The door groaned as it opened, metal scraping stone, revealing darkness thick enough to choke on. The flickering orbs of light hovering behind them did not follow—beyond the threshold, the Veil refused light.
Kira drew a small crystal from her belt, murmured a word in the old tongue, and a dim white glow burst from it—enough to push back the immediate dark. Syaoran stepped in behind her, hand on the hilt of his dagger.
The air was heavier here.
Not just cold—dense.
It pressed against his skin like water, damp with ancient magic and old death.
The passage sloped downward. Walls slick with moss and carvings long eroded into obscurity. Syaoran ran his fingers over one as they passed: spirals, symbols, wings. He couldn't tell if they were decorative or warnings.
"They say the underpath was built by the skyborn," Kira said softly, her voice muffled by the walls. "But it's older than the floating cities. Much older."
"You believe that?"
"I've walked far enough to know truth doesn't care what we believe."
They descended for what felt like hours.
And then the hallway opened into a chamber.
A wide, circular space, its ceiling domed and veined with glowing blue crystals. Pools of stagnant water lined the floor, and in the center stood a stone pedestal—cracked, overgrown with ivy, but unmistakably deliberate.
Syaoran stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "That's not natural."
"It's a gate," Kira said. "But it's sealed."
He circled the pedestal slowly. Strange glyphs shimmered faintly on its surface. Not runes. Not language. Something older. Something primal.
Then he felt it.
A sudden pulse, like thunder behind his eyes.
He stepped back, clutching his head. "What—?"
The glyphs lit up.
Kira whirled toward him, blade raised. "What did you do?!"
"Nothing!" he hissed, staggering. "I just looked at it—"
Before he could finish, the pedestal split open with a deep cracking sound.
Blue light burst upward, forming a shifting symbol in the air—an eye made of flame with a lightning bolt running through the iris.
Kira swore under her breath. "The Eye of Ilarum."
And the chamber screamed.
A soundless shriek flooded the room, rattling their bones. Water in the pools began to boil. Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls.
From the far side of the chamber, a shadow detached from the stone—slithering forward.
A figure.
Tall. Cloaked in torn robes. Masked in bone.
Eyes glowing red beneath a hood.
A cult priest.
Kira didn't hesitate. "Run!"
Syaoran turned—but the stone behind them had already shifted. The door was gone.
They were trapped.
The priest raised a hand—and black fire erupted from his palm, arcing toward them like a serpent.
Kira shoved Syaoran aside and took the blast full in the chest. Her cloak burst into flames, but she rolled and came up swinging.
Syaoran hit the floor hard, coughing, dazed—but something in him surged.
Electricity buzzed under his skin. His fingertips itched. The glyph above the pedestal pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
He looked up.
And the priest looked at him.
Not Kira.
Him.
Syaoran clenched his fist—and lightning exploded from his palm in a jagged bolt that cracked the stone floor and struck the priest square in the chest.
The scream that followed wasn't human.
---
When the smoke cleared, the priest was gone—burned into ash.
Syaoran was kneeling, gasping for air, veins glowing faintly with Veil-lightning.
Kira, singed but alive, stared at him.
"You told me you could fight," she said. "But you didn't tell me you're one of them."
Syaoran looked up, eyes wide. "One of what?"
Kira straightened, her voice low.
"A Veilborn."