The surface of the Guild was chaos.
Sirens blared across the compound as Riftlight streaked across the sky in jagged arcs, painting the horizon in violent blues and sickly greens. Smoke rose from the north tower, and a swarm of Guild sentries scrambled into position along the outer walls.
Ethan, Zeila, and Kael emerged from the archive just as a deafening roar split the air.
A rift had opened—fully—just beyond the training yard.
From it, horrors poured through: not beasts, but wraith-bound. Rift-touched humanoids wrapped in bone and chain, eyes glowing like dying stars. Soldiers twisted by ancient magic, servants of the Warden.
Kael cursed, raising his rifle. "We're out of time!"
Zeila was already gone, vanishing into the smoke with the fluid motion of a ghost. Ethan stood at the breach's edge, every instinct screaming, every nerve ablaze.
His Beastmark responded on its own.
The mark flared across his arm, crackling with heat and light. His pulse synced to the Rift's rhythm. He wasn't overwhelmed anymore—he was attuned. The Rift pulsed through him like a second heart.
He stepped forward.
I am not your key. I am your keeper.
"Ethan!" Kael shouted. "More incoming!"
Four wraith-bound leapt from the rift gate. Ethan raised his hand—and pushed.
A ripple of force burst from his palm, pure Riftlight surging out and slamming into the nearest enemy. One dissolved mid-air. Another hit the ground, stunned.
The last two rushed him.
Zeila appeared in a blink, daggers flashing. She took one down in a spiral of Voidsteel slashes, and Kael's plasma bolt finished the other.
"We hold this line," Ethan ordered. "The Warden sent them to test the seal. We can't let them through."
Guild reinforcements arrived—scattered, but determined. Ethan took command like instinct. Not because he wanted to, but because something in him knew how.
He moved between squads, pushing back invaders with Rift-forged shields, enhancing others' weapons with raw Riftlight as they fought.
The Rift responded to his will. It obeyed him.
But that obedience came with something else: a voice. Faint, inside his mind, threading through his thoughts.
You are the gate. You are the lock. You are the flame.
Ethan grit his teeth and forced it back. "Not now."
Kael sidled up beside him. "We've got another problem. Look."
Through the rift, something massive stirred. A colossal form moving behind the breach veil. Not just a soldier.
A Sentinel.
Zeila's face darkened. "We can't fight that. Not with what we've got."
Ethan stepped toward the rift, staring into the storm. "We don't have to fight it. We just have to seal it."
He drew the bone ring from his belt—the one they'd found in the archive.
It vibrated now in his hand. Reacting.
He felt the Rift swirl within it, like a fragment of a broken god. The glyphs began to spin.
Then he understood: it wasn't just a key.
It was a shard.
One piece of a whole.
Ethan turned to the rift and pushed the ring forward—channeling his mark into it. Power surged. The rift shuddered, reality bending like warped glass.
The Sentinel roared, sensing the seal forming.
"Cover him!" Zeila shouted, cutting down a new wave of attackers.
Kael laid down a suppressing field. "Whatever you're doing, do it faster!"
Ethan poured everything into the ring—his will, his memories, the pain of loss, the fire of purpose. The Rift resisted, screaming into his mind with images of endless war, eternal hunger, promises of dominion.
He clenched his jaw.
"I am not your weapon," he whispered. "I am your wall."
The ring ignited with Riftlight—and slammed into the breach like a lock snapping shut.
The rift imploded.
The Sentinel's scream was cut off as its form dissolved into stardust, sucked back into the void. Silence fell like a hammer.
Only the sound of labored breathing and flickering fires remained.
The survivors looked around in stunned awe. Guild soldiers, civilians, even the battle-scarred commander of the south post knelt before Ethan—uncertain whether to cheer or fear what they'd just witnessed.
Ethan turned away from them all.
Zeila came to his side. "That wasn't just a seal. That was control. You didn't close the Rift. You commanded it to close."
Ethan didn't meet her eyes. "And next time, it won't listen unless I give it more of myself."
Kael holstered his rifle. "So what now, boss?"
Ethan looked toward the horizon, where the sky still shimmered with Rift-born scars.
"We find the rest of the seal. The other shards. And when we do—" He looked down at his glowing mark. "—we end this. One way or another."
Far off in the depths of the Hollow, unseen by any of them, the Warden stood before a circle of cloaked figures. Its voice echoed across time and bone.
"He has awakened the first flame."
And behind it, something far older stirred.