The Verge trembled.
Not from the footsteps of adventurers or the hum of awakened magic. No this was deeper. A tremor that pulsed through the bones of the earth and echoed in the marrow of monsters.
Somewhere beneath, in a forgotten sector of the ruin, the Fangs of Silence performed their ritual.
They had found something a sealed spire wrapped in cursed glyphs and chained in obsidian. They did not try to understand it. They only broke it open.
Their leader, eyes glazed in ritualistic trance, spoke one word:
"Unmake."
The reaction was immediate.
A scream tore through the air, not from a throat, but from space itself. A rift opened in the Verge's heart wrong, jagged, and alive. From it spilled creatures that shouldn't have existed. Limbs where eyes should be. Voices that sang in reverse. They bled corruption, and with every breath, they multiplied.
At the same time, just outside the eastern checkpoint of the ruin, a figure approached calmly wrapped in torn black cloth, face half-concealed, her feet barefoot against the cold rock.
She was one of the Marked killers forged by the Slave Sector to erase all trace of their lost experiments. Kael was her mission.
But the guards stationed there recognized something off in her presence. No identification, no guild, no signature trace.
They denied her entry.
She smiled once. Then killed them all.
Her movements were unnatural silent and abrupt, like death skipping a beat. Within moments, blood pooled at the gate and nearby adventurers turned to flee or fight. Most didn't get the chance.
Then, lightning shattered the sky.
A whispering voice followed.
"You should've stayed in the shadows, corpse-walker."
A Whisperborn dropped from above, her hair crackling with electric arcs, twin blades glowing with charged runes. She moved like a storm given form.
The clash was sudden.
The Marked met her, claws versus current. Sparks and blood splattered across stone.
But the Whisperborn was fast. Too fast.
She struck the assassin through the gut, sending her crashing into a nearby obelisk.
Still, the Marked laughed guttural and hateful and vanished into a nearby crack in the ruin as the monsters from the Fangs' breach began to spill outward.
The ruin had turned.
Back inside the Verge, Kael and his party pushed deeper.
He had just struck down a beast of solid bone and sinew, its body now burning faintly with black ash. Tessan grunted, panting.
"Something's wrong," Ryall said. "The air's too heavy… and these things this isn't the kind of resistance we were warned about."
Elira's eyes narrowed. "We're being set up. Or someone's been tampering with the ruin."
Kael said nothing, but he felt it too.
The Verge was waking. And it was angry.
The walls whispered in voices only he seemed to understand low murmurs in a forgotten tongue that chilled the soul.
Far above them, lightning still danced in the clouds.
Far below them, something else had begun to stir.
And somewhere in the ruin's depths… the Marked was coming for him.