He didn't sleep again after the dream.
The vision of the seven thrones clung to his thoughts like soot in the lungs. One by one, they flickered and faded—until only the last remained.
Kezrith Vorr's throne.
And the whisper that echoed after:
"Your body remembers.
Your soul resists.
But your blood remembers everything."
By the time the sun bled through the clouds, Pao was already on the move.
His limbs ached, and his wounds throbbed from the bridge battle. But the fog at his back felt heavier than it had the day before—charged, alive, crawling after him like breath exhaled by something too large to see.
So he didn't stop.
Didn't look back.
Didn't speak.
By midday, the path curved around the edge of a ridge, where the bones of a once-great city slumbered beneath layers of ash and ivy. The wind shifted, carrying with it the scent of charred brick, rust, and rain that never came.
Calareth.
That was its name—once.
A Guild stronghold, known for its scholars and firebinders. Before the bells went silent.
Now they called it Ashmoor.
Pao stood above it, staring down at the ruins. Stone towers bowed in defeat. Walls choked by root and vine. Spirals—some old, some fresh—carved across the gates, chimneys, and doors. He could see them from here. They weren't warnings.
They were marks of ownership.
The Monarch cults had claimed this place.
And yet… he felt drawn to it.
Not just by fear. But by familiarity.
He entered through a broken aqueduct on the city's west end. Water had once flowed through it—clean, consecrated. Now it was bone-dry, cracked with age. He moved in silence, boots careful over mossed stone, blade ready.
Every few steps, he found signs of death:
A tattered exorcist coat.
A scorched spell seal.
A child's doll, twisted into a spiral by dried blood.
The deeper he went, the quieter the air became. Until the silence wasn't just absence, but presence.
A breath waiting to be drawn.
At the center of the city stood the ruins of a chapel.
Its spire was broken, its stained-glass windows long shattered. A spiral had been carved into the altar. Black candle stubs surrounded it. The scent of sulfur lingered.
He went below.
Basements like these used to hold relics and warded records. Now they held bones.
Laid out in concentric rings.
Dozens of skeletons, arms crossed, mouths stitched shut with iron wire. Each skull was polished clean.
He stood very still.
And then turned back.
He followed a collapsed stairwell deeper into the city's heart, navigating through alleys where thorned ivy cracked through stone. Eventually, he reached a reinforced tunnel door, half-covered by mud and vine.
A Guild seal was still etched on the rusted plate.
Safehouse C-11.
He forced it open and stepped inside.
Dust clung to the air. The passage was narrow and steep. Lantern hooks lined the walls. Crates were piled near the back, rotted but untouched.
And in the far corner—
Someone sat.
Still. Silent.
Pao reached for his blade—but the man didn't move.
Not until he spoke.
"You're late."
Pao froze.
The man's voice was dry and thin. He wore a patched exorcist's coat, long-faded. The emblem of the First Flame Division hung over his chest—a division lost in the Siege of Vareth five years ago.
His beard was gray. His eyes were hollow.
But alert.
"I don't know you," Pao said cautiously.
The man chuckled. It was a sound like flint scraping steel.
"Doesn't matter. You don't know you either."
Pao stepped forward, keeping his distance.
"What do you mean by that?"
The man raised a trembling hand and pointed at Pao's chest.
"The Lanternbrand. Solon's mark. He only used that seal once before."
Pao didn't answer.
"You dream of the pit, don't you?" the man whispered. "Of the chain. The fire. The throne."
Pao's blood turned cold.
The man leaned forward, eyes sharp now, his smile humorless.
"You think that's prophecy? No. That's memory."
He gestured behind him to a sealed vault door at the back of the shelter.
"Open it. The truth's inside."
Pao didn't move.
"You want answers?" the man said. "That's where they are. Solon tried to bury what you were. Tried to carve it out of you. But Kezrith doesn't forget."
The name flared in Pao's head like a wound.
He stepped toward the door.
It took effort to push it open. The glyphs on the frame were dead, the seal long broken. Inside was a small round chamber, lit by a single dormant glowstone.
At the center: a pedestal.
And resting atop it—
A ledger. Bound in blackened hide. Cracked. Stained.
His hands trembled as he reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the cover, he was elsewhere.
A burning city.
Screams echoing through alleyways.
Seven towers collapsing in sequence like candles blown out in a storm.
And standing amid the ash—
A boy.
Clothed in robes of spiral-threaded silk. Face hidden beneath a mask of polished bone.
He lifted a hand.
The ground opened.
And from it came fire—not red, but black, licking the sky like oil flames.
He turned. Saw a reflection in broken glass.
Not his face.
But his eyes.
Pao's eyes.
He gasped and stumbled back, coughing blood. The ledger burst into flame and crumbled into ash, smoke curling upward into the vault's ceiling.
He staggered out into the outer chamber.
But the old man was gone.
Not just missing—erased. No scent. No trace.
Only the back wall bore a new mark—freshly scratched, in shaky script:
He knows now.
They all do.
Run.
The bells rang at dusk.
Pao stood at the edge of Ashmoor's southern bridge, listening as the sound echoed across the ruins—deep, thunderous, wrong.
It wasn't a Guild bell.
It was a Spiral Bell.
The cult knew he was here.
And they were coming.
He turned from the city, cloak flaring in the ash-filled wind.
Kezrith Vorr's name still pulsed in his head.
And so did a question he didn't want to answer:
Was he born to destroy the Monarchs…
or born as one of them?