They moved quickly.
There was no choice.

The fractures were multiplying across the world now — like cracks in glass, spreading outward from some invisible impact. Entire villages had vanished overnight, swallowed into void pockets. Cities woke to find their skies crawling with impossible geometries. Entire rivers now ran black beneath unnatural moons.

The Hollow was eating reality.

And somewhere beneath it all pulsed the origin:
The First Fracture.

Their only lead came from an old name:
The Cartographer.

Elian hadn't heard that name whispered in over two centuries.

"He’s real?" Cray asked skeptically as they traveled north through the Ruined Expanse.

"He was," Elian said. "Whether he still is…"

Lysara, guiding from the front, finished his sentence:
"—we’ll find out."

The Cartographer was a rogue Anchor — one who had defected during the earliest days of the Pact. He hadn’t joined Malrek, but neither had he stayed with the Wardens. Instead, he'd vanished into the wild realms, obsessively mapping the fractures as they spread.

According to myth, he had seen the First Fracture with his own eyes.

They reached his last known location at dusk — a dead plateau known as The Weeping Plateau.

The land itself sobbed beneath their feet — faint, rhythmic pulses of air rising from deep beneath the cracked surface.
The wind moaned like something grieving.

At its center stood an ancient tower.

It looked impossible — spiraling upward in defiance of geometry, its upper levels curving sideways, then downward again, forming impossible loops.

"The Cartographer’s Sanctum," Lysara whispered.

Cray stared at it with clear unease.
"Do we go in?"

Elian’s eyes narrowed.
"We have to."

Inside, the air was thick with warping pressure. The walls were made of smooth obsidian, etched with maps — not of continents, but of fractures. Dozens. Hundreds.

Some stretched into the stars.

Some bled downward into black pits.

Some simply ended mid-line, as if the Cartographer had run out of sanity while drawing them.

"This is… wrong," Calen murmured, tracing one with his finger. "These aren’t just fractures of space. They’re fractures of time. Of possibility."

They climbed for what felt like hours, the tower folding upon itself in impossible loops.

And then — finally — they reached him.

The Cartographer was no longer human.

Or perhaps he never had been.

He sat in the center of a chamber suspended between multiple gravitational pulls — his body hovering slightly off the floor, arms elongated, fingers moving constantly as they traced new maps into the air with light itself.

His face was featureless. A smooth slate.
His voice did not come from his mouth but from the air itself.

"Warden. You have come late."

Elian approached slowly.

"We seek the First Fracture."

The Cartographer paused. His fingers twitched.

"The First Fracture does not wish to be found."

"It’s the only way to stop what's coming," Lysara said. "The Hollow is bleeding through every realm. We need to sever its root."

The Cartographer rotated slightly in the air, its head cocked as though amused.

"Sever? No. You cannot sever what predates your world."

"But it can be closed," Elian pressed.

The Cartographer’s hands shifted again. A glowing sphere formed in the air before them — a map unlike any they’d seen.

It showed the fractures as veins radiating from a single central wound — one so deep it pierced the foundation of existence itself.

At its core was a hollowed spiral — pulsing faintly.

The First Fracture.

"Here," the Cartographer whispered.
"But it is not on your world. It is beneath your world."

Calen inhaled sharply.
"The Underfold."

Even Elian's breath slowed.

The Underfold was legend — a collapsed realm beneath physical existence, where the oldest of the Old Masters had first whispered.

The Cartographer nodded faintly.

"Malrek searches even now. And others follow. When all factions converge upon it, the true war will begin."

"How do we get there?" Lysara asked.

The Cartographer's fingers drew a single line in the air — a glowing tear in space.

"Through sacrifice."

Suddenly — a pulse.

The Sanctum shuddered.

The walls bled light. The fractures twisted.

And then — voices. Dozens. Hundreds.

The air cracked as portals opened around them.

Figures poured into the tower — cultists from multiple factions.

The First Shard. The Watchers. And new ones Elian had never seen before — draped in emerald wrappings, with insectile eyes.

Cray swore under his breath.
"They found us."

The Cartographer’s voice echoed one final time:

"The Deep War has begun. Choose your side, Warden."

Elian raised the Memory Blade.
His voice calm — terrifyingly calm.

"Circle formation!" he barked. "Protect Calen. Lysara — shield the Cartographer if you can. Cray, burn everything that moves."

The cultists surged forward, their inhuman chants filling the air as the tower spiraled in on itself.

And the first true battle of the Deep War began.