There was no sky in the Rite of Silence.No ground, either. No wind. No light. No sound. Just weightless blackness, infinite and thick, pressing in from all sides like a cocoon woven from time and memory. Jerome didn’t remember falling, but now he was floating, or maybe suspended, like something waiting to hatch. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs, but he could feel himself — his thoughts, his heartbeat, the way his name still echoed faintly in the deepest parts of him. Arvail. Jerome. Hashford. Crownless. Every name he had carried, every life he had touched, whispered around him like ghosts.Then the silence broke.Not with sound — but with presence.A shape stepped forward from the dark, carved from the same blackness that filled the space, but brighter somehow. Human-shaped. Familiar.It wore his face.But older. Sharper. Worn down by battle and regret. The eyes were sunken, shadowed. The jaw tighter. The voice, when it came, sounded like his own recorded and played back in reverse.

The box sat on the motel table like a question that already knew its answer. Jerome hadn’t touched it since Calder left it there hours ago. He’d just stared at it, watching it sit in the thin line of sunlight slipping between the blinds. Selene stood by the window, arms crossed, tension in her shoulders so taut it looked like it might snap her in two. Margareth had taken up a spot on the end of the bed, silent but alert, like she was bracing herself for something she couldn’t see coming.The fabric wrapping the box was black — not dyed, not woven, but grown, like something once alive had been reshaped into silence. Jerome reached for it slowly. The moment his fingers brushed the surface, the chain beneath his shirt hummed. Not urgently. Not in fear. But in recognition. Like a door creaking open after centuries sealed.He peeled away the cloth.Inside was something folded — not parchment, not leather, but a thin, yellowed sheet, translucent around the edges and strangely cold to the to

The Crypt didn’t echo. That was the first thing Jerome noticed as he stepped further into the chamber. Even as their boots pressed against the stone floor, no sound returned. The air absorbed everything — breath, footsteps, heartbeat — like it had grown tired of hearing anyone speak, and now preferred silence above all things. Margareth stayed close behind him, her hand lightly grazing the wall, while Selene lingered at the edge of the corridor they’d emerged from, her eyes darting across the curved ceiling as if reading something the others couldn’t see.In the center of the vast hollow chamber, a single pedestal rose from the ground — sharp, elegant, and smooth as obsidian. It stood maybe chest-high to Jerome, and its surface shimmered faintly beneath the ghostlight that hung in the air. But it was what lay beneath it that stopped him.Something was buried in the floor — a circle of jagged metal, dull and twisted, half-sunken into the stone like it had melted there long ago. Pieces

The veins of black crystal that webbed through the stone now lay dormant. He climbed the spiraling path slowly, his boots moving with a heaviness that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t exhaustion. It was something else. A weight in his blood. A quiet thrum behind his eyes. As though part of the Crypt, part of whatever he had touched, had lodged itself into him and was now adjusting to the shape of his body.His right hand hovered over the mark on his arm — now no longer just a mark. The spiral had deepened, darkened, and fused into something intricate, almost mechanical, like a seal or lockplate that had finally been closed. The warmth hadn’t faded. It was steady now, familiar. But its consistency was unsettling. The chain didn’t move against his chest anymore. It rested, as if no longer needing to alert him. As if it had been waiting for this.He emerged into the upper chamber.Margareth was the first to see him, her eyes flicking from his face to his arm. She opened her mouth to s

All through the night, the sky remained heavy, bloated with thunder, but it never broke. It hovered instead, swollen and grey, leaking low, ambient light into Elden Reach like the ceiling of an enormous cathedral. The clouds didn’t roll. They stood still. They watched. And below them, inside a room that had grown colder since their return, Jerome sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at the motel floor like he could see through it.He hadn’t spoken since the vision.Not really.Margareth had asked him questions. Selene had offered answers. But Jerome had only nodded or blinked or responded with small movements of his fingers, always tracing the same spiral into his palm. Again and again. It wasn’t the original spiral anymore. It had changed after the Crypt — sharpened at the edges, more intricate, almost alive.Now he sat at the desk, the journal spread open before him, drawing.Margareth stood nearby, watching him in silence.“You haven’t slept,” she said.He didn’t look