Chapter 34: The Rift Below

They didn't speak much on the journey back to the skimmer.

Ethan sat silently in the rear compartment, hands clenched around the journal, eyes dark with a storm of thought. The Warden's words clung to his mind like chains: You are the key and the curse… a lock.

Zeila sat across from him, watching, not speaking. She'd seen it too—the way the feral beasts had bowed their heads, the way Riftlight responded to Ethan's presence like a tide pulled by its moon.

Kael piloted with unusual quiet. Not even a sarcastic remark.

They all felt it.

This wasn't a hunt anymore. It was a countdown.

The Guild was waiting.

The gates opened before them, defenses crackling, guards stiff with tension. Word had already spread. Not about the shard—but about what had awakened.

Master Janek was the first to greet them, his usual sternness replaced with worry.

"You brought something back," he said, eyes darting between them.

Ethan nodded. "The second shard. And a warning."

He placed the shard on the reinforced platform beside the first. The two pulsed in sync—like two halves of the same broken rhythm.

"The third one?" Janek asked.

Ethan met his gaze. "Below. Deep in the Rift. The real one—not the surface tears we've seen. There's a gate beneath the world."

Janek's face paled.

"I've seen that name in the oldest texts," he said slowly. "The Rift Below. A living pocket of Riftspace. It's unstable, always shifting, and no team has ever come back from it."

Zeila stepped forward. "We're not a team. We're the lockpick."

Janek's jaw tightened. "Then I hope you're ready to break the last seal before something else does. Because something is coming, Ethan. All across the Hollow, reports are spiking—Bonebound sightings, Riftstorms, mutated beasts. Like the world is… preparing."

Ethan looked at the shards, then at his mark. It was glowing again. Not bright. But steady. Focused.

"I think it's not just the world preparing," he said. "It's me."

They geared up in silence.

Kael loaded a fresh stockpile of Rift rounds and plasma cells, his hands unnaturally steady. Zeila reforged her Voidsteel daggers with fresh oil from the forges. And Ethan, alone in the chamber with the shards, opened his mother's journal to the final marked page.

The third seal is not a door. It is a mirror. And he who breaks it will see the truth the Rift tried to bury.

Below the note, a single phrase was written in her hand:

"You were never meant to be a weapon. But you were born into war."

Ethan closed the book and looked out the window toward the Rift horizon.

Storms danced across the edge of the world, red lightning bleeding through the clouds.

"Time to go," he whispered.

The drop into the Rift Below wasn't clean.

The skimmer hit turbulence the moment they crossed into the zone—violent winds, shifting gravity, distortion tearing at sensors and instruments. Lights flickered. Pressure built.

Kael cursed. "We're being pulled in!"

Ethan stood at the rear hatch, eyes wide. The Rift wasn't just space here—it was alive. Colors swirled like ink in water, impossible shapes spiraling through miles of open air.

"This is it," he said. "The Rift Below."

Zeila gritted her teeth. "Then let's find the gate."

The skimmer pierced through layers of storm—and finally broke into open stillness.

They floated above a massive basin. Carved into its center was an ancient ruin—circular, spiraling inward like a black eye. And in the center of that spiral stood a tower of bone and crystal, reaching up toward them.

Kael hovered above it. "We land here and we're cut off. No extraction."

Ethan's voice was steady. "That's fine. We don't need an exit."

Zeila touched his arm. "We just need an ending."

And as the skimmer began its final descent into the abyss, Ethan looked down at the structure waiting for him—and felt the Rift begin to hum in tune with his heartbeat.

Three seals. One gate. One truth.

And beneath it all, something vast was waiting to wake.