Kaelen hit the ground hard, his body skidding across jagged stone. The air was thick, heavy, and carried the copper tang of old blood. He staggered to his feet, his vision swimming, and froze.
This was no battlefield. No city. No Core.
The world around him was fractured—a vast plain of broken earth floating in endless darkness. Shards of landscapes drifted in the void: pieces of crumbling towers, skeletal forests, fragments of roads that led nowhere. They shifted and groaned as if alive, colliding and parting again in an endless cycle.
"This… isn't possible," Kaelen muttered, his breath forming pale mist.
The Abyss within him stirred violently. You've crossed the veil… into what even Keepers fear.
A sudden sound split the silence: whispers, dozens of them, layered and overlapping. Kaelen spun, his blade flashing to life. Shadows coiled between the fractured stones, taking the shapes of warriors, women, children—all with hollow eyes and broken mouths.
They didn't attack. They watched.
Kaelen's chest tightened. He realized what he was seeing.
"Keepers," he whispered. "The ones who came before…"
One of the shades drifted closer, its form flickering like smoke in the wind. Its mouth moved, but its words were barely audible, drowned in static: "Bound… chained… betrayed…"
Kaelen's grip faltered. Were these echoes warning him? Or trying to drag him into their fate?
The ground beneath him cracked, and a new voice rolled across the void—low, guttural, ancient. It didn't come from the shades. It came from deeper.
"You don't belong here, child of chains," it thundered. "And yet… you carry the scent of freedom."
The shades recoiled, vanishing like mist. Kaelen stood alone, the earth trembling beneath his boots.
And from the abyssal dark ahead, something massive stirred.
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