The smoke hadn't cleared.
What was left of the chamber crackled with energy, the runes on the walls flickering in and out like dying stars. The Archivist was silent now, retreating deeper into the shadows of the Archive. Kael lay on a cot, chest heaving, muscles twitching like live wires. The gauntlet had fused to his arm — the runes pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Sera sat nearby, glaive leaned against the wall, her jacket torn at the sleeve. Her eyes hadn't left him.
"You nearly erased yourself," she said at last.
Kael didn't answer. His eyes were open, but his mind was somewhere else — stuck in the aftermath of that impossible moment.
Sera stood. "You said the Eye opened on its own."
He nodded slowly.
"Which means," she continued, "it's not just reacting to threats. It's choosing when to break seals."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Kael whispered.
Sera's eyes darkened. "Then we need answers. From someone who was there before the first breach."
Kael frowned. "Everyone from the original cycle is dead, Sera. That was generations ago."
"Not everyone."
She pulled a scroll from her satchel — faded, brittle, marked with a sigil Kael didn't recognize: a seven-pointed star surrounded by broken chains.
"Where did you get that?"
"Back when I was still part of the Seraphiel Guard," Sera said. "They kept this locked in a vault beneath the Grand Temple. Off-limits to everyone but high-order Clerics."
She unrolled it slowly. The parchment glowed faintly, reacting to the Eye still simmering in Kael's face. The symbols on it shimmered and reformed — revealing a name.
Iris Thorne
Survivor of the First Veil Opening.
Status: Exiled.
Location: Forgotten.
Kael sat up too fast and winced, gripping his side. "That's impossible. Iris Thorne was a myth — the 'Veil Whisperer,' some lunatic who claimed to have seen beyond."
"She wasn't lying," Sera said. "She was hiding."
Kael stared at the name. Something about it felt… familiar. Not just from stories or records — personal. Like a splinter in his brain he'd never been able to reach.
"Where is she?"
Sera looked at him.
"Outside the city."
Silence.
"That's suicide," Kael said.
"That's the only lead we've got."
He looked back at the name. Iris Thorne.
"I need time," he said. "To stabilize. To think."
Sera nodded, but her jaw was tight. "We don't have time, Kael. Something changed in the Veil tonight. It didn't just leak through — it was called. And if that second seal opened by itself…"
Kael looked at his hand, now laced with burning sigils.
"…Then the third won't be far behind."
Sera turned, picking up her glaive. "We leave at first light."
Kael didn't respond. He was staring at the scroll again.
Not at the name.
But the image behind it — barely visible beneath the ink, almost erased:
A mural. Five figures standing before a torn sky.
One of them had his eye.
The gates of Seraphiel only opened once a week.Kael and Sera didn't have that kind of time.
They left before dawn, slipping through a maintenance breach in the city's lower perimeter — a tunnel flooded decades ago and forgotten by the surface. It stank of rot and rust and old magic. The moment they crossed the threshold, Kael felt the air shift.
Colder. Heavier.Like something was watching.
Outside the walls, the world was not dead.
It had simply changed.
Towering husks of skyscrapers leaned into one another like broken teeth. The roads were cracked open, overrun by wildroot and tendrils of Veil corruption that shimmered in the pre-dawn haze. The sky was gray, but the clouds moved unnaturally fast — like the atmosphere itself was unstable, stretched too thin.
Sera moved silently beside him, glaive folded to a compact staff strapped across her back. Her eyes were constantly scanning — a soldier's instinct never sleeping.
Kael adjusted the wrappings around his left arm, the gauntlet pulsing beneath them. He hadn't slept since the second seal broke. Not really. Every time he closed his eyes, something else woke up.
"I've seen this place," he murmured. "In the dreams."
Sera glanced sideways. "Which part?"
"All of it. But wrong. It was—burning. The sky was red. There were bodies hanging from—"
He stopped.
Sera raised an eyebrow. "From what?"
Kael shook his head, breath catching. "Nothing. Just… forget it."
They walked in silence for another hour, heading toward the old rail line that would lead them to the outskirts of the Southern Divide — a canyon torn open during the First Veil Collapse. Beyond that was the Forgotten Zone.
And, maybe, Iris Thorne.
But the moment they stepped onto the rail bridge, Kael staggered.
A pulse slammed through his skull. Not pain — pressure. Like his thoughts were being stretched in two directions. He clutched his temple, barely staying upright as Sera spun to catch him.
"Kael!"
He didn't hear her.
He was somewhere else.
Flashes.A corridor of black stone.Torches made of silver flame.A woman with long, white hair. Eyes like his.
