The steps wound down farther than they should've. Longer than any building in the city had room for.
The deeper they went, the more the air thickened—like they weren't walking into a basement but sinking into something ancient and alive.
Kael's hand brushed against the stone wall as they descended, his fingers tingling from the ever-present pulse of the mark. Violet light flared under his skin with every step, growing stronger the farther they went.
"Anyone else feel like we just stepped off the map?" Mace muttered, eyes darting around.
"We did," Rin said. "I've been reading up on the vaults. Nothing official, just whispers. Places between places. Built when the city was young, before the founders. Before the records."
Juno's flashlight flickered.
They stopped.
Rin flicked on her own, the beam catching on something just ahead.
The stairway opened into a vast underground chamber.
The floor was smooth black stone, veined with crimson and violet lines that pulsed softly like veins under skin. Pillars rose like ribs from the ground, arching high into shadow. Symbols covered every surface—more runes, more warnings, some still wet with something that gleamed like oil but smelled like iron.
Kael swallowed hard. "Where are we?"
"This is where the tethers were born," Rin whispered.
In the center of the room, a massive circular dais rose slightly from the floor. Five broken thrones surrounded it, each carved from a different material—obsidian, marble, bone, crystal, and gold. Each one crumbled, cracked, hollow.
All except one.
The sixth throne stood untouched.
Midnight metal, sharp-edged and jagged like it had been grown, not built. A strange aura rippled around it, and at its base, embedded in the floor, was the tether's core.
A sphere.
Floating, pulsing, wrapped in shifting threads of every color Kael had seen. But now, a sixth thread—the violet one—circled tighter than the others, winding inward like it wanted to strangle the rest.
Kael staggered toward it, drawn like a magnet.
The sphere pulsed once.
Flash—
He wasn't in the vault anymore.
He stood in a vast white void, again. Only this time, the cloaked figure wasn't alone.
Five others surrounded it—each one flickering, indistinct, like ghosts caught in static.
But the central figure—the one who had spoken before—turned toward Kael.
Its voice split reality like a blade:
> "You've come farther than the others."
Kael couldn't move. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
> "The threads are choices. But they are also chains. Yours… was never meant to be touched."
Kael gritted his teeth. "Then why give it to me?"
A pause. Then—
> "Because you are the one who was cast aside."
Flash—
He gasped as he was yanked back to the vault. He fell to his knees, coughing. Rin ran to his side.
"What happened? What did you see?"
Kael's voice was hoarse. "The cloaked one… they're not the enemy. Not exactly. They were betrayed. Just like us."
Juno frowned. "By who?"
Kael pointed to the broken thrones. "The other five. The ones who used to rule."
Mace raised a brow. "So what, this is some god-tier soap opera now?"
"No," Kael said, slowly rising. "It's a war. One that never ended. We're just the next round of pieces on the board."
Silence settled over them.
Then Rin stepped closer to the throne.
"Why is this one whole?" she murmured.
Kael didn't answer. He couldn't.
But something told him… the sixth throne had never been broken because no one had dared sit in it.
Until now.
The tether's core pulsed again—faster. Like a heartbeat approaching panic.
Juno's flashlight flickered again—then died.
So did Rin's.
Darkness swallowed the chamber.
And then—
A voice echoed through the black, cold and cruel:
> "The choice is no longer yours."
Kael froze. That wasn't the figure from his vision.
This one was different.
Rougher.
Hungrier.
The shadows rippled.
Something else was down there with them.
Watching.
Waiting.
The sixth thread wasn't just awake.
It was awake… and angry.