The rain came heavier now, drenching the stone streets until they shone like mirrors. Lightning traced crooked veins across the black sky, and the ruins of the Tower of Bells smoldered in the distance, shedding ash into the wind.
Cassiel stood facing the stranger, sword drawn but lowered slightly. Around him, Bastion, Elior, and Mirae formed a loose circle — tense, wary.
The stranger — Ilyan, as he had named himself — did not move to attack.
He simply watched them, as if seeing something else overlaid atop the world, something only he could recognize.
"You're not from here," Cassiel said first, studying him.
"No," Ilyan replied, his voice calm, but touched with an exhaustion that went deeper than mere travel. "I don't belong here. Not exactly."
Mirae shifted, eyes narrowing. "Another stray."
Bastion muttered, "We don't have time for strays."
Elior didn't speak. He simply watched, hand resting lightly on his sword hilt.
The stranger's gaze flicked between them, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He looked like someone who'd long stopped expecting kindness — and had learned to find amusement in its absence.
"You're looking for something," Ilyan said. "Or someone."
Cassiel tilted his head. "Maybe."
He laughed softly. "It's written all over you."
The bells still echoed faintly, ghostlike in the distance. They weren't just sounds now — they were memories, leaking into the streets, the stones, the skin of anyone still breathing.
"You helped bring it down," Cassiel said.
"Not by choice," Ilyan admitted, glancing back at the ruined tower. "But when the world bleeds, everyone nearby gets cut."
The group exchanged brief looks.
They were bleeding too.
Just not from wounds.
From exhaustion, failure, and the terrible certainty that they were standing on the edge of something too big for them to see.
They didn't invite him.
But they didn't tell him to leave, either.
Together, they moved through the broken city, heading toward the last place marked on Mirae's battered map — the Basilica of Fallen Echoes, where the Breach was worst.
Along the way, Cassiel kept stealing glances at the newcomer.
Ilyan walked like someone used to being hunted. Always slightly off the center of the group, always a few steps behind or ahead, never quite with them.
He didn't ask questions.
He didn't offer answers.
He simply followed.
Like a ghost who hadn't realized he was dead.
The Basilica loomed over the ruins, its vast doors splintered and sagging. Statues of forgotten saints lined the courtyard, their faces eroded into blank despair.
The Breach hung above the altar, a gaping maw of stars and wrongness. It pulsed like a heartbeat, breathing ruin into the air.
Cassiel stopped at the threshold, feeling the invisible weight pressing down on him.
"This is it," he said.
Mirae whistled low. "Big."
Bastion checked the straps on his shield again. "Bad."
Elior said nothing. His face was grim.
Ilyan smiled faintly, stepping past them into the basilica.
The ground shook.
And from the shadows, the hidden boss emerged.
It didn't look like a monster.
It looked like the memory of one.
A vast shape stitched from stained glass and prayer, its body shifting between wolf, lion, and crow with every blink. Its voice was the sound of breaking oaths, of forgotten names.
"WHO DARES TRESPASS?"
Cassiel barely managed to throw up a shield of magic as the creature roared, a physical force that blasted splinters from the ground.
Mirae darted left, tossing daggers like falling stars. They shattered harmlessly against the thing's skin.
Bastion charged, shield raised, but was swatted aside like a toy.
Elior moved with lethal grace, aiming for joints, weaknesses — but the creature had none.
Ilyan watched for a moment longer than anyone else could afford.
Then he moved.
It was not a heroic charge.
It was something colder.
Sharper.
He stepped through the air itself, warping it around him, and drove a strange, shifting blade — a weapon made of broken stories — straight into the creature's side.
The monster screamed, the sound fracturing reality.
Cassiel seized the opening.
His sword, coated in a thin sheen of dreamfire, struck true — slicing along the creature's flank where Ilyan had pierced it.
Mirae leapt for the eyes. Bastion anchored the ground with his shield, keeping the distortion at bay.
For a moment, they fought as one.
For a moment, they almost looked like a team.
The creature bucked, staggering back toward the Breach.
It didn't want to die.
It didn't want to leave.
It wanted to drag them all with it.
"REWRITE.""REWRITE."
The Breach expanded, sucking at the edges of the world.
Cassiel screamed over the roar, "Fall back!"
They didn't have to be told twice.
They fled the basilica as the Breach swallowed the monster, the altar, and half the courtyard.
The basilica groaned like a dying whale and collapsed inward, vanishing into the wound.
Ashreign trembled.
But it did not fall.
Not yet.
Later, soaked and shivering beneath the ruins of a shattered bell tower, the group huddled around a flickering campfire stolen from broken magic lanterns.
They didn't speak at first.
There were no cheers.
No victories.
Only breathing.
Only surviving.
After a while, Mirae said, "You didn't have to help us."
Ilyan shrugged, poking the fire with a stick. "Didn't say I was helping."
Cassiel narrowed his eyes. "Then why?"
He looked up at the ruined sky.
And smiled that thin, tired smile.
"Because once, someone pulled me out of the dark," he said. "Seems only fair to return the favor once in a while."
They didn't know what to say to that.
Didn't know how much of it was a lie.
Didn't know how much was the only truth he had left.
Far away, across the city, two groups of travelers entered Ashreign.
One group was the old companions — Ashwen, Rue, Loup, and Groat — worn by loss but still searching.
The other was a team of mercenaries sent by unseen hands, armed with contracts and blood-debts.
All their paths would tangle here.
In Ashreign.
The city of broken bells and bleeding magic.
Where every step forward was another name forgotten.
And where no story ended the way it was supposed to.
Not anymore.