Elian wasn't sure what was colder the damp air pressing against his spine or the weight of the eyes he couldn't see.
The path into the catacombs sloped deeper than he'd expected, carved by hands long dead or perhaps not human at all. The torch in his hand hissed, barely holding its flame against the unnatural air. The stone walls around him were slick with condensation, veined with black moss that pulsed faintly with a lightless energy, like rotting veins under skin.
Every step whispered secrets he didn't ask for. Secrets of betrayal. Of blood. Of a promise sealed not in ink but in bone.
Behind him, the stone door had slammed shut the moment he'd entered. He didn't turn back.
He couldn't.
He had to find the Eye.
According to the fractured texts salvaged from the burned Library of Thamor, this temple had been devoted to a god so ancient that even the Divine Pantheon feared to speak its name. Not out of reverence. Out of survival.
As he rounded the final spiral into the chamber, he found it massive, circular, carved out of obsidian and surrounded by thirteen pillars etched with hollow-eyed faces, mouths wide open in eternal screams.
In the center of the altar, resting on a clawed pedestal, was what he came for.
The Eye of the Forgotten God.
It wasn't what he expected. Not a jewel, nor a relic. It was alive.
Floating slightly above the pedestal, the eye blinked. Its iris swirled with storms. Its sclera was pitch black. It turned toward Elian and locked onto him like it had been waiting.
His breath caught. He staggered back.
The walls began to move. Or perhaps they had always been alive.
Stone peeled back like ancient flesh, revealing dozens no, hundreds of sleeping figures embedded in the temple's skin. Eyes sewn shut, mouths frozen mid-scream. One by one, their bodies began to tremble.
"Elian"
The voice came not from the eye but from within him.
A woman's voice.
Soft. Familiar.
"Elian, don't look at it. It remembers you."
His hand trembled. He dropped the torch. Darkness surged, but the Eye lit the chamber in pale, sickly luminescence. He fell to his knees, clutching his temples.
"Who are you?" he gasped.
But he already knew.
Seren.
The girl he'd left behind when the High Priests branded him a heretic. The one who'd begged him not to pursue the path of blood. The one they said had died during the purging.
Except her voice sounded present.
Real.
Alive.
"Elian, I'm not dead. But if you take the Eye, you'll lead them right to me. You don't know what you're awakening."
He looked up at the Eye. And it blinked again with her eyes.
His scream was silent as the entire chamber shook. The sleeping bodies in the walls began to open their sewn eyes, bleeding black tears. They moved jerking, crawling, twitching.
But not toward him.
Toward the Eye.
"Elian," the Eye spoke with his voice, "you came seeking power but what if power seeks something in return?"
He stepped back. Too late.
Chains made of runes burst from the floor and wrapped around his wrists and ankles. The mark on his chest burned to life again, glowing crimson.
"Blood calls to blood."
Suddenly, a portal burst open behind the altar. A figure stepped out a woman cloaked in white feathers, her face obscured by a silver veil.
"You were warned," she whispered. "But he chose you anyway."
"Who are you?" Elian rasped.
She reached up and removed the veil.
And Elian froze.
It was Seren.
Or, it looked like her.
But her eyes weren't hers anymore.
They belonged to something else.
"You're too late, Elian," she said softly. "The vessel has awakened."
The Eye screamed.
Everything went white.