The steps spiraled downward into a crimson haze, each one formed from a stone that pulsed faintly—as though blood flowed beneath its surface. The deeper Elira walked, the more she felt the air thicken, warmed by an unseen current that brushed along her skin like a living breath.Kael stayed close behind her, silent but alert. Tarin brought up the rear, scanning upward often, as though expecting something to follow them down the spiral.None of them spoke at first.Voices felt dangerous here—like sound itself would awaken something waiting beyond the mist.The only noise was the rhythmic hum pulsing through the stone steps and the distant rumble of machinery buried far below the earth. Once, the hum synchronized with Elira’s heartbeat so perfectly that she stopped walking, clutching her chest.Kael nearly collided with her. “Elira?”She raised a hand, signaling him to wait.The hum wasn’t random. It wasn’t mechanical.It was… responding.She stepped forward again, and the hum deepened—

The sanctuary did not greet the dawn.Instead, it clung to the night as though afraid to let go.A thin gray light pressed against the high windows, struggling to enter, but the glass resisted it—darkened by old magic, by years of secrets whispered into stone. The air inside felt heavier than it had the night before, thick with the residue of what had nearly crossed over. Whatever had reached for Michael had not vanished entirely. It lingered, like a wound that had not yet learned how to bleed.Michael sat on the edge of the altar steps, elbows resting on his knees, hands loosely clasped. He had not slept. Sleep felt dangerous now—too close to surrender. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it again: the pressure, the pull, the sense of being copied, not merely watched.Clara stood a few paces away, quietly packing what little they could carry. There was a deliberate calm in her movements, but her eyes betrayed her. They flicked toward Michael again and again, as though she feared h

The ground beneath the sanctuary did not break all at once.It remembered first.Clara felt it before she understood it — a subtle vibration beneath the soles of her boots, like a pulse traveling upward through stone, bone, and breath. It wasn’t violent. It was deliberate. The kind of movement that suggested intention rather than collapse.Michael staggered forward, catching himself against the fractured altar. His reflection did not follow.That absence — that wrongness — struck Clara harder than the darkness had.“Michael,” she said, her voice steady only because fear had already hollowed it out. “Look at the floor.”Hairline fractures traced outward from where the shadow had struck moments earlier. They weren’t random. They curved and looped, forming patterns that twisted into symbols Clara had seen before — not written, but felt — in the moments between sleep and waking.Alistair knelt slowly, pressing his palm just above the stone without touching it.“These are breach marks,” he

Morning did not arrive all at once.It crept in cautiously, as though the world itself was uncertain whether it should reveal itself yet. Pale light filtered through the fractured stained glass of the sanctuary, breaking into muted streaks of color that slid across the stone floor like reluctant witnesses. Once, those colors had carried meaning—hope, renewal, divine order. Now they felt fractured, uncertain, stripped of promise.Michael stood at the threshold, one hand resting against the cold stone of the doorway. He had not slept. Even if he had tried, he knew rest would have been impossible. Something in the air beyond the sanctuary tugged at him—not urgently, not violently, but persistently. Like gravity adjusted ever so slightly in his direction.Outside, the world appeared unchanged.The trees stood where they always had. The sky stretched pale and cloudless. Birds flitted between branches as if nothing had happened.But Michael knew better.The world wasn’t different because it

The message did not arrive as words.It arrived as weight.Michael felt it settle into him slowly, deliberately, as though the world had decided to lean just a little harder in his direction. Not crushing. Not painful. But undeniable. A second gravity layered atop his own—one that made stillness feel like defiance and movement feel inevitable.He didn’t stagger. He didn’t cry out.But something inside him shifted, aligning to a pressure he had never known existed.Clara sensed it instantly.She had learned the language of Michael’s silences over time—the subtle distinctions between reflection, fear, and the deeper quiet that came when something unseen brushed against him. This silence was different. Heavier. It pulled at the air between them, thinning it until even breathing felt deliberate.“Michael,” she said carefully, lowering her voice as though sound itself might fracture something fragile. “What’s happening?”He didn’t answer right away.His gaze remained fixed on the valley ah