The tower howled as reality buckled.

Dozens of factions clashed inside its spiraling chambers.
The air smelled of burning ozone, blood, and something fouler — a scent that didn’t belong to any world Elian knew.

At the center, the Cartographer remained motionless, suspended in his fractured gravity field, as if waiting for the chaos to choose its victor.

But Elian wasn’t waiting.

"CRAY—"

"Already on it!"

Cray unleashed a wave of wardfire. The runes lining his arms burned white as he swept his hands forward, releasing a pulsing ring of flame. The first line of cultists screamed as their bodies were incinerated. Their masks melted into slag.

Lysara chanted behind him, fingers weaving complex glyphs in the air.
Her shield barrier expanded, a semi-transparent dome of silver light surrounding Elian, Calen, and the Cartographer.

A Watcher threw itself at the barrier — its jagged limbs screeching across the shield like knives over glass.

"These things don’t die like the others!" Cray shouted.

"They don’t," Elian said grimly.
"That’s because they aren’t alive."

The Watchers weren’t merely cultists. They were echoes of the Hollow’s original breach — fractured entities born of pure distortion. They couldn’t be killed in any normal sense.

But they could be sealed.

Elian drew the Memory Blade tight to his chest.

"By pact, by blood, by anchor bound—"

The blade glowed as the invocation pulsed through him.

The Watcher shrieked as its body contorted unnaturally — its form unraveling into a mist of spiraling symbols as the blade severed its hold on reality.

More cultists surged in.

The First Shard came with their staff-wielders now — chanting, raising glyphs of bone from the ground beneath Elian’s feet. The floor itself tried to bite upward — jagged spikes of corrupted matter shooting toward him.

Lysara dropped the barrier and redirected its power downward — shattering the spikes before they reached him.

Her face was pale, drenched with sweat.
"That’s all I’ve got for the barrier!"

"Hold the line!" Elian barked.

Calen knelt beside the Cartographer, his voice shaking.

"Can you help us?!"

The Cartographer’s voice whispered directly into Calen’s mind.

"I observe. I do not interfere."

Calen slammed his fist into the ground.
"If you truly observed, you’d see we’re about to die!"

For a moment, the Cartographer’s head tilted, curious.

And then — faintly — the sphere-map hovering above him shifted.
A new path illuminated itself — a sliver-thin fracture leading downward into the Underfold.

"Your exit."

But the factions saw it too.

The emerald-robed cultists — the newest faction — turned toward the forming exit.

Unlike the others, these cultists moved with terrifying speed and coordination, their insectile eyes reflecting every flash of light in the room. They spoke no chant, issued no scream.

Instead, they flowed like liquid.

"ELIAN—!" Cray called.
"They’re heading for the breach!"

Elian sprinted.

The Memory Blade struck true, cutting through two emerald cultists as they lunged toward the breach. Their bodies dissolved into black spores that scattered into the air like ash.

But more poured in behind them.

Cray threw another glyph — a containment sigil this time. The air thickened, freezing several of the cultists mid-motion, their forms suspended like flies in amber.

"That won’t hold for long!" Cray shouted.

Lysara moved beside him, her voice low and dangerous.

"We take the breach. Now."

Elian’s jaw tightened.
"Calen—grab the Cartographer. Cray, cover the rear."

Without hesitation, they surged toward the fracture-path — the only route into the Underfold.

Behind them, the factions clashed in full war — The First Shard battling the Watchers, the emerald cult cutting through both indiscriminately.

The tower groaned.
The fractures widened.

Reality itself was breaking.

As they reached the threshold, the Cartographer finally moved for the first time — floating forward, arms extended.

"You step into deeper water, Warden."

Elian nodded grimly.
"We don’t have a choice."

"Few ever do."

The breach pulsed.

For a moment, the world inverted — their bodies stretched, pulled, compressed into spirals of light.

And then—

They fell.

When they landed, there was no ground.

Only drifting platforms of shattered stone floating in an endless black void. Above and below, faint pulses of impossible stars flickered, spiraling in slow, nauseating arcs.

The Underfold.

Elian rose slowly, breath catching in his throat.

"It exists…"

Calen looked around, shaking.
"This isn’t a world. It’s an infection."

Lysara’s eyes narrowed.
"No. It’s the wound."

Behind them, a soft cracking sound echoed.

Elian turned just in time to see several emerald cultists pull themselves through the breach after them — their forms less stable now, flickering with static pulses.

Cray readied another ward, voice low.
"Round two?"

Elian raised his blade.

"No."

He pointed toward the horizon.

"Endgame."