The silence after the slaughter was suffocating.
Only the soft drip of blood from broken stone echoed across the hall. No one spoke for a time not even Tessan, who usually had a half-joke ready even when his blade was soaked.
Kael leaned on his scythe. The blade pulsed with fading heat, the black flames curling inward, returning to the dark metal like they'd never existed.
"I say we rest," Elira finally said, eyeing Kael's side. "Patch up, regroup. Whatever's deeper than this… won't be low-tier."
They found a shallow alcove down a cracked stairway. Tessan and Ryall took watch, Drev sat with his eyes closed listening, always listening and Elira began tending Kael's wound.
He barely noticed the pain. Something in his mind was slipping.
"Still with me?" Elira asked.
Kael nodded.
She studied him. "You've looked like you're somewhere else since we entered the deeper level."
"I am."
The shadows behind Kael trembled only slightly, like they were breathing with him.
Elira finished wrapping the wound and leaned back. "That scythe… the glyphs on it, the way it reacts to your essence. It doesn't function like normal Ethereal channeling."
Kael glanced at the weapon.
"It's not Ethereal at all."
She froze. "Then what is it?"
Kael shook his head. "I don't know. But it's old. And it remembers things."
They continued deeper after an hour.
The ruins became worse. No more carvings, just scratches as if something had tried to claw its way out of the walls. Occasionally, a soft hum passed through the stone, like the memory of a bell struck long ago.
Then, they reached it.
A door.
Ten feet high. No hinges. Just a slab of grey metal carved with a sigil.
Drev stopped immediately. "That shouldn't be here."
Elira's voice dropped. "It's not recorded in any of the Whisperborn glyphbooks."
The sigil looked alive. Not glowing. Not pulsing. But changing. Kael stared at it and felt
Something twist in his spine.
Then came a sound.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
The others turned. But Kael didn't move.
Because the sound wasn't external.
It was inside him.
His heart skipped.
The scythe vibrated once, then went still.
Then the sigil opened.
Not the door just the symbol itself. It unraveled in midair, spinning, curling outward, and forming a ring of darkness around Kael.
Elira shouted. She tried to move, but her body slowed like time broke around Kael.
The second whispered event began.
Kael stood in a space that didn't exist.
No walls. No sky. Just shadows infinite and thick, churning like stormclouds around him.
Then they spoke.
Not in words. In truths.
"You were not meant to survive Sector Delta."
"You were carved from forgotten material."
"You are what even Xha'veth refused to acknowledge."
Kael clutched his head.
His body felt like it was burning and freezing all at once. Black flames rose from his chest not hurting, but stripping.
Then he saw a figure.
Tall. Robed. Holding the same scythe. No face.
It pointed at him.
Kael tried to speak but the figure raised a hand, and suddenly Kael saw his own memories: the escape, the loneliness, the voices in the dark…
And then: a glimpse of what he could become.
His body fractured.
The world shattered.
Kael collapsed.
Back in the ruin, the dark glyph ring vanished in a flicker of deep violet light. Kael crumpled to the stone floor, unconscious.
Elira was the first to reach him. His body was cold, but breathing. The scythe had melted into raw shadow next to him, steaming faintly.
She touched his face gently, frowning.
"Another Event," she whispered.
Drev stood behind her, silent. Watching. Measuring.
Tessan and Ryall returned from ahead, weapons raised then stopped at the sight.
Ryall cursed under his breath.
Elira looked up at them. "We need to camp. Now. He's not waking up soon."
Drev murmured something in a tongue only Elira understood.
"He's changing."
And far below, deeper still in the Hollow's sealed heart… something else woke up.