The first breach didn't come with warning.
No horns. No siege banners snapping on the wind. No marching drums rattling the streets. Just a sharp, wrong shiver that rolled up through the guts of Phokorus, like the city's bones had slipped out of place all at once. The floor buckled just enough to make knees unlock. Somewhere deep beneath the stone, a sound tried to crawl out but never quite made it. Not a sound, exactly. Pressure. The kind that collects in your teeth and sinuses before a storm. The kind that reminds your nerves they're built to sense something they can't explain.
Birds shot off the rooftops, wings snapping like flint sparks. Stone shifted underfoot. Not cracking yet, but thinking about it. The wind cut down the main corridor in an odd, hollow gasp, dry and dead and missing all the right sounds of a living city.
Ezreal staggered back from the vault door like someone had punched him in the sternum with both fists. His boots slid a bit, scuffing against worn marble. He caught himself on the pedestal beside the door, one hand white-knuckled on the edge. His chest heaved. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. It felt like his heart had switched teams mid-beat and was now trying to claw its way out through his ribs.
Verek dropped to a knee beside him. Not out of reverence. Not pain either. Just something heavier, more bone-deep. His gloved hand slapped the floor for balance, and the other locked tight over his heart. His breath hissed through clenched teeth. Blood started from his nose, thick and dark and steady. It dripped onto the floor like ink bleeding from a cracked seal.
"It shifted," Verek said, voice like he'd been chewing gravel for days. "It reached through. Not from the egg. From beneath. Lower than we've touched."
Ezreal didn't respond. His eyes were still locked on the vault. He looked like someone listening for a train they already knew had derailed.
Caylen skidded into the chamber, boots scraping and cloak flapping like it was trying to outrun him. He looked wind-whipped and pale. Light clung to him in the wrong way—shifting around him instead of reflecting off. Two mages stumbled in after him, dragging the last sputters of their protection spells. One looked like he'd touched a lightning rod mid-spellcast. Spiral burns crawled down his arm like vines. The other's eyes shimmered with silver tears, steady and silent.
"Northern ward tower's gone," Caylen said, breath catching. "Gone. Wards, stones, anchor threads, the entire ley core. Burned to glass."
Ezreal still didn't look away from the vault.
The seal was wrong now. No hum. No steady pulse of defense magic. The light that bled from it looked thin and sickly, too pale to be holy, too slow to be heartbeat. It flickered like a song played backwards, like some unholy chant humming out of something that had never learned to speak.
Then it sang again.
The egg.
The sound wasn't loud. Didn't have to be. It slipped in around the teeth and under the nails. It was the kind of sound you felt in your fillings and your spine. Like static through a corpse. Ezreal flinched hard. His molars throbbed like something had tapped the roots.
High above, the sky cracked open.
Not with thunder. Not the beginning of rain. This was sharper—dry, brittle. Like old ice fracturing under foot. Like a world split down the middle of its own reflection. Time peeled back for just a breath and showed its ribs.
Verek pressed both hands to the wall beside the vault. "That was a failsafe. One of the older runes. Death ward just inverted. But we haven't had a breach."
Ezreal's voice was flat, teeth clenched. "Then something died... just not on our side."
Caylen looked awful in the glow. His face had picked up every line it had been trying to hide. He looked years older. "Or something woke up."
Then came the bells.
Thin. High. Shivering. Not alarms. Not temple gongs or war chimes. These were the old bells, the ones the priests buried because they didn't want to risk ringing them by accident. The kind that only sounded for one thing.
Godblood.
The wind turned sharp and mean. Not a breeze anymore—something hungry with wings in it. A streak of silver and blue cut across the clouds like a thrown blade. It wheeled high, banked hard over the eastern tower, then vanished into smoke with a snap.
Lightning broke open the ceiling like a wound. The runes etched into the ancient walls—those carved in the First Tongue, bones of the palace itself—lit up, flaring brighter than flame. The very stones pulled breath.
And then she landed.
