Kale woke in the ruins of himself.
His skin burned. Not with heat, but something deeper—like every nerve had been stretched and scraped raw. He lay in a crater of blackened stone, surrounded by drifting ash and twisted wreckage. The vault was gone.
No... not gone.
Unmade.
The ground where it had stood pulsed faintly, like something invisible had burned a scar into reality. Even the air was wrong—too quiet, too still, as if the world was holding its breath.
"Alive. Improbable. Curious."
The voice again. Not heard, but felt, like oil on the surface of his thoughts. Kale tried to stand. Failed. Tried again.
He vomited ash.
"You are weak. You were always weak. But perhaps... moldable."
"Shut up," Kale muttered, spitting gray onto gray.
"And you speak. Excellent. This will be interesting."
He staggered to his feet, clutching his ribs. His fingers brushed something cold beneath his coat—the heart. It wasn't pulsing anymore. It had fused to his chest like a brand, just below the collarbone, faintly glowing beneath the skin.
Not normal.
Not good.
The walk back to the Dusklands outpost took a day and a half.
Kale moved like a ghost, skirting ruins, hiding from scavengers and beasts alike. But the world seemed... dimmer. Quieter. He couldn't explain it, but the further he walked, the more wrong things became.
Birds weren't chirping.Wind didn't howl.Even the ash didn't fall.
As if reality was keeping its distance.
"Do you know what you carry?" the voice asked as he collapsed near a broken metro station to rest.
"No," Kale muttered.
"A shard of the final truth. A fragment of the blade that killed fate itself. Or tried to."
"What does that mean?"
"It means, little thief, that the moment you touched me… you began to end things."
By the time he stumbled into the outpost—a ramshackle sprawl of metal walls and barricades built on the bones of the old world—Kale was barely conscious. Guards raised crossbows. Someone shouted his name.
He collapsed before they reached him.
He awoke in a cot inside Marell's shack.
The old witch stood over him, wrinkled fingers glowing faintly as she worked her magic. Her blind eyes were covered by a band of dried fungi stitched into leather, pulsing with golden threads.
"You stupid boy," she whispered.
Kale tried to speak. Couldn't.
"You opened something you shouldn't have," Marell said. Her voice trembled—not with anger, but fear. "I smelled it on the wind. Something old. Something forgotten."
She leaned close, voice low. "Tell me what you touched."
"Don't."
The voice coiled again, sharper now. Protective.
Kale's lips moved on instinct. "Nothing," he croaked. "Found... a vault. It was empty. Then gone."
Marell stared at him. Or through him. "Liar."
But she stepped back. "You'll rest. Eat. And when you wake again… we're going to the Hollow Tree."
Kale frowned. "Why?"
Her expression darkened. "Because something followed you. And I need to know if it's still inside you."
"Too late for that," the voice whispered.
End of Chapter 2