The forest at the city's edge did not greet Alpha with the smell of pine or the warmth of earth. It breathed something else—something cold, like the sigh of stone sealed in a crypt. The dirt road dwindled behind him, swallowed by the crooked branches and a creeping fog that coiled along the ground. Each step carried him further from the outskirts, further from the thin warmth of firelit taverns and the echo of human voices.
He walked alone.
The strip of black cloth still clung to his wrist, soaked by the mist, clinging to his skin like the weight of a promise. The Shade had been meant for mourning an Emperor, but Alpha wore it as though it bound him to something else. Not loyalty. Not grief. Only inevitability.
The forest grew darker with every step. Trees twisted into one another, their roots tangled like knotted veins. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. It was not the silence of night, but the silence of absence, as though the world itself had drawn back from this path.
Alpha did not stop.
Hunger gnawed at his belly. His feet bled from stones hidden in the dirt. Yet his pace remained steady. He had walked years in chains. Walking without them, even into emptiness, felt no different.
The mist thickened until the trees themselves seemed like shadows half-formed. And then he saw it.
The ruin did not rise from the ground so much as it seemed pressed into it, like a scar carved into the earth. Pillars of stone jutted upward, bleached white like bones, cracked and leaning. Between them yawned an archway of shattered masonry, its edges jagged, its keystone broken. Beyond it, no light shone. No sound escaped.
The entrance to Viren.
It pulsed faintly, though there was no glow. It pulsed like a heart too far away to hear, but close enough to feel in the marrow. Alpha stood before it, and the emptiness inside him stirred. He should have felt fear. Men in taverns had spoken of it with pale lips. Mercenaries had spat its name like venom. Yet in him, there was no fear. Only recognition.
Chains, he thought. This place smells of chains.
The archway seemed wider than it should have been. Black mist rolled within it, thick and endless. He reached out, fingers trembling—not from doubt, but from the weight of the air pressing against his skin. The stone felt warm, as though it had drunk blood for centuries.
And then it came.
A soundless crack in the air, a shiver that ran through bone, through soul. His vision blurred.
A window flared before his eyes, not of glass or parchment, but of light pressed into words:
```
[Name: Alpha Omega]
[Veyres Name: Feylith — The Fateless Shadow]
[Veyres Rank: Wisc]
[Liberance Rank: Mortyros — Unawakened]
[Essence: 0/0 (Not yet awakened)]
[Flaw: None]
[Dreamstones: 0]
```
The letters flickered, unstable, as though they resented being seen. His eyes burned, and for a moment the words warped into symbols he could not comprehend. Then the vision shattered, leaving only the mist.
Alpha blinked. His pulse raced, but his face remained still. If this was madness, then let madness guide him.
He stepped forward.
The mist closed around him like water. For an instant he thought he was drowning, lungs squeezed tight. Then the weight released, and he staggered onto stone.
The world had changed.
He stood in a city of ruins. Towering spires leaned at impossible angles, their windows shattered, their walls coated in ash. Streets cracked into fissures, spilling rubble across his path. Skeletons lay sprawled where they had fallen, their bones brittle, their armor rusted into flakes. Chains dangled from archways, from lamp posts, from doorframes, rattling faintly though no wind stirred.
Viren had shaped itself.
The Labyrinth had looked into him, and it had seen a slave.
Alpha clenched his fists.
The emptiness in his chest deepened, swallowing the fear that might have lived there. This was not freedom. This was reflection. A mirror held up by something greater than gods.
He walked forward, past the corpses, past the shadows. His footsteps echoed against broken stone, hollow in the silence. Every breath seemed to stir dust from the ruins. Every corner seemed to hold eyes watching from the dark.
And then he heard it.
A dragging sound. Slow. Rhythmic.
Alpha turned.
From an alley shambled a figure. Its flesh hung loose, mottled with rot. Shackles clung to its wrists, rusted but unbroken. Its head tilted at an angle too sharp for the living, and hollow sockets fixed on him.
The corpse lurched forward.
Alpha had no weapon. Only fists hardened by years of labor, only instinct taught by the whip. His muscles coiled, but his mind was cold. There was no thought of escape. No thought of prayer.
The corpse swung its arm, iron shackles whistling through the air. Alpha ducked, the chain grazing his scalp. He lunged forward, slamming his shoulder into the thing's chest. Bones cracked, but it did not fall. Its hands clawed at him, nails tearing skin.
He seized its skull, his palms slipping against cold flesh, and slammed it against the stone wall. Once. Twice. A third time.
Bone shattered. The corpse crumbled into ash.
Alpha staggered back, panting, blood dripping from his arms. The ash swirled and coalesced, forming a shard no larger than his thumb. It pulsed faintly, a glow trapped within stone.
He reached down.
The moment his fingers closed around it, the window flickered again:
```
[Dreamstones: 1]
```
The shard throbbed in his palm like a heartbeat. Energy prickled through his veins, sharp and alien. He tightened his grip, staring at the faint glow.
This was Viren's answer.
The Labyrinth did not grant freedom. It demanded survival.
Alpha slipped the stone into his hand, its warmth seeping into his skin. His face remained empty, but within him, the faint ember stirred again.
He took another step into the ruins, the black mist curling at his heels.
And Viren, the city of the dead, watched him enter.