Queen Kaelith Serpantwind hit the chamber like a thunderclap that hadn't bothered bringing sound. Her boots crunched frost into the marble. Her cloak whipped around her like it was trying to escape. Power spilled off her in waves, hot and cold at once, the kind of magic that made other spells stutter. Her right leg was caked with dried blood. The left had a broken greave melted halfway down. Her hair looked like a hurricane had nested in it. And her eyes—her eyes didn't blink. They looked molten. As if she'd swallowed fire and forgotten how to cool it.
"Report," she snapped.
No one answered at first. The kind of silence that builds a gallows.
Ezreal found his voice in pieces. "We thought you were dead."
Kaelith didn't miss a beat. "I was. Briefly."
She flicked a hand. The wall torches burst into flame. Gold fire snapped against shadow. Faces went hard in the light.
Her eyes fell on Verek.
"And you're out of your box."
Verek wiped the blood from under his nose with the back of one glove. He gave a half-bow that looked more tired than respectful. "Technically, with permission."
She didn't laugh. But she didn't roast him either.
Her steps hit like hammer strikes as she crossed the floor. Caylen moved to meet her, still limping slightly from something he hadn't spoken of yet.
"The egg's syncing to the leyweb," Caylen said. "We tried to sever the connection. Too late. It's not feeding from the lines anymore. It's feeding them."
Kaelith didn't blink. "Then it's building shape. Form. Intent."
The air in the chamber flexed again. No wind. Just pressure. Like something trying to push out of someone's brain through the eye sockets.
Dax came in at a stagger. His arm looked mangled, tunic fused to the skin. His eyes were wild, but he didn't stop walking. Didn't even grimace.
"The streets are breaking," he said. "People collapsing mid-run. Some of them muttering names I've never heard. Others are chanting. One line. Over and over."
Ezreal turned to him. "What are they saying?"
Dax's voice dropped. "The world beneath the world wakes."
Kaelith moved to the vault and laid her palm against it. She didn't speak for a moment.
"It knows we're afraid," she said. "That's the key. It doesn't need the gate open. Just the fear. That's enough."
Verek stepped beside her. "Then stop the rhythm. Shatter the pattern. Pull the weave apart before it finishes the net."
She studied him for a second. "That might trigger emergence. Even a partial breach could level the palace."
Ezreal rubbed his eyes with shaking fingers. "And if we let it finish, we disappear. All of us. Burned out of history like we were never here."
Kaelith nodded. One clean motion. "Together then. All of us."
Her hand pressed into the seal.
Verek added his next.
Ezreal followed, then Caylen.
Dax came last, mumbling that prayer his grandmother used to whisper while watching the stars shake. The one about holding the heavens still when gods forgot the ground.
The vault didn't open.
It peeled.
The sound wasn't a bang. It was a sigh. A weight lifted. Light poured out of the seams in angry bolts. The seal cracked, then split, then dissolved, until only raw energy hovered in the shape of what once held it closed.
The egg floated there.
Not cracked. Not whole.
It spun, veins of light twitching along its surface. Cracks split through it in a slow cascade. Not random. Not wild. Like something carving its way out.
From inside.
Light pulsed out again. Not hot. Not cold. Not magic.
Will.
Something inside moved.
And then an eye opened.
Not shaped like any creature Ezreal had studied. Not mammalian. Not reptilian. It was a slit across memory itself. It burned with the color of extinction.
Kaelith spoke.
Not words, exactly. A sound pulled from the marrow of mountains. The kind of denial only old gods used.
The egg split.
Light punched outward in every direction. The floor shattered beneath them. Glyphs caught fire and vanished. The ceiling fractured. Stars fell through.
Ezreal screamed. Caylen hit the ground hard. Dax folded like a man shot in the gut.
Verek stood his ground.
Kaelith didn't flinch. Her cloak burned away. Her skin blistered where light touched. She didn't blink.
She stepped forward.
Something else did too.
The egg hovered, cracked wide, pieces rotating around something that hadn't fully taken form.
Ezreal stared through tears and light. "It sees us," he whispered.
Kaelith nodded slowly, eyes hard.
"No. She remembers."
Somewhere far below, in places older than names, something ancient smiled in the dark.
And Phokorus began to weep.