Lira woke up before the sun rose. The pendant still pulsed softly against her chest.
It was different now.
Not heavy. Just real—like it was hers, finally.
The voice of her mother echoed softly in her brain.
"Don't run. Remember who you are."
She didn't feel like the girl she'd been yesterday. But she didn't yet know who she'd become either.
Outside the broken glass of Kael's hideaway, the cityscape of Hollowgate shimmered with lights of the city. Kael was moving somewhere in the distance. She felt it, as if negative gravity pulling her in.
She shrugged the blanket from her shoulders, rose to her feet, and gritted her teeth.
A spark stirred deep inside of her—dormant power reconfiguring like tangled wires behind her bone structure.
The pendant vibrated softly, synchronizing with her heartbeat.
Kael dropped into the understructure of Hollowgate from a maintenance shaft near Bridge Row. The air was warm, wet, and smelled like old rot and mana.
Another dungeon was forming.
He could feel it in the walls—pressure building, like thunder without a sound.
This one wasn't in the records. Too new. Or too well-hidden.
But the lines of fracture in the stone whispered of something deeper than monsters.
Like it knows I'm here.
He rested a hand on the hilt of his relic-blade, which still rested attached to the Devour sigil. A low thrum greeted his fingers.
"I'm not afraid of you," he muttered.
And then the relic had a response.
Not yet, you aren't.
Kael froze. This time, it wasn't just a whisper—this time it was audible. As if whatever resided within was improving at speech.
He stepped back, gasped for air, and walked toward the dungeon crevice. The air rippled where reality was distorted. The bleed had begun already.
A sigil blazed on the wall. Not a careless rune—his family crest, burned upside-down into the stone.
He spat in revulsion.
"Someone wants me to find this."
Elsewhere, in a high-rise tower hung with velvet curtains and faded portraits, a man in blue silk robes paced.
Lord Tyren Malcovar.
Not a prince. But of old blood. And rich enough to buy loyalty where the law could not pursue.
"She woke up?" he demanded of the informant on his knees before him.
"Yes, my lord. The girl has the relic with her now. Her entry accessed Tier III records in Crescent Row."
Tyren's eyes glittered. "So it is true. She did not die in the culling."
"She was seen with the boy."
Kael.
Tyren tightened a glass of wine until it broke.
"Bring me the girl," he said quietly. "We'll use her to pull him out. The court can't shield a Viremont if he walks into a trap."
"And if he doesn't come?"
Tyren smiled coldly. "Then she's valuable enough on her own."
Back in the Hollowgate underlayer, Kael stepped away from the sigil. He'd seen enough.
This wasn't just a dungeon.
It was a message.
And he was running out of time.