Rain ticked against the basement window like a fingernail tapping on a cracked screen—slow, weirdly patient, but steady in its rhythm. Not pounding. Not even really falling. Just a muted patter that sounded like the sky was chewing on a thought and hadn't decided how to spit it out yet.
Inside, hunched at a desk that barely resembled furniture anymore, Cal didn't notice. Or he did, but the sound didn't land. He just sat there, curled in like something caved his chest inward, arms locked like he was bracing for a hit that never came. The desk was buried under pages, folders, maps, a soda can turned fossil. It looked less like a workspace and more like a failed excavation.
The quiet wasn't peaceful. It was thick. Dead. Not just a lack of noise, but the weight of everything that used to be here. No headset ping. No laughter. The Discord server had gone silent, and even the spam folder stopped pretending someone wanted to talk. The old gaming table—left as-is, like maybe they'd come back—still held dice in mid-roll. No one would touch them. They belonged to ghosts now.
Cal wasn't really working. He was spiraling. Obsessive. Maybe lost. His pencil scrawled across the same half-torn graph paper until the graphite smudged into gray static. Character sheets, relic names, stat blocks—everything bleeding into itself. None of it clicked. Nothing held.
And every line he drew dragged the same shape back up from the pit: Verek Solheim.
Didn't matter how many lore tweaks Cal made. Didn't matter how many new characters he tried to crown, how many plot arcs he set up like traps to steer the story away. Verek always clawed his way back in. Some part of the mythos always bent back around to him.
Verek wasn't just a character. Not anymore. He was the version of Cal that didn't hesitate. Didn't apologize. Didn't fade. He walked like he owned the air, like fire bent to his shape. Cal had created him to be a kind of armor, sure. At first. But somewhere along the way, the armor turned into a map. A goal. A place to disappear inside.
The sketchpad in Cal's lap sagged. His fingers cramped. He hadn't blinked in minutes. Maybe hours. A low whine of the basement bulb hiccupped, sputtered once. Twice. Then gave out with a faint pop.
The dark didn't feel natural. It settled in heavy, like it wanted to move furniture. Cal didn't move. Didn't even breathe right. The shadows weren't just there—they reached. Crawled. Got their fingers in the corners of the room.
Then it happened.
Thimblewick.
But it wasn't the weird little sketch-Cal had drawn back when caffeine counted as a personality trait. Not the candy-wrapper-winged glitch sprite he used to doodle on napkins during lunch. This thing was scorched. Wings charred like burnt silk, skin flaked and cracked like dry clay left too long in the oven. And its eyes—no, those weren't eyes. Just holes that shined, like obsidian soaked in oil.
"You never knew what you summoned."
Its voice sounded like a file dragged across bone. Not loud, but it hit like a dropped anvil. Not angry. Just final.
Cal's back stiffened. Muscles went tight, but nothing moved. Even his breath stuttered. Some old prey instinct firing off alarms.
"You broke the rules."
No heat. No yelling. Just a line being drawn.
"You stitched gods together out of scraps, and you thought the seam wouldn't tear."
The creature stepped closer. No footsteps. Just presence. Its voice peeled apart into layers, like multiple mouths reading from the same scroll.
"We are the Nyr'thazar. We don't destroy. We correct. You made a world and expected it to worship you. Now the imbalance has a cost."
Cal tried to move his mouth. Nothing came. His pencil dropped to the desk and the noise of it hitting felt too loud, like it cracked something in the air.
"You built Verek to carry your fear. To hide in. But you forgot where the mask ended. Now, your fantasy bleeds. The egg of Vyrathys stirs. Chaos drinks deep. This is not punishment. It's repair."
Its eyes caught light that didn't exist.
"You are him now. Not a reward. A requirement. To undo the damage, you have to become it."
The floor vanished. Not in a thunderclap or quake. Just... gone. Like someone flipped a light switch on the concept of ground.
Cal fell.
Fast. No dramatic wind rush. Just a vertical rip through sense and space. Voices slid past him—ones that didn't have words, just texture. Cold textures. Sharp.
Impact didn't wait.
He hit knees-first. The pain cracked up his spine and something in his chest buckled. Dust jammed in his throat. His palms scraped rock that wasn't flat, wasn't clean, wasn't kind. Everything smelled scorched and stale. Not death exactly, but something like a room that hadn't seen a god in decades.
He pushed up on hands that looked wrong. Skin too smooth. Too bright. Blue flickers ran under the surface like static searching for an exit. Veins pulsed.
Then the mirror.
Slanted in rubble. Cracked. Waiting.
Verek looked back.
White-silver hair like molten wire. Robes that shimmered like water with a mind of its own. Eyes like small furnaces. The kind of gaze that made you feel judged and reshaped in the same second.
His reflection's mouth moved. Cal's body stood there. But he wasn't Cal anymore.
Footsteps echoed behind him.
Not fast. Not frantic. Just sure. Confident in their arrival.
Ezreal appeared first. Blindfold still neat, expression smug like someone who'd already read the next three chapters.
"Took you long enough," he muttered, dry as dead leaves.
Dax came next, all muscle and stillness. The way he walked, it wasn't threat. It was readiness. Like he could end a problem without breaking stride.
Then Caylen. Bounding in like chaos on springs, that sideways grin loaded with things better left unsaid.
"Praise the stars," Caylen said, arms spread wide. "He lives! I was about to start composing your funeral dirge."
Cal—Verek—opened his mouth. Nothing came. The words stuck like glue to the roof of his throat. If he spoke, it might shatter this fragile transition. Might remind him he was still just a kid in a basement.
So he stayed silent.
The world he'd built no longer needed him. But it had found a place for him.
Now he was inside it.
And there wasn't a way back out.