The trees thinned by dawn.
Pao had walked through the night, ignoring the ache in his legs and the burning in his eyes. He didn't stop to rest. He didn't dare. Sleep was no longer safe—not after what happened in the spiral. Not after hearing that voice speak his name.
Not his name.
Kezrith Vorr.
The sound alone made his Lanternbrand throb beneath his shirt. It hadn't faded since the ritual. If anything, it was getting worse. A fever bloomed beneath his skin, slow but growing, like rot beneath a floorboard.
Still, he pressed east. Every hour mattered.
The path he followed now was older than the roads. He had found the stone trail just beyond the ruined outpost—a line of weathered slabs half-buried under roots and time. The exorcist camps called it the Pilgrim's Spine. It once connected shrines and watchposts from the southern cities to Azoran Reach. Now, it was barely visible.
But still safer than forging blind.
Mostly.
By midmorning, the mist had receded.
Only the Lanternbrand burned now, steady and pulsing like a second heartbeat.
He stopped at a shallow ridge overlooking a dead valley. Black trees jutted from the cracked soil like bones. In the center of the valley stood an old shrine—half-buried in ash. A crescent stone rose behind it, with a jagged hole where a bell should've hung.
Pao crouched behind a boulder and studied the structure.
Shrines were unpredictable.
Some still held holy protections. Others had been corrupted, inverted by Monarch cults, their blessings twisted into traps. More than a few exorcists had died praying at the wrong altar.
But the shrine below was different.
It had no runes.
No glyphs.
Only a spiral.
Etched on the stone, carved deep into the archway.
His blood chilled.
It was the same spiral.
Not similar. Not close.
Exact.
He took a slow step back, instincts screaming.
Then he heard it.
A whisper.
Not from outside.
From within.
It slithered through his thoughts like smoke.
"You've seen it before."
Pao staggered, grabbing the side of his head. "No—"
"You were there when it was sealed."
That voice—coarse and rich, like oil poured over gravel. Familiar, though impossible.
He hadn't heard it before yesterday.
But it knew him.
Knew his memories.
Knew his fear.
The vision hit him mid-step.
One blink—and the world changed.
He stood in a cavern lit by red torches, surrounded by fire and chanting.
Around him were figures in black robes, hands raised. A great pit lay open before them, with chains descending into the dark.
And at the center, bound in silver and salt, was something massive.
He couldn't see its full form. Only hints.
Horns.
A crown of bone.
Eyes that didn't blink—but watched.
He looked down.
His own hands… were covered in ash.
Not from war.
From ritual.
He was standing inside the summoning ring.
And he wasn't a prisoner.
He was part of it.
Pao gasped awake, flat on the ground, his body drenched in sweat.
The valley was gone.
No, not gone—changed. The fog had returned without warning, thick and yellow. The shrine below had vanished in the mist, like it had never existed.
But his heart still raced.
He had felt it.
The pit. The chains. The ritual.
And his hands.
They weren't hallucinations.
They were memories.
But they weren't his.
Were they?
He rose, trembling, and kept moving.
The next stretch of road was silent but stifling. The deeper he went, the heavier the air became. Not hot—pressurized. As if something was watching from above. Or below.
He passed broken statues along the trail—old saints of the exorcist faith. Most were shattered. Some had their faces scraped off. One had been hollowed out, and something had nested inside it. Long nails. Sinew. And a mouth.
He didn't stop.
But he watched.
The signs were all there.
The Monarch cults had passed through here. And not long ago.
Each spiral etched into the stone confirmed it.
They were active. They were marking territory.
And the worst part?
They were headed east.
Same as him.
By dusk, he reached the mouth of a canyon. The cliffs were jagged and narrow, the pass tight enough to force single file. On the far side, the road curved upward toward a forested ridge—and beyond that, he hoped, was the first signal post to Azoran Reach.
But the canyon felt wrong.
The stones were too quiet. No echoes. No wind.
The fog didn't enter here.
He stepped through carefully, blade in hand.
The first corpse was buried under stones. Only the arm remained, reaching out as if trying to crawl free.
The second was fresher—an exorcist, maybe. His talismans had been torn off, his eyes burned out.
Pao crouched and checked the man's pouch.
A single page remained—torn from a manual like his.
It read:
"They don't just listen to their names. They hide inside them."
He swallowed hard.
That voice.
That dream.
Wasn't a dream at all.
It was a call.
A memory borrowed. Or returned.
His link to Kezrith Vorr wasn't just magical.
It was personal.
An echo.
A piece of something buried inside him.
He didn't sleep that night.
Instead, he found a cave beneath the canyon's edge and sealed the entrance with salt lines from his travel kit. He lit a small fire, enough to keep the mist at bay.
Then, for the first time since the orphanage, he opened Solon's manual to the forbidden pages.
The ones the Guild had blacked out.
One name pulsed faintly on the ink, as if it had waited for this moment:
Kezrith Vorr – The God-Eater.
Once sealed beneath the Ashen Pit.
Blood-tied. Thought-bound. Memory-thief.
A Monarch that leaves nothing—only silence.
At the bottom of the page was a note, scribbled in Solon's familiar hand:
If you are reading this, Pao, then I am already dead.
Kezrith knows you. Has known you.
That is why I branded you.
You must not let him remember fully.
You must not remember fully either.
Pao stared at the note, hand trembling.
He wasn't just a survivor.
He wasn't just marked.
He was part of something ancient.
Something buried.
And now, it was waking.