The forest beyond Isen's Hollow felt wrong.
From the moment they crossed the border's edge and into the forest's edge, the Qi in the air shifted, now dense and slow like walking through water laced with thick, black ink. Trees stood too still. Their bark was cracked, peeling away like the life that remained within them; slowly stripped until nothing remained and their roots dark and blackened reaching across the ground like they are crawling in search of vitality, in search for the life they so desperately want.
There were no birds.
No insects.
Not even a slight wind.
Only the distant, pulsing echo of something buried alive.
Elyra led them through a narrow path carved long ago by forgotten cultivators. Stone slabs were etched with faded symbols that poked through moss, partially devoured by rot. The further they went, the more the ground hummed with the slow decay they sensed earlier.
"They've seeded the land with corruption," Kalavan muttered, touching the base of a tree. "The roots are absorbing corrupted Qi."
Yan flared her aura slightly, burning a clearing around them. The flames didn't rise. They hissed and fell low, suppressed by the heavy air surrounding them.
"This place wants to smother us," she said.
Elyra pointed ahead. "From what I recall there's a temple beneath the heart of the forest, buried by the Collapse. The Ash Sect has turned it into a sanctum."
Ryu's mark pulsed.
He said nothing, but he felt it too.
Something was calling him.
They found the entrance beneath a hill of dead earth.
A broken staircase led downward, choked in vines and ossified roots. The deeper they descended, the more the air pressed in around them. Their Qi didn't move as freely here. It coiled inward, hesitant, aware of the effects of the decay Qi that lingered in the air.
Ryu took the lead, blade in hand.
He felt each step like a tolling bell in his chest.
He wasn't fearful, instead a familiar tension hung in the air.
The underground sanctum was vast.
Where once there had been marble halls, now there were tunnels made of bone and stone, lit by dim orbs of flickering black Qi. Chanting echoed faintly through the corridors, though no voices spoke.
They moved in silence.
Eventually, they reached a great atrium, circular, with nine stone plinths surrounding a sunken ritual pit. Symbols carved into the floor matched the reversed sigil on Ryu's hand.
Kalavan crouched at the edge. "Blood was spilled here recently."
Elyra nodded. "Ceremonial. Not for death, this isn't what they would do for common murder but for transformation."
Ryu stepped forward, staring into the pit.
At the centre, a cocoon of Qi pulsed faintly. Inside it was a humanoid shape, still forming. Still changing.
Yan's breath caught. "They're... creating something."
"No," Ryu said quietly. "They're shaping a vessel."
A voice echoed from above.
"You've come further than we expected."
They turned.
A figure emerged from the shadows, descending from a stairwell carved into the far wall. His robes were fine, ash-coloured, lined in crimson. His Qi rippled around him, not immense, but controlled.
He wore no mask.
And he looked almost human.
"You are the bearer of the Star Flame," he said, gazing at Ryu. "I am Ashborn Veyr. The hand that breaks what time seals." His head twisted beyond what a human should be able to. "Welcome to our little party"
Elyra stepped forward. "Veyr died. In the breach war."
The man smiled. "One version of him did. Another was reborn through the Rite of Unravelling, there are beings that can give us life beyond what you mere mortals are capable of."
Yan drew her blade. "We're not here to talk."
Very's teeth chattered as his neck snapped back into place, the stare filled the room.
"Then you've already lost," he said softly. "Because what waits behind your rift does not speak. It consumes. We offer surrender, in return we are granted immortality."
Ryu's mark burned.
Veyr raised his hand.
And the cocoon of bulging flesh in the pit shattered as blood erupted across the room.
From it rose a malformed being, flesh of ash and Qi, its body barely held together by threads of space distortion. Its eyes glowed with the same mark on Ryu's palm but twisted.
Corrupted.
Kalavan lunged first, blades moving in arcs of water and wind, but to no avail, the monstrous creature caught his sword with the back of its large claw like hand and sent Kalavan across the room. He cracked into the stone wall as a cloud of dust shrouded around him.
Yan followed, her flames illuminating the entire atrium, but the speed of the creature was faster, its body moving unnaturally out of the way of her blade.
Ryu moved last, closing the distance between them.
The creature was fast, powerful in every way. Its attacks bent space briefly, causing swings to land behind instead of ahead. Kalavan was forced to keep his distance. Yan's flame barely scorched it once it the monster's resilience is far beyond the regular monsters we have battled.
But when Ryu struck, the creature paused.
The star flame on his hand flared, and the creature responded, mimicking it.
A duel began, a battle of strength and control.
Ryu pushed harder, drawing on both space Qi and the flame within him.
He reached past the fear of the star flame consuming him.
Past the confusion of what he was, or the decisions he would need to make.
And then, with vigour he grasped the core of the creature's distortion, Qi pulsing powerfully pushing his body to its limit.
His mark expanded.
A gravitational burst collapsed the room's centre, forcing everything inward.
The creature screamed, ripped apart by the force of the sealed rift.
Only ash remained.
They all looked around after the distortion of the rift ended and Veyr had vanished.
Only his laughter echoed through the stone walls.
"You open your gate every time you use it. And soon… the others will feel it too." His voice twisted through the air with corruption, the malice and unsettling nature of his voice echoed in their mind followed with the manic laugh fading as the remanence of vocals fade to silence.
As they stepped from the temple into the cold breath of night, the stars above began to drift and swirl.
Constellations had shifted.
Kalavan still injured from the battle checked over his body, circulating his Qi and vitality, luckily, he suffered no major injuries. Pulsing his Qi he checked the lines of under his feet. "The veins have moved…"
Yan's eyes rose to the sky. "Not just the land. The heavens too."
Ryu stood in silence, breathing heavily.
The mark on his hand now pulsed with a new rhythm, the pulsing he felt throughout his body when he focused, and the deep energy that flowed through the mark. He was too weak to understand it so far, but he could feel subtle changes, and this was one of them.
The pulse gave out a new meaning.
It served as a beacon, guiding and summoning, doing far more than any mere key could.