There was no sky in isolation.
Only stone. Damp, lifeless, eternal.
They led him down without a word. Two guards — their faces half-covered in ash-dyed cloth, spears etched with warding runes that pulsed dimly with residual heat. They avoided his eyes. One muttered a prayer under his breath in an old dialect, as if that could protect him.
The descent took minutes… or maybe hours. Time buckled in these depths. There were no torches. No echoes. Just the soft hum of glyphlight pulsing across the blackened walls — veins of light beneath the Keep's withered skin.
Finally, they stopped at a rusted door bound in chains thicker than a man's leg.
They didn't speak.
Didn't explain.
The door groaned open — and they shoved him inside.
Then the sound of locks. Bolts. Silence.
No trial. No sentence. Just a cell.
It wasn't cramped. But it felt too close.
Walls like tombstones. No bedding. No bucket.
Nothing human.
Only a single shard of crystal embedded high above — glowing with a pale, sickly violet light.
Not torchlight.
Not magic.
Something colder.
He stood motionless. Just breathing.
The mark beneath his ribs had stopped burning.
But it hadn't stopped watching.
You're not done feeding, it murmured.
His fists clenched. Nails drew blood.
"Shut up," he whispered to the nothing.
The whisper obeyed.
But it didn't leave.
Time… unraveled.
He didn't sleep. Couldn't. The floor froze his skin. The silence screamed.
He dreamed with his eyes open.
Of a city of fractured glass.
Of twin moons bleeding.
Of a sword buried in starlight.
Of a boy lying broken on the pavement of a world long gone.
Of a name… lost in the drift.
Then… the knock.
Not on the door.
On his mind.
He jerked upright. Breath caught in his throat.
The mark glowed faintly. The shard above him pulsed in answer.
And then — a voice.
Not the whisper.
Not the Void.
A woman's voice. Cold as ice, sharp as frostbite.
"You're the Riftborn, aren't you?"
He turned. No one was there.
Just shadows. Just stone.
"You're late."
His heart pounded harder.
"Who…?"
A flicker in the corner of his eye.
The shadows bent. Just for a moment.
A figure — beastkin — formed from memory, not matter.
Not Kaia.
Older. Harsher. A face he had never seen.
Yet she spoke like she knew him. Like she was carved into the mark itself.
"You carry something that doesn't belong to you, Riftborn. And soon… they'll come to take it back."
Then nothing. No sound. No figure. No exit.
Only silence.
He sank to the floor, breath ragged, the mark pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Not in pain. In warning.
And somewhere far above, the chains of fate rattled