The bone door slammed shut behind them with a wet crunch, sealing Elias and Lira in absolute darkness. The air hung thick with the scent of damp earth and something metallic—like old blood on a butcher's block. Elias's pulse hammered in his throat as he reached blindly for Lira's arm.

"Don't let go," she whispered, her fingers tightening around his wrist. "This place plays tricks."

A whisper slithered through the black:

"At last... the twelfth comes to dine."

The darkness convulsed.

Elias's stomach lurched as the ground tilted violently beneath them. Shadows peeled away like rotting skin, revealing a cavernous hall lit by flickering corpse-candles. Eleven thrones circled the room—each crafted from nightmare material: one of fused finger bones, another from rusted bayonets, a third from what looked like petrified tongues.

And in each throne sat a guardian.

Elias choked back bile. Their preserved corpses were arranged in grotesque tableaus—a woman with her ribs splayed like wings, a man with his own intestines looped around his neck like a scarf. Their decayed lips moved in unison, their voices blending into the Hollow King's rasp:

"You've fed our Vessel well, Elias Silang."

At the chamber's heart sat the box, its lid yawning open. Inside pulsed a monstrous heart—black and glistening, threaded with veins of tarnished gold. With each sluggish beat, the guardians twitched in their thrones.

Lira's knife flashed in the candlelight. "Don't look at it," she warned, but Elias couldn't tear his eyes away. The heart's rhythm synced with his own, each thump sending a jolt of pain through his chest.

The guardian in the bone throne stood first, chunks of desiccated flesh sloughing off as it lurched forward. Its jaw unhinged with a crack, revealing the box's sigil carved into its tongue.

"The King keeps His promises," it gurgled. "Eleven consumed... one to crown the feast."

Elias's backpack jerked violently against his spine. The box inside shrieked, its nails tearing through the canvas as black veins erupted across Elias's forearm where the straps had touched him. The pain was electric—like molten wire threading through his muscles.

Lira shoved him behind her. "Fight it, Elias! It's using your fear as a doorway!"

But the box's voice was already inside him, slithering through his thoughts:

"You gave me fire... now let me taste her light."

The corpse-guardian lunged—

—and the heart in the open box gave a single, thunderous beat.

The world shattered.

Elias woke face-down in dew-wet grass, his mouth full of the coppery tang of blood. Dawn light filtered through the skeletal remains of Manila Cathedral's rose window. Nearby, Lira knelt over a twitching shadow priest, her boot planted on his chest as she wrenched her knife free.

"You with me?" she panted, wiping gore from her cheek.

Elias rolled onto his side and vomited. His backpack lay in tatters, the box now ominously still—its lid cracked open a finger's width, held shut only by a single frayed cord. From the gap seeped a thin trail of black fluid that hissed where it touched the grass.

A dry chuckle echoed from the ruins.

"Oh, you clever boy," purred a familiar voice. "You didn't just visit Him... you brought back a piece."

The red-masked man emerged from the shadows, his cloak stitched from stolen sacramental cloth. Up close, Elias could see the scars where something had torn his lips into a permanent grin.

"Tell me," he whispered, crouching to trail a finger through the box's black ooze. "When it asked you to feed it her soul... how loudly did you say 'no'?"

Lira's knife was at his throat before he could blink. "Try that smirk again and I'll rearrange your teeth."

But Elias was staring at the box. At the way its lid trembled. At the single, glistening eye he could swear peered out from the darkness within.

Somewhere beneath the cathedral, something ancient stirred in answer.