They crossed the frozen valley at dusk, when the sun bled orange into the glacier-stained peaks of the northern horizon. A storm gathered in the west—bruised clouds thick with hail—but Lucian gave no command to slow. Every hour counted. The Harbinger had fled toward the Precursor vaults with purpose, and they were still days behind.
The Dawnbound rode in grim silence, wounded but not broken. Their bodies bore the bruises of battle, and their minds the weight of the obelisk's destruction. Selia was the only one who spoke with any clarity about what they had witnessed.
"That obelisk… it wasn't a seal. It was a fail-safe. A tether. Whatever that vault was built to hold, the creature severed the final binding," she said from horseback, her breath fogging in the air. "Now it's free. Completely."
"Free to do what?" asked Tista, adjusting her greaves. "Kill? Or something worse?"
Lucian didn't answer. He remembered the Harbinger's gaze—that strange flicker of knowing. This was not a mindless beast or an alien predator. It had a mission. A master. And perhaps, a voice behind the void whispering in its ear.
They reached the edge of the vaults by nightfall.
From above, the ruins looked like the remnants of a shattered fortress buried under snow. Towers reduced to stumps. Entrances caved in. What had once been a Precursor complex now lay broken and half-consumed by time and the elements. Only the deep stairwell in the mountain's base remained, jagged and cold as a scar.
Lucian stood at the threshold. "No torches. No sound. We go in quiet."
As they descended, the temperature rose strangely. Not warmth, but the dense, stale heat of sealed chambers untouched for centuries. The stairwell wound like a serpent downward, and their boots echoed against obsidian tiles as they moved.
They passed murals, faded with age. Carvings. Strange symbols. The images grew more frantic the deeper they went: solar flares, winged figures cast from the skies, black spheres consuming stars. One mural showed a figure split in half—light and shadow—chained between two worlds. The chain was cracking.
Selia studied it with a frown. "This is older than the Dawnbound. Older than the First Fracture. It might even predate the Silent Collapse."
Laila narrowed her eyes. "How do you chain a being between two worlds?"
Lucian responded grimly. "And what happens when those chains break?"
The central vault chamber opened before them like the hollow of a god's tomb.
It was immense. A domed ceiling arched a hundred feet above, cracked with veins of green light. Pillars jutted upward like skeletal fingers. In the center stood a dais, circular, and atop it lay a sarcophagus—not carved, but grown from the stone itself.
It was open.
Empty.
Tista swore. "We're too late."
Lucian stepped forward, eyes scanning. "Look for anything. Clues. Echoes. We need to know what this was."
Selia knelt by the sarcophagus, laying her hand on the inside. Her breath caught.
"It was a vessel. Not a prison. The thing we saw outside—it was created here. Incubated, maybe. This wasn't a place of exile… it was a forge."
Laila looked around sharply. "You mean there could be more?"
"No," Selia whispered. "This was the first. The only. But something built it. Something meant for it to awaken now."
Tista unslung her hammer. "And that 'something' could still be here."
That was when they heard it.
Not a roar. Not a screech.
A voice—clear, melodic, and utterly inhuman—spoke from the shadows.
You do not belong here, children of ash.
Lucian turned, blade drawn.
A figure stood at the far end of the vault—tall, clad in layered armor like rippled bark, and crowned with antlers made of pure obsidian. Its eyes were wells of stars.
It took a step forward, and with it came silence. Even the mountain stopped breathing.
The Harbinger is not your enemy. He is merely the herald. I am the Maker.
The air thickened with power. Lucian could feel it in his bones—a pulse of age and force too immense to understand.
"You built him," Lucian said quietly. "To do what?"
To prepare. The gate you closed was only the smallest. This world is not what you believe it to be. It is a cage. A lie.
Selia rose, defiant. "Who are you to decide what our world is?"
The Maker turned its star-filled gaze upon her. I am what your kind fled from. What your oldest myths forgot. I remember the shaping of this realm—and the crime of keeping it hidden from the truth.
Laila raised her bow, steady but uncertain. "What truth?"
That your world is one of many—and the fire beyond the gates burns hotter than your gods can bear. The Harbinger will burn away the falsehood. You… are merely embers.
Lucian's voice was calm, but cold. "Then we'll snuff him out before he lights the pyre."
The Maker didn't move, but the chamber began to quake. Dust rained from the ceiling. The green veins in the dome pulsed brighter.
Then come, Dawnbound. Let your final flame be beautiful.
The figure vanished.
An explosion rocked the vault.
Stone shattered. A pillar collapsed, crushing the staircase. One of their horses above screamed and fell silent. Fire poured from the central dais—green and white and roaring with unnatural heat.
Lucian grabbed Laila and Selia. "MOVE!"
They sprinted toward the side tunnels as the vault began to implode. Walls fractured. Shadows bled light. The sarcophagus cracked open wider and spat forth a sound that was not a scream—but something deeper. Like a memory dying.
They made it out just as the mountain above them split open in a column of fire and smoke.
The Vault of Ash was gone.
But the Maker had awakened.
Later, they camped in the ruins of a weather station, half-buried in snow.
Lucian sat with his sword across his knees, staring into the flames. No one spoke for a long time.
Then Selia broke the silence. "He's right about one thing. There are other gates. Other worlds. We've seen proof."
Lucian nodded. "Then we find them."
Tista tilted her head. "To seal them?"
Lucian's voice was iron. "To fight through them."
Laila looked up. "You're not thinking small anymore."
"No," Lucian said. "This was never just about our world. It's about the war waiting beyond it."
He stood, blade catching the firelight.
"Tomorrow we march east," he said. "Toward the next gate. Toward the truth."
And the Dawnbound—wounded, hunted, but unbroken—rose with him.
Their war was no longer one of survival.
It was a reckoning.