WHISPERS OF THE LOST

The passage stretched before Elara like a gaping wound, its walls pulsing with an eerie light. The air was thick, heavy with something old, pressing against her skin like unseen hands. Each step she took echoed in the vast emptiness, the silence stretching taut between her and the unknown.

Rael moved beside her, his hand hovering near his blade, crimson eyes scanning every shadow. He was tense, his usual smirk replaced by something colder. More alert. He hadn't heard the whispers. But she had.

And now, they were growing louder.

You carry what was lost. And now, it must be found.

Elara's fingers tightened around the pendant, its cold surface thrumming in response. The power inside it pulsed in sync with the sigils lining the passage, like a heart that had been waiting to beat again. She swallowed hard, forcing herself forward.

"Tell me you're not just following voices in your head," Rael muttered.

Elara shot him a glance. "Would it make a difference?"

Rael sighed. "Probably not."

They pressed onward, the tunnel narrowing as the sigils flickered and dimmed. The air shifted, growing colder. Then—

A shape emerged from the darkness ahead.

A cloaked figure, shrouded in tattered fabric that rippled as if caught in an unseen wind. They stood unmoving, featureless beneath the hood. No visible eyes. No breath. But Elara felt their gaze settle on her, heavy and unyielding.

She swallowed. "Who are you?"

The figure did not speak.

Instead, the whispers in her mind sharpened, distinct now, layered voices speaking as one.

Not who. What.

A flicker of movement. The shadows around the figure rippled, parting just enough for something else to step forward. A second figure, smaller, moving with slow, deliberate steps.

A child.

Elara's breath caught. The girl looked no older than ten, her pale skin glowing faintly in the dim light. Her dress, simple and worn, was soaked at the hem as if she had walked through water. But her eyes—

Black. Deep and endless, as if she carried the void within her.

Elara took a hesitant step forward. "Are you—?"

The girl lifted a hand.

Elara's vision fractured.

She stood in a city she did not recognize. Towers of black stone stretched into a sky streaked with violet lightning. The streets pulsed with a dark energy, cracks in the cobblestone revealing something beneath—something shifting, writhing.

Figures moved around her, their faces blurred, their voices a symphony of whispers. They walked with purpose, heads bowed, hands clutching objects wrapped in cloth. Artifacts. Relics. Pieces of a past they had fought to protect.

At the center of the city stood a monolith, impossibly tall, its surface engraved with the same sigils from the tunnel.

Elara's heart pounded. This isn't real. This is—

A memory.

The ground trembled. A deafening crack split the sky, and in the distance, something came through.

A tear in reality. A chasm of shifting void. And from its depths, figures crawled forth—twisted mockeries of the people they once were, their forms distorted, hungry.

Screams.

The city burned.

Elara turned, desperate to move, but her body was not her own. She was not Elara here. She was someone else. Something else.

A voice rang out over the chaos. Not in panic. Not in fear.

A command.

Seal it. Now.

The figures around her obeyed, rushing toward the monolith, their hands raised as the sigils ignited with blinding light. The pendant in Elara's grasp burned, as if answering an unspoken call.

The world blurred—

Elara fell back into herself, gasping for breath. The cold stone of the passage pressed against her palms. Rael was beside her, his hands gripping her shoulders, his expression alarmed. "Elara! What the hell just happened?"

She sucked in air, her heartbeat hammering in her ears. Her vision cleared, the cloaked figure and the child still standing before her, unchanged. But now—

Now she knew.

She looked down at the pendant in her grasp, its once-faint glow now burning like a dying star. Her fingers trembled as she clenched it tighter.

"They didn't just seal something away," she whispered. "They sacrificed everything to lock it out."

Rael's grip on her arms tightened. "Lock what out?"

The little girl smiled.

The whispers answered for her.

The Forgotten One.

Elara's blood ran cold. She staggered to her feet, her gaze locking onto the child's. "Then why are you showing me this?"

The girl's smile faded. Her black eyes darkened, the void within them shifting. And for the first time, her lips parted.

Because it never left.

A pulse of energy erupted from the tunnel walls. The sigils flared violently before shattering, their glow extinguished in an instant. The air grew thick, suffocating. And from the depths of the darkness behind the figures—

Something moved.

Rael drew his blade, stepping in front of Elara. "We need to go. Now."

Elara barely registered his words. Her entire body was frozen, locked in place as something deep within the tunnel stirred.

It was no longer just whispers.

It was awake.

The cloaked figure lifted their head, and for the first time, she saw their face—

A reflection of her own.

Elara's heart stopped.

The ground beneath them collapsed.