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 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."
He said nothing. There was no breath to give.
And then — the voice again. This time, not echoing in the air, but threading through his veins.
"Do you know what it is you hold, little star-thief?"
The words slid beneath his skin, like talons dragging along bone.
He flinched. Not from pain — but recognition.
That voice knew him.
And it hated him.
"I don't…" he whispered.
"Don't lie. Not here. The Keep strips away all masks. Even the ones you wear for yourself."
He swallowed dry. "If you know what I am, then tell me."
"What you are? No. That would be too generous. Let's begin instead with what you are not."
The air thickened, the shard above dimming into a bruised violet haze.
"You are not chosen.
Not destined.
Not blessed.
You are not ready."
"Then why am I still alive?"
"Because the root does not kill the worm that burrows. It waits.
And when it has eaten its fill… it collapses."
A pause.
He stood, fists trembling, eyes on the mark glowing faintly on his chest.
"I didn't ask for this."
"Oh, they never do."
"But ask yourself this, Riftborn: when you touched the riftlight, when it coiled around your soul like flame around dry wood… did you resist?"
Silence.
"Or did you open your hands… and beg?"
He turned his back to the voice, though it was everywhere now — in the stone, the walls, the light.
It laughed softly. A laugh like glass breaking underwater.
"You hunger. I can feel it. Even now. Beneath all the fear. All the shame."
"I've seen what it does. What it turns people into."
"And yet you keep using it."
"That's the part I like about you."
He turned again, voice sharp, raw. "What do you want from me?"
"Nothing."
"Everything."
"What does the fire want from the forest?"
His throat clenched. "You're not real."
"Then why do you bleed when I speak?"
A shadow detached from the far corner. A shape — vaguely humanoid, but flickering, shrouded. Beastkin, but wrong. As though memory had warped it.
"Tell me, Riftborn… how many voices do you carry now?"
He stepped back.
"The whisper. The sword. The girl. The one you killed. The one you couldn't save. The one who looks at you like you're still whole."
"Shut up."
"No. Not until you do."
A pause hung in the stone like a breath held too long.
"What are you, truly?
A vessel?
A thief?
A godling?"
He sank to his knees.
"Or just a boy too frightened to bury his own name?"
His voice cracked. "You don't know me."
"I am you."
"I am the part you cast into the Rift and hoped would never crawl back."
"But I did. I always do."
Then silence again.
No figure.
No voice.
Just breath.
His own — uneven, shaking.
The mark beneath his ribs pulsed. Once.
Twice.
Then steadied, like a second heartbeat.
And above, the violet shard dimmed — but did not die.
He remained still for a long time.
Listening.
Waiting.
And somewhere, far above, the chains of fate rattled again.
Not as warning.
But as invitation.