The path into Khyronia was not carved — it was worn. As though thousands of feet had once walked it, then vanished, leaving only the memory of movement etched into the stone. Moss clung to every surface. Vines spilled from ledges like old blood. The air changed with each step they took down the sloping trail — growing cooler, thicker, dense with a scent like wet parchment and ancient copper.
August said nothing, but Elias could feel him watching everything: the shape of the rocks, the unnatural stillness of birds, the runes barely visible beneath layers of lichen. Nothing here had truly died — only waited.
At the foot of the trail stood a broken gate — iron and bone, melted into one another by something hotter than fire. Beyond it, the city stretched like a wound stitched shut but never healed.
They crossed through.
Immediately, it was as if the world muffled itself. The wind stopped. The birds fell silent. Even their own footfalls sounded distant, like echoes reaching them from behind glass.
August halted in the shadow of a marble arch. The symbols etched into its pillars pulsed faintly, almost imperceptibly, as though reacting to his presence.
"This place is listening," he murmured.
Elias glanced at him. "To us?"
"To me," August said. Then softer, with something close to fear: "It remembers."
They passed crumbled towers and courtyards overtaken by ivy. Statues with broken faces lined the walls. Some held weapons. Some reached skyward, their fingers worn smooth. And in all of them — in every twisted limb and hollow eye — was the sense that they had once watched something come down from the sky and never leave.
They reached a plaza by midday. The sun hung just overhead but cast no warmth. In its center stood a well — dry now, its stones blackened with some old fire. Around it were benches carved from a strange stone that shimmered in multiple colors at once.
Elias walked the perimeter slowly, hand near his weapon. "There are no animals. No birds. No sound."
"That's because this place isn't part of the world," August said, his voice echoing faintly. "Not anymore."
He walked to the well's edge and peered down. There was no bottom. Only a black spiral, faintly pulsing, like the heart of some sleeping god.
Then came the sound.
A breath — long, slow, and hollow — rising from the stones beneath their feet.
Elias had drawn his pistol before he could think. August didn't flinch. His eyes had gone wide again, and he reached unconsciously for the pendant around his throat.
The breath faded.
Then came a voice. Not loud. Not human. Like memory spoken aloud.
"Return... the circle must close..."
Elias stepped forward. "Did you hear that?"
"Yes," August whispered. "And it knew us."
Suddenly, a gust of wind ripped through the plaza — sharp as razors, cold as bone. A strip of black silk flew from one of the nearby statues and tangled in August's hand.
He looked down.
It bore the same symbol burned above the safehouse door: the vertical line, the two cuts across it — now stitched with red thread.
Elias turned sharply as a shadow passed over them. He raised his pistol—
—but there was nothing there.
Just the wind again.
And the distant chime of metal striking stone, as though someone far below had begun to forge something.
Then the voice again:
"The key walks among ash... but the lock waits in blood."
August stood completely still. Then, slowly, he looked to Elias. "That dream wasn't a memory," he said. "It was a warning."
Elias approached him. "We're leaving. We'll come back with more."
"No." August shook his head, gaze fixed on the spiral in the well. "We can't leave now. We were led here. You saw the map. The mark. The cloth. They've been pulling us toward this city long before Port Royal burned."
Elias looked around them, jaw clenched. "Then what are they leading us to?"
Before August could answer, the stones beneath their feet shivered. Not with motion — but with awareness.
And then—
A second map. Burned into the stone of the plaza before their eyes. Fresh lines scored by unseen hands. A path drawn not to a location — but to a chamber within Khyronia itself.
One word carved beneath the symbol.
"Sanctum."
August reached out, tracing the final letter with a gloved finger.
Something inside him whispered:
"That is where they died."
The chamber was hidden deep beneath the earth—where stone sweated cold, and the silence pressed against the skin like damp cloth.
There were no torches. Only a soft, shifting glow emanating from veins of crystal embedded in the walls. The air shimmered faintly, laced with incense and something older. The scent of secrets, and of things never spoken aloud.
Two figures knelt on the obsidian floor, heads bowed, cloaks soaked from days of rain and failure.
Killian Vesper, the second blade of the Eclipse Elite, his hands bloodied still.
Elysian Nevan, the first, spine rigid in a posture that defied pain.
Neither dared lift their eyes.
Before them sat the one they called Master. Not on a throne—but on a simple stool beside a low lacquered table. A porcelain teacup rested in his pale hand, its surface painted with cranes mid-flight.
The Master's face remained obscured in shadow, though no hood covered it. Somehow, the eye refused to hold the details. His features dissolved like fog on glass, unforgettable the moment one turned away.
His voice, when it came, was soft. Measured. Too calm.
"You were bested."
Killian's head dipped lower. "Yes, Master."
"By two men."
"Yes, Master."
"One still fevered, the other barely trained."
A pause. Long. Unblinking.
"…Yes, Master."
Elysian swallowed. "We underestimated them."
"No." The word was final. "You misjudged the threads of fate. You forgot that even broken things can sharpen into weapons."
His fingers tapped the rim of his cup.
"I gave you everything. Precision. Power. Purpose. And yet, you return with shame wrapped around your shoulders like wet cloth."
"We came to ask forgiveness," Elysian murmured. "And to ask how we must atone."
The Master did not answer.
Instead, he stood.
Behind him, the walls were covered in symbols—etched with blades into black stone. Marks of an old order. The sigil of the Eclipse Elite shone faintly in red: a circle cleaved by a crescent blade.
He looked not at them, but past them, into the far distance of the chamber's single, narrow window.
Beyond it stretched a ravine of molten rock and echoing time.
A beautiful view.
For a moment, he was still.
Then, without warning—
Crash.
The porcelain teacup shattered against the floor. Tea steamed against the stone like spilled blood.
A breath passed.
And then the Master spoke, voice now colder than the grave.
"So. He's still alive."
Killian raised his head an inch, confused. "Who…?"
But the Master was not speaking to them anymore.
His voice was distant, wrapped in memory. "I sent one of our finest blades. The cleanest hand. The assassin who did not fail. Or so I believed."
He turned slowly, and the air itself seemed to flinch.
"The night that manor burned, the target was clear: a child. Just one. The rest were to be... collateral."
Killian stiffened. "You mean—"
"Yes." His voice was laced with iron now. "The boy. The one with the blood that doesn't belong in this century. The boy named Elias."
Silence.
Like a room holding its breath.
"But something intervened," the Master murmured. "A mistake… a shadow that hid him. And instead, the parents died. And the other boy—what was his name…?" He trailed off, tapping his temple lightly.
"…August," Killian whispered.
The Master turned back to the window.
"Ah, yes. That one. The one who watched. Who remembers."
He let the words settle.
Then, more softly, with a touch of strange admiration:
"It seems they've both wandered into the fire I lit long ago."
Behind him, Killian's jaw clenched. "What would you have us do?"
The Master's voice was velvet now. Laced with something unreadable.
"Let the city wake."
"Master?"
"Let Khyronia rise. Let them enter its heart. Every step they take leads them closer to the truth—and closer to me. And when they stand before the door they should never open…"
He turned, and for a single, terrifying second, his face sharpened into clarity—a stranger without age, eyes that remembered fallen empires.
"…then you may kill them."
Killian and Elysian bowed low again, this time not from failure, but fear.
"Go."
The crystal-veined walls pulsed once, like a heartbeat. And the shadows reclaimed the Master's features as the last drop of tea steamed away.