The cold that found them past the Flats wasn't sharp or clean. It crept, slow and rotten, the kind of chill that soaked straight into bone and sat there. Not wind-chill, not frostbite. It felt more like being watched by something that forgot how to blink. Verek noticed it first—his shoulders stiffened, breath shallower. Not from fear. He was used to dread. This was something quieter, older. He knew the feeling. The calm that comes before a blade presses in.
The trees rose up not long after. Black-trunked pines with bark like blistered paper and roots that curled in tight fists, choking the earth. The canopy pressed down like a ceiling with weight behind it. Whatever light made it through landed in jagged stripes, as if the sky had snapped a few ribs and bled out. No birds. No rustle. Just the sound of boots on a forest floor too soft to be trusted.
"Feels like we're walking between two breaths," Ezreal muttered, rubbing at his sleeves like he expected heat to show up just because he asked nice.
Caylen moved up a few paces, jaw set tight, eyes scanning the branches like he expected them to snap shut. "This place doesn't like us. Not a bit."
Dax brought up the rear, steps steady, hand resting near his blade—not quite ready to draw, but close enough. His voice rumbled low. "I've marched through haunted trenches with more cheer in them than this."
Verek didn't say anything. No orders. No comfort. Just kept his eyes forward and his steps even. He walked not like he was leading, but like he was the only one who couldn't afford to stop. There was something in this place, some pressure you didn't feel so much as taste. Like sucking on old coins.
Branches scraped. Fog thickened. And still, the forest didn't make a sound. That was the worst of it. No wind. No birds. Not even the snap of a twig without permission. Just that tight silence clinging to their skin like oil.
When they stumbled into the clearing, it didn't feel like they found it. More like the forest pushed it on them. A temple slouched at the center, stone half-choked by root and vine. Green crept up the sides like it wanted to eat the place whole. Symbols snaked along the stone—looping, shifting things that danced when you weren't looking. Blink, and they'd be in a different place. Like they were crawling toward your eyes.
Verek stepped forward. The others paused but didn't stop him. He reached out, fingers grazing the worn face of a rune. The stone pulsed beneath his touch, slow and deep, like the heartbeat of a mountain learning how to dream. Air around him shimmered, barely enough to see, just enough to make you doubt what you were seeing.
And then she stepped out from the shadows between two ruined pillars. Woman-shaped. But nothing about her was right. Her veil shimmered like the surface of water when it's too still. She moved like smoke—intentional, quiet, dangerous.
"Knowledge is a blade," she said, her voice dragging silk over broken glass. "It cuts deeper when wielded blind. Will you look, or flinch away?"
Verek's jaw twitched. He didn't blink. "We didn't come all this way to turn our backs now. Open the door."
She didn't move, but something did. The temple peeled open like a thought, not a structure. One moment the ruin stood, the next, there was an entry carved from the space between seconds.
They stepped inside.
The air in the temple hit different. Thicker. Not hot or cold, just too much of something that shouldn't be there. The walls bled illusion. Not dreams, not memory. Deeper. Thought. Regret. Voices you never said aloud, looping back in ways that twisted the path. Rooms didn't make sense. Angles broke apart. Time folded wrong.
Ezreal jerked to a stop first. His hands trembled. Fire licked at his boots—he was back on that battlefield. Dragonfire eating rooftops while the people inside screamed. He remembered giving the order. "Hold." It rang through him like a bell made of guilt. He tried to step back, but the smoke clung to his skin.
Caylen staggered sideways. His feet found tiled stone. A courtroom. He was the judge, and the accused, and the audience. His brother's voice passed the sentence, cold and certain. "You chose wrong." He felt the verdict in his gut. It didn't feel new.
Dax stopped breathing. The illusion wasn't flashy. Just a fire. A quiet one. Backwards flame and too many eyes around it. His old unit stood in the dark. Every one of them dead. Watching. Saying nothing. But their eyes said it all. He didn't flinch. Just clenched his jaw and waited for the heat to pass.
Verek saw the child again. The one he promised. His hand on a too-small shoulder. The boy's name still lived in his throat, locked behind his teeth. The village was gone now. Ash and silence. The kid vanished in that silence, like so many others. Verek didn't cry. He didn't look away. He stood in it. Let it soak through.
They didn't speak.
The temple didn't need to lie. It just held up a mirror and let them squirm.
They reached a final chamber, the air there still as glass before a storm. The pedestal sat in the center, smooth stone carved so clean it made your teeth itch to look at it. Atop it, the White shard. Faint light poured from it, quiet and cold like the moon behind winter clouds.
But something stood between them and it. Something tall and neither shaped like man or woman. Its features kept shifting, always just out of reach. It wasn't solid. It didn't need to be.
"To take this shard," it said, voice layered and dry like parchment catching fire, "you must choose. Justice alone is tyranny. Mercy alone is madness. When the world falls, where do you land?"
Verek stepped forward before anyone else moved. His voice cracked, but not from fear. "We choose truth," he said. "Not the kind that comforts. The kind that burns. The kind that breaks you into something better, if you live long enough to be better."
The figure stared. Then, slowly, it faded like steam.
Verek reached out.
His fingers closed around the shard. It didn't spark. It didn't sing. It didn't feel like magic. It just settled into his palm with the quiet finality of a loaded weapon. Cold. Certain.
When they stepped outside, the light had changed. Not brighter. Not friendlier. Just real.
Caylen lingered a second, eyes scanning the canopy. "That place didn't test us. It took something. Like confession with teeth."
Dax cracked his knuckles. "Every shard rips something out of us. Feels like we're losing pieces faster than we can stitch 'em back."
Verek didn't reply. His mind stayed in the chamber, where the truth hung still in the air. He hadn't spoken everything. Not yet. But the shard was listening. He felt it settle in his pack like a coiled truth.
Behind them, the temple closed like it never existed.
Far across the world, beneath a high chamber walled with starlight, Queen Kaelith Serpantwind traced her finger along a map. Thin red lines split through the paper like veins bleeding from the mountain range.
"Vargus didn't fall," she said softly. "He disappeared. There's a difference."
Her steward stood just far enough back to be safe. "The Fey Queen returns. They say she's gathering clans."
Kaelith turned. Her expression wasn't angry. It was measured. Cold the way winter waits.
"Then we strike first," she said. "Before the next shard shifts the board."
Back in the forest, the party moved slower. Not because they were tired. But because now they knew what the next step cost.
Ezreal looked at the sky, lips pressed flat. He didn't say it, but the question was there.
How many more?
Verek didn't stop walking. But his spine bore the weight of every truth they weren't done carrying.
The trees rustled above, not with wind, but with breath.
And still, the road didn't end.