The observatory felt heavier that morning. The storm had passed, but the sky was still bruised, streaked with veins of red cloud like torn muscle across a dying god's face.
Duran stood by the rusted gears of the telescope, turning something small in his fingers.
Kael watched him quietly. There was something final about the silence between them.
Then Duran spoke.
"You're really going to Red Hollow."
Kael didn't answer. He didn't need to. The Blood System had already whispered its pull into every cell in his body. The name echoed in his bones now, louder than his own heartbeat.
Duran sighed, then extended his hand.
Resting in his palm was a jagged black shard wrapped in crimson threads. A faint, pulsing glow beat at its center—like a second heart.
"What is it?" Kael asked.
"A bloodstone compass," Duran said. "Attuned to your lineage. It'll guide you—not just to Red Hollow, but to everything you've forgotten."
Kael took it carefully. The moment his fingers brushed it, the threads unwound and the stone flickered bright, pointing slightly southeast, toward the dead forests.
"It's alive," Kael whispered.
"No," Duran said. "You are. That's why it works."
Duran moved to the map table. He rolled up the old Vyr scroll, tied it shut, and handed it to Kael.
"I know what you're thinking," he said. "That this is your destiny. That you're meant to finish what the queen started. Maybe that's true. Maybe not. But either way…"
He looked Kael in the eyes.
"Don't become the weapon they want you to be."
Kael's grip tightened around the scroll. The memory of the child he saved—the slaver's blood on his hands—flashed in his mind. That voice of the System still echoed: You are not a god yet.
"How do you fight what's in your blood?" Kael asked quietly.
"You don't fight it," Duran said. "You guide it. You remember that blood is just memory, not fate."
There was a sound outside—low and distant. A rumble. Not thunder.
Engines.
Kael stepped toward the window. From the distant ridge, he could see dark shapes swarming into the ruins: bloodline enforcers in crimson armor, prowling warhounds with glowing eyes.
"They've found us," he said.
Duran cursed under his breath. "Too soon."
Kael turned to him. "You have to leave."
Duran shook his head. "I won't make it out. But you can."
"I'm not leaving you behind."
"You must."
He pulled something else from under his coat—a needle-thin shard of blood crystal.
"Take this too. If the compass breaks, crush this into your skin. It will burn like hell, but it will call the System directly. It will show you what you really are."
Outside, footsteps began echoing through the stone corridors.
Duran looked at Kael one last time. "You're waking something up, Kael. Every time you consume, the Old Blood stirs. The ones who buried it are watching. And the ones who worshipped it are beginning to move."
Kael looked down at the compass. It pulsed faster now. Urgently. Like a countdown.
"Then I'll find the truth before they find me."
Duran smiled faintly. "That's what the queen said. Just before she vanished."
Kael moved to the back exit. Just as he reached the broken tunnel door, Duran called out.
"Kael."
He turned.
Duran's voice cracked.
"I'm sorry for hiding the map. I didn't want you to end up like the others."
"I won't," Kael said.
"How do you know?"
Kael glanced at the bloodstone, then back at the old man who'd saved his life.
"Because I made a promise," he said. "To myself. To survive. To become something more."
Duran nodded. "Then go. Before they tear this place down."
Kael ran into the tunnel, the compass pulsing with bloodlight in his hand.
Behind him, the observatory roared with explosions.
The last thing he heard before the dust swallowed everything was Duran's voice—chanting a spell in the old tongue.
And the System, whispering softly:
"The first bond has been broken."
"Now the Red Road begins."