The market was chaos.
Stalls toppled as people shoved past one another, desperate to reach the upper exits. The air had taken on a strange weight, pressing down on Kaelen's chest. Somewhere in the distance, a low groan rumbled through the island's bones — not the sound of stone shifting, but something alive stretching after a long sleep.
Kaelen pushed against the tide of fleeing merchants, forcing his way toward the nearest bone stair. His rune pulsed like a second heartbeat, hotter with each tremor.
Halfway up, the stair shuddered violently. A crack split one of the massive titan ribs forming the tunnel wall, spilling dust and pale fragments onto the steps.
He wasn't the only one who noticed.
A young bonecarver clutched a necklace of rune shards to her chest, eyes wide. "It's real," she whispered. "The old stories — the Sleeper's waking!"
Kaelen didn't wait for more. He burst out of the stairwell into the open air — and froze.
From this vantage point, the whole horizon was visible. Duskport Isle floated above the endless churn of the Veil… but beyond it, the neighboring island of Grayrift was sinking. Slowly, steadily, its base was disappearing into the mist.
The sound came again, louder this time, shaking the wooden walkways. Clouds of seabirds rose from the islands, screaming in alarm. The sky felt smaller, as if something vast moved just beneath it.
Then Kaelen saw it — a shape in the mist far below Grayrift. Not rock. Not storm. Something moving.
A jagged ridge broke the surface of the Veil, dripping with silver vapor. It was the size of a mountain, curving upward like the crest of a monstrous spine before sinking back down.
The rune in Kaelen's palm blazed with pain, forcing him to his knees. A voice — not his own — growled through his mind:
> Soon.