The rain above Morsilith had not stopped in days.
But it wasn't natural.
The droplets left marks that hissed, tiny vapor scars that whispered as they struck the earth. Not water — not quite. Residue from the rift in essence.
A woman in dark armor stood at the edge of the valley. Her robes bore the sigil of the Verdant Stag Sect — a rising regional power known for its manipulation of living qi and body-forging pacts.
She did not step further. She merely opened the cage.
"You know what to find."
The creature inside slithered out — not on legs, but jointed paws that could fold like hands. Its fur was scorched black, but its tongue glowed with embers.
It sniffed the ground once.
Then raised its head.
And howled.
Not for others.
For the depths.
Kier felt the pulse below.
The howl echoed through the ruin, filtered by old stone and glyphward corridors — but it found him.
It should not have.
His guardian stirred behind the soul-thread, growling softly in his bones. The bond between them flexed with static.
"Unclean," it rasped.
Kier stopped mid-step.
Another spiral corridor opened before him, and this one was different.
Lined not with stone, but burned root. Like veins scorched and frozen in time.
"So. Someone sends a sniffing beast."
He crouched, pressing one hand to the ruin's skin.
A flicker.
A pulse.
The hound above had found his memory-trail.
Above ground, the beast stopped moving.
Its head twitched.
Then it began to dig.
Not wildly. Deliberately.
Through layers of dirt and ash.
The armored envoy watched it without speaking. But her left hand hovered over a glyph-brand on her neck — a failsafe.
She whispered to no one:
"If it howls twice, burn it."
In the depths, Kier found a room untouched until now.
An offering chamber—long defunct, its shrine cracked in half. Broken statuettes scattered across the floor.
But in the center stood a mirror of flame.
Not literal fire — but essence shaped to look like flickering heat. It didn't burn. It reflected rot.
As Kier entered, the flames bent toward him.
"Who remembers you?" the mirror asked.
"Enough," Kier answered. "But not all."
A growl cut through the silence.
The hound had entered Morsilith.
Kier turned slowly.
The corridor behind him warped. A scent, like charcoal and old rot, filled the air.
Then he saw it — crawling from the dark. Bone-thin, eye-less, fur dripping with embers that didn't fall.
The beast exhaled smoke, then spoke.
"You… are not marked… yet reek of old sin."
Kier raised one hand.
The air thickened.
The flame-mirror behind him reacted, surging higher.
"Leave," he commanded.
"Too late," the beast hissed. "I have smelled the Scavenger on you. I will taste your end."
It leapt.
Faster than thought.
But Kier didn't flinch.
Instead, he shifted the flame-mirror.
It bent—not away, but forward.
The beast struck it mid-lunge, and froze.
In the mirror, its reflection burned — not the body, but the echo. The beast screamed once, soul unraveling in flame.
It wasn't a howl.
It was a second call.
Above, the envoy grimaced.
The glyph on her neck burned black.
"It has seen too much," she muttered. "Burn it."
Behind her, a formation of sect disciples nodded. They held no weapons — only scrolls wrapped in chains.
One unraveled.
And the sky split.
A line of green fire descended — not into the valley, but into the hound itself.
In the depths, Kier shielded his eyes as the creature incinerated mid-collapse.
Not natural fire.
Sect-cleansing flame.
"So," Kier murmured. "They're watching now."
He knelt beside the ashes.
All that remained was a tooth — obsidian, still warm.
He picked it up.
And felt it.
A trace of the one who commanded it.
A name, half-suppressed.
A path back.
The Guardian's voice returned, now more alert.
"They send hounds. Soon, they will send judges."
Kier didn't answer.
He turned toward the flame-mirror.
And whispered a name the scavenger had left behind.
"Let them come."
"I remember them, too."