The darkness was not silent.
It whispered to him in a language of teeth and static, a sound that curled around Elias's bones like smoke. He tried to move, but his body refused to obey. His limbs were leaden, his tongue a dead weight in his mouth. The air smelled of damp stone and something older—something that should not have a scent at all.
A voice cut through the fog.
"Open your eyes."
It was not the Vein. This voice was human. Cold.
Elias forced his eyelids apart. The light was dim, flickering—torchlight, he realized, dancing across wet stone walls. He was underground. A cell.
And he was not alone.
A figure stood over him, clad in the silver-trimmed black of the Inquisitors. But this one wore no mask. His face was bare, sharp-featured, with eyes like chips of flint.
"Elias Veyne," the man said. "Or should I say… the thing wearing his skin?"
Elias's throat tightened.
The Inquisitor smiled. It did not reach his eyes. "You've been very careless with your borrowed life."
A rustle of fabric. From the shadows behind the Inquisitor, another figure emerged—smaller, hooded. Their hands were bound, their steps unsteady.
Elias's breath caught.
Liora.
His mother's face was pale, her lips pressed into a thin line. But her eyes—her eyes were furious.
"Let him go," she said, her voice steadier than Elias had ever heard it. "He's just a boy."
The Inquisitor laughed. "Oh, Liora. Still lying to yourself?" He turned back to Elias. "She knows, by the way. About the shard. About your father's little rebellion." His smile widened. "She just didn't know it was already too late."
Elias's pulse roared in his ears. "Where's my father?"
The Inquisitor ignored him. Instead, he reached into his robes and withdrew something that made Elias's stomach twist—a vial of liquid so black it seemed to swallow the light.
"You've felt it, haven't you?" the Inquisitor murmured. "The Vein. The way it speaks to you. The way it… hungers." He tilted the vial, watching the thick liquid slither inside. "Most people go mad when they hear it. Their minds unravel. Their bodies hollow out." His gaze locked onto Elias. "But not you."
Elias said nothing.
The Inquisitor leaned closer. "Do you want to know why?"
A pause. Then—
"Because you're already hollow."
The words struck like a physical blow.
Liora made a choked sound. "That's not true."
The Inquisitor didn't look at her. "Isn't it? Think, Elias. Do you remember being born? Do you remember your first steps? Your first words?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Or do those memories feel… borrowed?"
Elias's hands shook. Because the truth was—he didn't know. The memories of Elias Veyne's childhood were there, but they were distant, faded, like ink bleeding through old parchment.
And the other memories—the ones of a life before Lotheris, of a world of steel and glass—those were slipping too.
The Inquisitor straightened. "We're going to perform a little test." He nodded to someone unseen. "Bring him."
The cell door groaned open. Two more Inquisitors entered, dragging a third figure between them.
Elias's blood turned to ice.
Orlan.
His father's face was bruised, his robes torn. But his eyes—his eyes were clear. And when they met Elias's, there was no fear in them. Only resolve.
"Elias," Orlan said, his voice rough. "Listen to me. Whatever they tell you—whatever they show you—it's a lie. The Vein doesn't hollow people. They do."
The lead Inquisitor sighed. "Always so dramatic." He lifted the vial. "Let's settle this."
Before Elias could react, the Inquisitor grabbed Orlan's hair and forced his head back. The black liquid poured into his mouth.
Orlan convulsed.
His back arched, his fingers clawing at his throat. Veins of inky black spread beneath his skin, branching like cracks in glass. His mouth opened—
—and a sound came out.
Not a scream.
A voice.
But not Orlan's.
Something deeper. Older. Something that made the torchlight gutter and the stones tremble.
"SEEKER," the voice boomed, shaking the cell. "YOU HAVE FAILED."
The Inquisitor paled. "No. That's impossible—"
Orlan's body jerked upright, his head lolling at an unnatural angle. His eyes were no longer human. They were voids.
And they were fixed on Elias.
"FOUND YOU," the thing inside Orlan said.
Then the world exploded.
The explosion never came.
Instead, time itself tore apart.
Elias watched in frozen horror as the world around him unraveled like fraying thread. The stone walls of the cell dissolved into swirling mist. The Inquisitors' faces stretched and blurred, their screams stretching into wordless echoes. Only three things remained solid—the monstrous thing wearing his father's skin, his mother's paralyzed form, and his own trembling hands.
The creature tilted Orlan's broken body at an impossible angle, neck craning until vertebrae popped. That terrible mouth—the one that hovered where no mouth should be—unhinged like a serpent's jaw.
"Little gap between worlds," it cooed in a voice that dripped like honey and burned like acid. "Did you truly think you could hide from us?"
Elias's breath came in ragged gasps. His vision pulsed with each heartbeat, shadows twisting into shapes that almost resembled words.
Liora moved suddenly, throwing herself between Elias and the abomination. "Run," she choked out, her voice raw with terror. "Elias, please—"
The creature laughed. The sound shattered the remaining torches, plunging them into darkness. Yet somehow, Elias could still see—could still witness as the thing reached a single elongated finger toward his mother's forehead.
The moment it touched her, Liora Veyne began to unravel.
Not her body. Not her flesh. Something deeper. The very essence of her—her memories, her laughter, the scent of her hair when she hugged him—all of it peeled away like layers of paint, revealing...
Nothing.
An absolute, howling void where his mother's soul should be.
Elias screamed.
The sound tore through the unraveling world, and for the first time, the creature hesitated. Its hollow eyes snapped to Elias, that terrible mouth twisting in something almost like surprise.
"You..." it breathed. "You shouldn't be able to do that."
Pain erupted behind Elias's eyes. The Vein—no, something deeper than the Vein, something older—roared to life in his chest. His vision went white.
When it cleared, he was no longer in the cell.
He stood in a place between places.
Above him, infinite stars pulsed in a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Below his bare feet, a mirror-like substance reflected nothing—not his face, not the stars, only endless depth.
And before him, floating just beyond reach, hovered the obsidian shard.
It pulsed once. Twice.
Then it spoke.
"Finally," it sighed with a voice like breaking glass. "You're awake."
The ground vanished.
Elias fell.
Not downward. Not upward.
He fell through the cracks in the world, through layers of reality that peeled away like rotting skin. He saw cities built on the bones of forgotten gods. He saw the Inquisitors kneeling before something vast and shapeless in a cathedral of shadows. He saw—
—his own body, lying motionless in the ruins of the cell, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm even as his eyes remained wide open, unseeing.
The shard's voice followed him down into the dark.
"They will try to make you forget again. Don't let them. Remember the hollow places. Remember what they took from you."
Something grabbed his wrist.
Elias jerked back to awareness with a gasp, finding himself kneeling in the cell once more. The creature was gone. The Inquisitors were gone.
Only Liora remained, her hands clutching his shoulders, her eyes wide with terror.
"Elias," she sobbed. "What did they do to you?"
He opened his mouth to answer. That's when the screaming started from somewhere deep below the prison. Not human screams. Not even mortal. The sound of something ancient. And hungry.