The deeper Kier walked into Morsilith's sunless marrow, the less the ruin obeyed geometry. Walls no longer met at clean angles. Corridors folded into themselves, not through design, but erosion of memory.
He knew the signs.
This part of the ruin had been consumed.
Not by time. Not by battle.
By something that fed on remnants.
The soul-thread in his ring dimmed, like a heartbeat losing rhythm. His steps slowed. No light followed. No echo returned.
He stopped at a broken archway—a frame carved with names too faded to speak aloud. In the space beyond, a circular room lay open, littered with tokens: fragments of spirit lanterns, torn robes, shattered bone scrolls.
None of them radiated essence.
All had been stripped.
Kier stepped inside, careful not to touch anything.
No scent of death, he noted. Only silence.
But there was something watching.
Not ahead. Above.
His eyes flicked upward.
Perched among the beams of the broken ceiling, curled like a shadow denied a host, was a figure. Slender, pale-skinned, with long fingers tipped in essence-stained claws.
Eyes pitch black, but not empty—full of things it had taken.
It didn't move.
It didn't blink.
But it spoke—not with voice, but through a vibration in the soul-thread itself.
"...You remember. You carry. You bring weight..."
The voice was not hostile. But it was hungry.
Kier didn't react. His body remained still, but his mind reached—scanning the room. No corpse. No blood. Yet forty-three fragments lay in sight. Each item carefully cleaned. Purged.
"You're not a scavenger," Kier said flatly. "You're a witness that eats."
The thing stirred. Bones clicked faintly as it tilted its head.
"All that dies here... forgets. I do not."
Kier stepped forward, not into aggression—but offering.
He removed a worn spirit-sigil from his sleeve. One he'd taken from a dead binder days ago. It pulsed faintly with fractured will.
He placed it on the ground.
"Feast," he said.
The thing dropped from the ceiling in complete silence.
No air displaced.
No weight pressed.
It crouched beside the token and extended one claw—not to stab, but to drain. The sigil faded before contact. Essence gone.
And with it—the name etched into its core.
The thing turned its eyes back to Kier.
"Why do you carry memory?"
"Because I do not trust forgetting," Kier answered.
The thing made a soft clicking sound—laughter, maybe. Or challenge.
"Do you fear being scavenged?"
"I fear nothing," Kier replied.
The thing blinked. "Then why do you bind yourself?"
It pointed to Kier's ring—the soul-thread glowing faintly. The Guardian bond still fresh. The shadow in his bones still heavy.
Kier didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The scavenger turned. It walked—not away, but into the far wall.
Not through it.
Into it.
Stone shimmered like disturbed memory, and the thing vanished.
Left behind was a single glyph burned into the floor where it had stood.
Kier approached it.
It was a name, but not one spoken.
A glyph that described forgetting. Not passive, but directed. As if someone long ago had learned to cast oblivion like a weapon.
He knelt and traced it with one gloved finger.
A vision struck him—not his own, but left behind.
A city once stood here.
Vast. Loud. Arrogant.
And then the scavenger came.
Not as killer.
Not as conqueror.
But as a hollow, eating not people—but their roots.
And so they forgot themselves.
One by one.
Until silence won.
Kier stood again.
The scavenger was gone. But its gift remained: confirmation.
Something older than even the Dominion had lived here—and been erased.
Not by time.
But by intent.
And the scavenger? Not a creature. Not a spirit.
A system. A will bound to this ruin, not to guard it—but to prune it. To ensure the forgotten stayed buried.
Kier turned toward the path ahead.
The soul-thread in his ring pulsed slower now, as if... hesitant.
He smiled.
"If you feared that," he whispered, "you'll despise what comes next."
And he walked on—his shadow longer now, and not entirely his own.