Chapter 61: The Hollow Victory

The temple collapsed behind them in a roar of dust and screaming stone. Kael stumbled as the ground shuddered beneath his boots, his lungs burning as he sucked in air that tasted of ash and something metallic. Aurelia grabbed his arm, her fingers digging in hard enough to bruise as she yanked him forward.

"Move your ass, time-boy!"

Lucian was already ahead, his vampiric speed carrying him effortlessly over the shifting terrain. The dead forest around them groaned and splintered, blackened trees toppling like dominos as the earth itself rebelled against whatever ancient magic had just been undone.

Kael risked one glance back—just in time to see the last obsidian spire of the temple crack apart and vanish into the churning dust. The Shard was gone. Future Kael was gone. The Veil—

A sharp pain lanced through his skull, sudden and brutal. He staggered, vision swimming with fragmented images—

—a city burning under a blood-red sky—

—Aurelia standing over Lucian's broken body—

—his own hands, covered in black veins, reaching for something terrible—

Then Aurelia's palm connected with his cheek hard enough to snap his head sideways.

"Stay with me!" Her dark eyes burned with something fiercer than anger. "Whatever that thing showed you, it's not real."

Kael touched his stinging cheek. The visions were gone, but the dread remained, coiled tight around his ribs. "You don't know that."

Lucian materialized beside them, his sword still drawn. "We need to keep moving. The Veil's forces might be broken, but this land is still poisoned."

Aurelia opened her mouth to respond when the ground lurched violently beneath them. Kael hit the dirt hard, his palms scraping against jagged stone as the earth split open mere inches away—a yawning fissure exhaling air so cold it burned.

From the depths came a sound.

A whisper.

A laugh.

Kael knew that laugh.

Aurelia went rigid beside him. "No."

The fissure exhaled again, this time carrying more than just sound—a wisp of shadow darker than the surrounding night, twisting and coiling like living smoke. It solidified into a familiar silhouette, featureless save for two points of light where eyes should be.

"Did you truly think it would be that easy?"

The voice was different now—no longer Kael's own, but something older. Hungrier.

Lucian moved first, his sword flashing in a silver arc—and passed clean through the shadow as if it weren't there.

The figure laughed again, the sound vibrating through Kael's bones. "You broke the vessel. But the darkness? That was never yours to destroy."

Aurelia stepped forward, her daggers raised despite the tremor in her hands. "What are you?"

The shadow tilted its head. "The first truth. The last nightmare." It extended a hand that wasn't a hand, a limb elongating impossibly toward them. "And now... we begin again."

The world twisted.

Kael's stomach lurched as the forest, the fissure, the very air itself stretched and warped like melting glass. Lucian shouted something lost in the sudden roar of wind. Aurelia reached for him—

Then—

Silence.

Absolute and suffocating.

Kael blinked against the sudden darkness. He was... somewhere else. Somewhere wrong. The air was too still, too thick, pressing against his skin like stagnant water.

A single point of light flared to life ahead—a pale, sickly glow revealing a figure slumped against a crumbling wall.

Aurelia.

But not the Aurelia he knew.

This one was hollow-cheeked, her dark eyes sunken and dull. Chains coiled around her wrists, their links fused to the stone behind her. When she lifted her head, her cracked lips parted in a soundless scream.

Behind Kael, the shadow whispered:

"This is what comes next."