The earth under Vel'shara throbbed—slow, slow, like the heartbeat of a dying deity. Even though the heavens above were already mending, clearing away from the hellish wound inflicted by the Bound One's temporary breakout, the earth still stank. With each breath drawn, one could taste ash and remembrance.
Kai remained frozen at the center of the destroyed temple's crater, the words "Second Sin" repeating themselves eternally within his mind. His hand shook as he looked down at the sigil on his arm—the Wyrm-Sigil—still burning, but fainter now. It was far away, a distant whisper through the glass.
Venri knelt beside her, her stave, once so proud, now splintered at her side. Her scraped and bleeding fingers followed one jagged edge with awe and incredulity. "The Bound Ones were myths," she breathed. "Tales of warning for careless summoners. We never believed they existed. And yet…"
Kai made his fist. Within him, the dragons rustled—awakened, snarling at something just out of sight. "The dungeons," he grumbled. "They are not threats. They are veins. Tunnels to something deeper."
"To the Depths," Venri spoke, standing up with slowness. Her voice quivered. "He said that. 'They will bleed.' What does it even mean?
Before Kai could respond, a shudder coursed through the valley. Not savage—but immense. Profound. As if a sleeper stirred miles under the earth. And then, stillness.
Then, darkness.
From the distant rim of the broken temple grounds, something moved—at first, only a flutter at the edge of vision, a shadowy glint against the firefly light of the horizon. But then it advanced, and air itself drew back.
It was man-like. That much was true. But the body it inhabited was false—like a mannequin covered in living shadow. A cloak of pure absence clung to it, not black but absence—an annihilation of shape and reality itself. Its eyes were holes of blood encircled by twisting ink.
Venri gasped in sharp breath and stepped back. "That… that's not a Bound One."
Kai's senses screamed. The presence felt off, like oil in water, like a discordant note in a sacred hymn. He summoned flame to his palm, and the light bent away.
"No," he said quietly. "This is something else. Something worse."
The figure raised one slender, clawed hand—and all light in a ten-meter radius vanished. Gone. Not even darkness remained. Just void.
Then it moved. Shadows twisted outward from its feet, stretching like ink across the ground. Where they touched stone, corruption bloomed—veins of violet and black spidered through the marble, pulsing with unnatural life.
It wasn't just shadow—it was emotion, too. Despair. Rage. Loneliness. The kind that festers for centuries. The kind that hungers.
Kai's eyes widened. "He's using the dungeons to corrupt the stones."
Venri stared at the spreading decay, horror blooming in her features. "Then this… this isn't random. Someone's seeding the world."
The figure spoke, but not aloud. Its presence pushed into Kai's mind, cold and wet and heavy.
"You opened the door. Now the flood begins. The Age of Harmony ends."
And with it, a tide of tainted energy washed out. Kai raised a dragon-forged shield, the golden fire fighting back against the filthy magic. It held—just barely. The explosion knocked him and Venri back, their bodies sliding across the devastated courtyard.
When the dust settled, the figure vanished.
But something had been left behind.
Where it had stood, a spire now towered—black and jagged, vibrating with dungeon power that smelled of blood and madness. It curved toward the heavens like a blade driven into the world.
Venri coughed as she struggled to her knees. "A Spire of Sin," she repeated, her voice empty. "A conduit. A seed of corruption."
Kai gazed at it, his stomach wracked with a sickness. "It's the first," he told it. "There will be more."
Behind him, the Sentinel's glyphs blazed on his back. They pulsed in counterpoint to the Wyrm-Sigil. Deep inside, a new dragon awakened—one who had waited. A silent echo. A creature born not of flame nor of sky nor of storm—but of silence, of time. A dragon of resonance.
It recalled.
Kai gritted his jaw. "We need to go. If we stay, it'll spread."
Venri stared at him. "What do we name this foe?"
Kai was silent for an instant. He gazed upwards, where the stars were vanishing one by one—eaten by some unseen force. Some unseen eyes.
He said softly, "The Eater of Harmony has started walking."
And deep beneath the surface of the world, in the lowest of the first ever dungeon born, something smiled.