The wind howled as they climbed.

The peaks beyond the Shatterveil Ridge had no name — at least, none the world still dared to speak. They were drawn on no maps.
Even the Cartographer’s records stopped just short of this place.

But Veylen’s stitched parchment pointed here.

To a canyon where stars bent wrong.

Where compasses spun in circles.

Where something waited.

“I still can’t believe we’re trusting him,” Cray muttered, trudging beside Elian.

“He betrayed us,” Lysara said flatly.

“I didn’t betray you,” Veylen called over his shoulder. “I bought you time.”

“By selling us out to the Root?” Calen asked sharply.

Veylen shrugged without turning. “There are worse things than betrayal. Like silence while the world burns.”

They crested the last ridge just before dusk.

And there it was — the mouth of the Dominion.

A vast, yawning canyon split the mountains in two. It stretched for miles in both directions, rimmed with broken towers and shattered bridges — the ruins of a civilization no one remembered building.

A strange haze hung over the ravine — not mist, not shadow.

Memory.

Elian stepped forward, the air instantly heavier.

Even the Memory Blade on his back hummed low, uncertain.

“What is this place?”

Veylen stood beside him now, gaze locked on the chasm below.

“The last thing the Masters sealed before they vanished. This was their vault, their prison, their final hope. Depends on who you ask.”

“And what’s inside?” Lysara asked.

Veylen glanced at her, eyes serious for once.

“The True Seed.”

The words dropped like thunder.

Even Cray went silent.

Elian felt something stir in his chest — not fear exactly, but weight. A knowing that everything ahead would change them permanently.

“Explain,” Elian said.

Veylen crouched beside the cliff’s edge and began drawing in the dust with his finger.

“The Fractures weren’t accidents. They were consequences.”

“Of what?” Calen asked.

“Of a choice,” Veylen replied. “The First Masters tried to unify all forms of reality magic — dream, memory, void, life, essence — into a single source.”

He tapped the center of his crude diagram.

“They succeeded. Briefly. But the power was too unstable. They couldn’t control it.”

“And the Fractures began,” Lysara murmured.

Veylen nodded.

“So they did the only thing they could. They severed the Seed — split it into fragments, buried most of them across the world… and sealed the core down here.”

He looked at Elian.

“You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The resonance. That blade of yours — it’s made from Seedsteel.”

Elian said nothing. But the truth sang behind his ribs.

Calen stared into the mist. “So why go down there? Why open it?”

“Because the Court already knows it exists,” Veylen said grimly. “And if they reach it first, they won’t destroy it.”

He straightened up.

“They’ll cultivate it. Shape the world into something perfect, eternal… and utterly enslaved.”

A long silence followed.

Then Elian spoke.

“We go down at dawn.”

That night, as the others rested, Elian sat alone near the fire — the Memory Blade laid across his knees. The stars overhead swirled ever so slightly wrong, spiraling around an unseen center above the canyon.

He could feel it now.

A hum beneath the earth.

A pulse like a second heartbeat in his chest.

The Dominion was calling.

But not just to him.

Far away — beyond the horizon — in the towers of the Court, the Speaker Auren stood before a mirror of still water. Within it, a vision formed:

Elian descending the canyon.
Veylen leading.
The blade shining.
The Seed awakening.

She smiled, thin and sharp.

“So the door opens,” she whispered.

Beside her, a figure emerged from shadow — faceless, vast, cloaked in nothingness.

“The Warden awakens the core,” the figure said.

“Yes,” Auren murmured.

“And when he does?”

She turned from the water.

“We take it from his bones.”