Chapter 30 – The Ruin Echoes
Ash still hung in the air like mourning dust when the guild arrived.
The surviving members of Kael's party Ryall, Elira, Tessan, and Drev sat near the collapsed entrance to the Verge. Silent. Exhausted. Grief-stricken.
They were questioned immediately.
Representatives from the Adventurers Guild swarmed them with reports to fill, maps to mark, details to clarify. But the four had little to offer. Elira refused to speak. Tessan only growled. Drev answered calmly, but even his answers felt empty.
Ryall tried to hold everything together, but his voice kept cracking when they mentioned Kael's name.
The report was eventually pieced together a partial, fragmented account of what had occurred in the ruin. The presence of the Eclipseborn. The appearance of the Black Union. The final clash.
Then came the silence.
They hadn't seen Kael since the fire consumed everything.
The news hit the continent like a silent quake.
The Adventurers Guild issued an emergency directive. Guildmasters gathered in the central halls to discuss the implications. Whispers of the Eclipseborn reached corners it shouldn't have.
Even worse rumors leaked that one of the MARKED agents had perished.
The Slave Sector pulled out completely.
There was no formal announcement. Just a quiet, total withdrawal. Their operatives scattered, bases decommissioned. All because they believed the boy the one they had been watching was dead.
And he wasn't the only one.
The body of the MARKED woman was never recovered. But there was no mistaking it she had died in the flames. The other MARKED members realized it too. Her last signal had gone dead.
What concerned them wasn't just her death… but how she died.
Far to the east, within the fractured towers of the Fangs of Silence, new plans began to stir.
A voice echoed within shadowed halls:
"If only the NINE were here…"
No one spoke after. Their names weren't said. Just a bitter silence.
Back in the western reaches, the guild called off further expeditions into the Verge.
"Too unstable," they said. "Too dangerous."
They didn't say what everyone felt.
Too cursed.
In the weeks that followed, the party disbanded.
Elira vanished without a word.
Tessan returned to his clan, but those who saw him said he had changed quieter, colder.
Ryall took up solo commissions again, though he no longer smiled.
Drev? He was simply gone.
None of them ever spoke of what truly happened inside the Verge.
But Kael wasn't dead.
Far away, in the mist-covered mountains of the Sablereach Forest, a young man stirred beneath fallen leaves and broken stone.
His clothes were charred. His skin burned and healing. But he breathed.
An old man knelt nearby, watching quietly.
He didn't know the boy's name.
But he felt it something strange had been reborn here.
The winds howled through the forest.
Kael's eyes opened.
And the world would never be the same again.