felt like the world shifting its bones. Dust billowed up, tasting of rust and old blood. From the fissure, faint lights kindled and moved like embers in a hearth: blue, green, red, colors that made the hair along Leo's arms stand up. They guttered and swam, then steadied into a slow, slow dance.
The hum resolved into rhythm. Not words exactly, but an ancient cadence that sank into marrow and made the teeth ache. It was a chant and a bell and a drum all at once, hitting a frequency that had nothing to do with ears and everything to do with the soul.
Owen's parchments fell, forgotten. He dropped to his knees, hands clawing at the carvings as if to read them with skin. "It is awakening," he croaked, voice small beneath the weight of the sound.
Evelyn seized Leo's arm, fingers digging into his sleeve with a force that jolted him back to himself. "Tell me you do not feel it pulling you," she demanded. Her eyes were bright with terror and pleading.
Leo's vision flared molten amber. His fingers clawed at his chest as if he could wrench the shard free. The voice inside him swelled to a roar, loud as the horns now echoing off the cliffs.
You are mine, boy, it bellowed. This is mine. Step forward, claim it. I will not be denied.
From the ridge mouth came the wild staccato of shouted orders, and the torches at its edge flicked like a second set of stars. The mob had reached them. Its sound rolled up the pass a single, thundering presence, punctuated by the cult's low cries and the rasp of cloaks.
Sofia placed herself between the caravan and the fissure. Her sword tip dug into the stone. "Hold the circle," she barked, voice even though it trembled. "Whatever wakes, it will not matter if we are slaughtered before sunrise."
Her words steadied a few, pulled the ragged line tight. Men formed as best they could, shields raised, spears angled outward, a ring of metal and flesh around the bones of the old world. But in their eyes was fear, an animal fear that made hands shake and breaths shallow.
Below, the mob surged like a living swarm, torches painting the cliff face gold and black. The cult moved among them, deliberate and silent as shadows, their serpent marks visible in the torchlight. The sound of a horn rose and broke like surf.
The ruin pulsed in time to the shard's hunger, and the shard pulsed in time to Leo's frightened heart. The two beats matched until the boundary between inside and outside thinned to a thread.
The choice that had once been his, to step into the old bargain or to deny it, narrowed until there was no room at all. The circle of stones had claimed them by the very fact of their crossing. They could not leave without passing back through the threshold they had just taken. The mob thundered closer. The conduit, once dormant, had been set stirring.
There was no longer a decision. The ruin had decided for them.