Chapter 190 - The Broken Path

The chamber with the sigil did not have an exit in any conventional sense, but their vows had changed something fundamental about how they interacted with the deep Empire's architecture. Where before the cosmic machinery had seemed designed to funnel them toward predetermined outcomes, now it responded to their united will with something that might have been reluctant respect. A passage opened before them not created but revealed, as if it had always been there waiting for souls who had chosen to scar themselves rather than be shaped by external forces.