The air was heavy with the scent of damp stone and forgotten prayers. Crickets had ceased their song, as if something older had stepped into the world that demanded silence. Miles beneath the mausoleum built generations ago by the Nguyen dynasty, Marcus and Elijah descended with oil lanterns in hand, their shadows cast monstrously large across the crumbling walls.
"We're close," whispered Marcus. His voice echoed, then dissolved into the oppressive stillness.
Elijah knelt by a stone slab. Strange runes glowed faintly upon its surface — the same language he had seen in the dreams ever since they opened the spirit gate.
"The passage beneath this leads to the old altar," Elijah murmured. "That's where the offering was interrupted two centuries ago."
"You mean where the pact was broken."
Marcus crouched, brushing off centuries of dust and ash. With trembling fingers, he produced a vial from his pocket — blood of a bloodline descendant, harvested willingly. It pulsed faintly in its glass prison.
"The moment we pour this," he said, "there's no going back."
"No one has come this far for centuries," Elijah replied, gaze resolute. "We're not turning around now."
Marcus uncorked the vial.
The blood hissed as it touched the ancient stone. A low groan stirred beneath their feet, like the yawning of a tomb that had not known light since time forgot.
The slab began to slide open — not with the clatter of stone on stone, but with a sound like breath exhaled from a long-dead lung.
Lanterns flickered.
A staircase descended into blackness.
They hesitated at the threshold.
"One step at a time," Elijah whispered.
"Together."
They stepped into the dark.
---
The passage was suffocating. The walls, etched with sigils, seemed to pulse faintly in rhythm with their heartbeats. Or perhaps... something else's. The lanterns began to dim the further they walked.
"How long has it been?" Marcus asked.
"Time bends in places like these," Elijah muttered. "Don't trust your senses."
And indeed, as they reached the final step, it was no longer stone beneath their feet but hardened soil — scorched, blackened, salted.
They had arrived.
A wide cavern opened before them. At its heart stood a dais, and upon it, an obsidian altar cracked down the center. Suspended above it, mid-air — a mass of writhing shadows, tendrils of smoke coiling in and out of the corporeal.
"A soul fragment," Elijah breathed. "But not just any..."
"It's him," Marcus said, voice reverent. "The Forgotten Prince."
The tendrils recoiled as their presence became known, like a beast long tormented by isolation. Then, slowly, they surged toward Marcus — but stopped just short, repelled by the glow of a talisman Elijah held up.
"He knows the blood," Elijah said. "You're his descendant. You must speak the rite."
Marcus stepped forward, pulling a scroll from his robes — brittle, yellowed, but the ink still potent. His voice rang out, trembling but firm, speaking in the ancient tongue.
Each word struck the walls like thunder.
The shadow writhed. Screamed.
Then —
Silence.
A blinding light.
And then — a man knelt at the altar.
He was regal, though dust-covered, skin translucent like smoke, hair silver and eyes hollow.
"I... remember," he said, voice hollow. "You... brought me back."
"You're bound to the bloodline," Elijah said. "Marcus has summoned you. You must answer."
"I died betrayed," the Prince whispered. "My soul cleaved, my vengeance incomplete."
"And now?" Marcus asked, eyes narrowing.
"Now... I serve. But I also warn."
He rose.
"She comes."
"Who?" Elijah asked.
"The one who shattered me. The Lady in Gold. She hunts the bloodline. And you have awakened her wrath."
Behind them, the stone corridor began to shake. Dust fell in cascades. The lanterns extinguished.
Far above, in the world of the living, something began to stir from the depths of an ancient lake long forgotten.
---