She knelt in a circle of chains, hands dripping blood.Behind her — five doors.Only one was open.
"You aren't ready," she said."You were never meant to reach me this early.""If the third seal breaks… you won't come back."
Kael gasped awake.
They were still on the bridge. His hands were shaking. Blood ran from his nose again.
Sera looked pale. "What was that?"
He couldn't speak at first. Then, quietly: "The Eye showed me her. The woman. I think… I think she's the original host."
Sera swallowed. "That would make her over three hundred years old."
Kael looked back the way they came. The sky behind Seraphiel was turning. No longer gray. Violet.
"Whatever's out here," he said slowly, "it's accelerating everything. The seals. The memories. The Veil. I don't think this was supposed to happen yet."
Sera unslung her glaive. Her tone was razor-sharp. "We need to find Iris. Fast."
They crossed the bridge without speaking again. But as they descended toward the Southern Divide, Kael noticed something else.
The world was quiet.
Too quiet.
No wind. No animals. Not even insects.
And then, carved into the wall of an old, crumbling watchtower, barely visible under years of grime and growth, was a message burned in Veilflame.
Words not meant for mortal eyes.
"THEY ARE NOT DEAD.
THEY ARE WAITING."
The canyon stretched before them like the wound of a dying god.
The Southern Divide—twenty miles wide, bottomless by most accounts. Clouds curled into its depths and vanished. No birds flew above it. No sound echoed inside. It was as if the world itself had bitten through its own flesh and bled silence.
And somewhere at the bottom, waiting in a place called the Forgotten, was Iris Thorne.
They descended slowly.
Ancient lifts powered by arcane gears creaked and groaned beneath their weight. Kael stood still as the platform lowered into the darkness, eyes fixed forward. His skin buzzed. The Eye behind his left socket had stopped pulsing. It was utterly still.
And that terrified him more than anything.
Sera kept her weapon drawn. "When we find her," she said softly, "don't trust her immediately. Survivors of the First Veil don't stay sane."
Kael didn't answer. He already felt the shift. The descent wasn't just physical—it was pulling something inward, dragging memories from a place he didn't know existed. Names. Symbols. The taste of metal in his mouth. Screams not his own.
The lift stopped.
They stepped into the Forgotten.
It wasn't ruins they found.
It was a sanctuary.
Black trees with veins of silver rose from obsidian soil. A hollow moon hung low in the sky, unmoving. Everything was bathed in an unnatural stillness, like a world paused mid-breath.
And in the center of a stone courtyard stood a woman wrapped in white silk and rusted chains.
Her hair was snow-pale, cascading down her back. Her skin was flawless. Ageless.Her eye glowed with the same symbol that lived inside Kael.But hers was… fractured.
"Iris Thorne," Sera said, leveling her glaive.
The woman turned.
Her voice was soft. Cold. "You brought him here too soon."
Kael stepped forward, heart pounding. "You… knew I'd come?"
"I knew someone would." Iris studied him. "But the Eye chooses the when. You were not supposed to awaken for another ten years. The world is unraveling."
He hesitated. "Why me?"
Her gaze didn't waver. "Because you were born remembering. Because the Eye looked back… and saw itself."
Kael felt dizzy. "What does that mean?"
Sera cut in. "No riddles. Just tell us what's happening."
Iris ignored her.
She walked toward Kael slowly, the chains dragging behind her. As she approached, the air around them thickened. Symbols bloomed in Kael's vision—ones he couldn't read, but felt.
"Three seals," she whispered. "Three gates. Three trials. The first tests the flesh. The second tests the will. The third…"
Her eyes locked with his.
"…tests your soul."
Kael staggered back. Something inside him screamed.
Iris raised a hand, and the world shifted.
Suddenly he was somewhere else again—surrounded by fire, standing on a battlefield made of glass and bone. Figures walked through the blaze. One looked like him. One looked like Iris.
One wore a mask made of mirrors.
"If you break the third seal," Iris's voice echoed, "you will no longer be Kael. The Eye will consume what's left. You will become the gate."
He snapped back.
Gasping. Shaking.
Sera caught him again, barely.
Iris stepped away. "You've already seen too much. But now you must choose."
She turned toward the far wall of the courtyard, where a single monument stood — an obsidian monolith etched with the names of the dead.
She touched it. The stone split down the middle.
Behind it… a stairwell descending into the dark.
"I can show you what's coming," Iris said, voice hollow. "But knowledge comes at a price."
Kael looked at Sera. At the stairway.
Then back at the woman with the same cursed eye.
He stepped forward.