High above the stormline, inside a spire shaped like a serpent's fang, the Black Cartel gathered beneath the fractured moon.
The chamber was silent save for the rhythmic drip of blood—falling, drop by drop, from a chain-bound prisoner suspended over a runed circle. His breath came in rattles now. Not long left.
At the head of the chamber stood the one they called Marrow.
No one knew his real name. His voice was like gravel soaked in ash. His cloak was made from stitched veils—each one once worn by a memory-singer killed by his hand.
He stepped closer to the prisoner and crouched.
"Where did the boy go?"
The man tried to shake his head, but the glyphs binding his skull made that impossible.
"I—I don't know…"
Marrow sighed, standing. "Then you're of no more use."
One twist of his fingers and the prisoner's Core unraveled like smoke—dissolving into the void between the runes. The blood stopped dripping.
Behind him, two Cartel agents flinched. One of them, lean and pale-eyed, spoke up.
"The trail went cold near the Rift spine. Emberfall's territory."
"Then he's alive," Marrow said simply.
The second agent—a large, iron-masked enforcer known only as Grimwell—shifted his weight.
"He wasn't supposed to survive Hollowroot. He wasn't even supposed to touch it."
"He didn't just survive," Marrow said, turning toward a map etched in bone-metal. "He merged. The pulse pattern was clear. He's carrying the echo signature of something old. Something we lost."
"You want him retrieved?" Grimwell asked.
Marrow didn't answer immediately. He stared at the flickering flame atop the map—a tiny representation of Kael's last known resonance. It danced erratically.
"He's not just a vessel anymore," he murmured. "He's becoming."
A third voice spoke from the shadows—serpentine, female, sly.
"Becoming what?"
Marrow didn't turn. "A problem."
The speaker emerged: a woman clad in fractured obsidian armor, her Core split—literally. Two frequencies hummed in her presence. Her name was Vethra. A Cartel Seeker. And a killer of legends.
"I can breach Emberfall," she said. "Slip through the outer wards. Poison the air. Kill him before he forgets what pain tastes like."
"No." Marrow's voice was cold, absolute.
Vethra raised a brow. "No?"
"We don't kill him," he said. "We break him. In the right place. At the right time."
Grimwell grunted. "Why wait?"
Marrow finally turned.
"Because Kael isn't important for who he is. He's important for what he touches. The Hollowroot, the Core, Emberfall. Every contact deepens the wound in the world. Every step he takes widens it."
He paused, eyes glowing faintly behind the veil of bone.
"And when the breach tears open, we need him alive—bleeding, desperate, and full of power he can't control. Only then will the world remember who made him bleed."
He drew a glyph in the air—a sigil shaped like a spiral turned inside out.
"Deploy shadows along the Frost Paths," he ordered. "Interception teams at three points. Push him. Corner him. Don't catch him yet. Let him run. Let him burn."
"And when he falls?" Vethra asked.
Marrow smiled, razor and empty.
"Then we take back what never should've escaped."