The light on the other side of the gate was wrong.
Lucian felt it before he saw it—the sensation of falling sideways, of time curling in on itself. He tumbled not through space, but memory, thought, and intention. Images flickered in the dark between the stars: a broken sphere adrift in an ocean of dying suns, a tower whose roots pierced planets, a child weeping as a moon turned to dust.
Then, abruptly, he landed.
Hard.
The others crashed beside him on a landscape not made for flesh. The ground was glassy and ridged with veins of dark, pulsing crystal, like obsidian grown from a sickened dream. The air was thick, but breathable. It smelled faintly of scorched honey and metal.
Overhead, the sky was a roiling bruise of color—green, violet, and bleeding amber. There was no sun. No moon. Only a massive, slowly rotating sphere in the distance that cast no light yet seemed to be the center of this realm's gravity.
"Where the hell are we?" Laila muttered, already drawing her bow.
Selia was still on one knee, hand pressed to the crystalline ground. "We're not on any charted world. This place doesn't obey the Precursor lattice. Gravity here bends, but it remembers what it's supposed to be. That's… not natural."
Tista stood and turned slowly in place, hammer resting across her shoulders. "I don't see a gate behind us."
Lucian looked over his shoulder.
Gone. No shimmer. No standing stones.
Just endless, jagged plains stretching into a horizon shaped like a torn scar across the sky.
"We're trapped here," he said flatly.
"No," Selia corrected, "we're expected."
She pointed ahead.
There, rising from the plain, was a structure.
It pulsed faintly, as though built from the same crystal as the ground, only inverted—as if it grew inward rather than upward. Its walls bent at impossible angles. Its apex spiraled into the void like a frozen shriek. Around it, immense obelisks floated—not on supports, but in defiance of logic.
One of them cracked open as they approached.
A figure stepped forth.
It was human in shape, but wrong in scale—seven feet tall, skin like moonstone veined with dark blue. Its face was smooth, eyeless, and adorned with glyphs that rearranged themselves when stared at too long. It wore a mantle of shifting fabric that crackled softly when it moved.
It spoke directly into their minds, each word arriving fully formed, layered with meaning both ancient and raw.
You are the Dawnbound. You have crossed the Threshold of Thought. Welcome to Yll-Korath, Cradle of the Pale Lords.
Lucian stepped forward. "We came for answers. And to stop what your kind is unleashing."
The being turned its faceless gaze toward him.
Then speak quickly, Lucian Vale, last son of Gyrn. The Sovereign of Unbirth stirs, and every word you utter drips into the sea of consequence.
The others tensed as the thing glided closer. Not walked—glided. Its feet never touched the ground.
Selia whispered, "It's one of the Eld. An emissary. Maybe a Watcher."
Tista muttered, "A demon wearing glass armor is still a demon."
The being raised one elongated hand. The sky above shifted. A section of it peeled away, revealing stars—but not as they knew them. These stars were wounds in space, holes through which light screamed.
Your world was never yours. The gate you crossed was a seal. This place… is the keyhole.
Lucian's voice was low. "And the Maker? Where is he?"
The Watcher turned toward the horizon, where the strange tower spiraled inward.
He stands before the Threshold of Naming, preparing to awaken what sleeps beneath the Veil of First Fire. You are too late to stop him alone. But not too late to understand. Come. Witness.
Despite every instinct, they followed.
As they walked, the terrain shifted beneath them. Not physically, but perceptually—as if their understanding of the ground realigned every few paces. Once, they walked through what seemed to be a field of frozen bones, only for it to become a sea of feathered monoliths the moment they blinked.
Reality here obeyed something else.
Thought.
Or memory.
The Watcher brought them to a chasm. It didn't stretch down—it stretched out, into a depth that sang with the sound of unborn stars. On the far side stood the tower.
Selia trembled. "It's not built. It's remembered."
"What?" asked Laila.
"This place isn't a world. It's a thought that became real. The Pale Lords don't create—they remember, and in remembering, they shape."
Lucian stared across the chasm. On the tower's lowest tier, a lone figure knelt before a burning sigil that hovered in midair.
The Maker.
He had shed his armor. His body glowed faintly, runes moving across his skin like ants. His hands hovered before a sphere of writhing fire that contained no heat—just power.
He is rewriting the lock, the Watcher said. Turning the seal into a summoning. When he finishes, the Sovereign will awaken beneath your world.
Tista gripped her hammer tighter. "So we kill him now."
You cannot. Not here. Not without consequence.
Lucian stepped forward, fire in his eyes. "Then tell us how to stop him."
The Watcher paused.
There is one path. Not through strength, but memory. You must enter the Hall of Echoes. Learn what he saw. Why he turned. And what he fears. Only then will you see the choice that must be made.
Lucian narrowed his eyes. "What choice?"
But the Watcher did not reply. Instead, he raised both hands—and the chasm rippled, revealing a bridge of starlight descending into the void.
At its far end was a door.
It bore no lock. No hinges.
Just a sigil: the shape of a flame devouring itself.
The symbol of the Sovereign.
Selia took the first step. "If we die in there…"
Lucian followed. "Then we die knowing."
And one by one, the Dawnbound crossed the bridge.
Toward memory.
Toward truth.
Toward the beginning of the end.