Pain lingered in his shoulder —
a slow warmth pulsing down his arm like a second heartbeat.

Kael pressed his hand to the wound.
The cloth was stiff with dried blood, but no longer wet.
Beneath it, the skin was warm.
Too warm.

Not fever.
It felt like something beneath the flesh was stitching itself back together…
slowly.
Wrongly.

The shard lay cold in his other hand.
Then — it pulsed.
A soft throb, just once.
Not with light.
But with presence.

Kael stared down at it.

"Are you healing me… or feeding on me?"

No answer.
Just the hush of the ruins, and the distant hush of moving air.

The path began to change.
The mist hung lower, heavier.
And the stones underfoot were no longer rough.

They were smooth.
Curved.

Kael crouched.
Veins of pale white twisted through the ground —
not cracks.

Bones.
Fused together, human and not,
woven into the floor like an ancient mosaic.

He was walking on a bed of the forgotten dead.

The space widened ahead —
pillars arched overhead like the ribs of a collapsed giant.
A crypt with no ceiling,
open to the dead sky.

There were pools between the fractures of bone-stone.
Not deep.
Perfectly still.
Black like glass.

Kael stepped near the first.
The surface quivered.

An image flickered to life.
A kneeling figure.
Ash smeared across their arms.
Head bowed.

The face was obscured — not by shadow,
but by something deeper.
A blur of identity.
Undefined, yet familiar in feeling.
A shape that stirred something bitter in Kael’s chest.

Shame.
Loss.
A sorrow he didn’t understand.

The image vanished.

Kael staggered back.
The pool stilled.
Nothing remained.

A wall rose ahead — not built, but carved.
Covered in symbols —
etched deeply as if by claws, not tools.

Figures lined the stone.
Bent.
Kneeling.
Reaching toward something above them.

At the top of the carving:
a shape with too many arms,
and eyes blooming like wounds across its body.

Kael’s breath caught.
He stepped closer.

One of the kneeling figures…
held something in its hand.
A small shard.
Identical to his.

He reached out.

The moment his fingers touched the carving,
the shard in his palm pulsed — stronger this time.
Heat spilled up his arm and into his spine.

A whisper cracked through the silence:

"You were not the first."
"But you may be the last."

Kael recoiled.
He turned, but saw no one.
Only stillness.

The whisper faded — or had it been inside him?

Beyond the carving, a stairwell opened downward.
Half collapsed.
Carved into the bone-stone itself.

The air below was darker.
Tighter.
No sound.
No light.
Only the sense of something waiting.

Kael stood at the edge.
His wound pulsed again — not in pain,
but with pressure.

He looked down at the shard.
It no longer glowed.
But the warmth at its core beat with his own heart.

One step.
Then another.

The stairs groaned beneath his weight.
The darkness pulled closer.

Somewhere below,
a breath was being held.

Or maybe…
something had just begun to breathe.