The shard vibrated in Leira's grip, softly at first, like the purring of some dying creature, then harder, pulsing in erratic surges that crawled up her arm. She tightened her fingers around it and forced her breath steady. The bond she felt inside her chest yanked again, violently.
Kael.
It wasn't like a voice. It wasn't even like she was just feeling him anymore.
It had become this sensation of something ripping, a thread pulled through bone, dragging her in a direction she had no choice but to follow.
The dead world shifted with each step she took. The cracked earth groaned under her boots, plates of dry ground grinding against one another in slow, miserable movements. Heat rose in shimmering waves, distorting her vision until even the horizon looked bent and broken.
Shadows scattered around her feet, not out of fear. They moved like animals recognizing something familiar in her… something marked. Something doomed.
The feeling in her chest jerked again, harder. Her lungs seized. She staggered forward, teeth clenched, clutching her chest as the burning thread dragged her toward a formation of jagged stone.
No…
Not stone. A wall.
A wall that stretched so high her neck ached just from trying to see the top. Its surface was made of the same cracked earth as the ground, but it… shifted, faintly, as though breathing. As though the world itself pulled in a long, suffering inhale.
"The Labyrinth."
The Veil's voice flickered through her mind in a thin, warbling line.
Weaker than before. Afraid.
"You know this place?", Leira thought inward to the Veil.
"I know only what it was. Not what it has become."
She placed a hand on the wall. It was hot…scalding. But beneath the heat, the surface felt almost… soft. Like parched skin stretched too tight.
The wall shuddered where she touched it.
The Veil hissed. "Leira… step back."
But the bond inside her pulled forward, harder than any warning. The wall split open down the middle, unfurling like a wound. A narrow passage appeared, stretching into a maze of violent angles and sweating heat.
Leira swallowed, her mouth dry as ash.
She stepped inside. The passage snapped shut behind her.
The air thickened instantly. Every breath scraped down her throat like sand was in the air. Her heartbeat echoed in the narrow corridor, bouncing between the cracked surfaces.
The walls shifted again, the sound a grinding rumble.
Like the entire labyrinth was reorienting itself around her.
"Do not let it shift your focus," the Veil whispered. "These halls were made to test memories. To teach Keepers what came before them."
"And now?"
"…Now it copies what it can not understand."
Leira didn't like the tremor in its voice.
The corridor branched into two. Then four. Then more.
Paths splitting like spider legs, disappearing into whorls of dust and ruin.
The bond tugged sharply at her sternum, it pulled her to the right… and she followed it.
But no matter how fast she walked, she couldn't shake the feeling that the labyrinth was keeping its eyes on her. The walls felt too close. Too aware. Every time she blinked, something changed, a new crack, a shift in temperature, the faintest whisper of movement behind her.
The shard in her hand pulsed once. Twice.
And the bond inside her chest screamed even louder now.
Leira to both knees, clutching her head as white hot pain exploded behind her eyes.
Kael…
It wasn't his voice, it wasn't a vision.
She felt a sensation of agony so sharp she tasted iron.
She pressed her forehead to the hot ground and gasped until the wave passed. When she looked up…
The corridor ahead had changed. No longer just a passage.
Now a wide chamber… filled with figures.
Her breath hitched.
They were not alive, in fact, they were not even fully formed. They flickered like mirages, humanoid shapes made of distorted light, many missing pieces, some with hands clasped behind their backs, others kneeling, others standing tall with ethereal remnants of authority in their posture.
"My Keepers," the Veil said quietly. "Before you."
But these weren't memories. They were reflections, scattered fragments of power that once belonged to those who came before her.
As she stepped toward them, one shifted.
A head turned.
Its face hollow.
Blank.
Yet somehow… familiar in its pain.
Leira stiffened. "Why are they looking at me?"
"They sense what's happening," the Veil murmured. "They recognize the bond ripping inside you. They know the ritual."
Leira's throat closed.
"Ritual?"
Silence.
The kind that chilled even the blistering air.
Finally, the Veil spoke, slow and broken:
"The Unmaking."
Her legs weakened.
"Leira… the shadows aren't just hurting Kael. They are rewriting him. Twisting him into something they can use against you. Against the Keepers. Against the Veil itself."
Her pulse pounded so hard it hurt.
"No," she whispered. "They can't do that. They can't just change him."
"Bonded souls are the most vulnerable," the Veil said, voice cracking. "What he feels, you feel. What you feel, he feels. They are turning his bond into a weapon."
Leira shook her head violently. "No. I cannot accept that."
A flicker of movement.
The nearest Keeper fragment raised an arm, pointing deeper into the labyrinth.
Leira followed its gesture…
…and saw a massive stone archway forming, twisting out of the ground like a spine. Beneath it lay something small. Metallic.
Her chest tightened.
She hurried to it, knees hitting the ground as she reached out.
They were shackles.
Two heavy iron restraints, cracked and torn open by something brutal. The metal was warm, in this impossible heat, and pulsed faintly, like a heart struggling to keep beating.
Kael's.
She knew it instantly.
His fear was embedded in the metal.
His fury lived in the cracks.
Her throat closed. She pressed the shackles to her forehead, and the bond inside her surged, screaming through every nerve.
He's close.
"He was dragged through here," she whispered. "This is some kind of trail."
"A prison pathway," the Veil trembled. "For the unmade."
Before she could respond…
A sound, like sharp object scraping against the stone beneath her feet.
It didn't come from behind her, it came from everywhere, echoing along the corridors, sliding across the shifting walls.
Leira froze.
"No," the Veil breathed. "Not here. Not in this place."
"What is it?" she whispered.
"…It followed you."
Her blood chilled.
The stalker.
She stood slowly, the shackles in one hand, the shard in the other. The corridor behind her shimmered, and the walls bent inward as if reacting to something passing too close.
"Leira," the Veil whispered, "don't blink."
Her eyes stung instantly from the heat. A flicker in her peripheral vision. She forced herself not to look.
Another flicker, even closer this time.
Her pulse jumped.
Don't look. Don't look. Don't…
She blinked.
And just like that, the creature was standing inside the archway.
Twisted. Crooked.
Too tall, its limbs bending at unnatural angles. Its body flickered between whole and torn apart. Its face was a blur, shifting masks sliding over one another as it did before, but it looked like more masks had been added to it.
It didn't breathe.
It didn't speak.
It just tilted its head, listening to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
The shard vibrated violently in her hand.
The creature took one step forward…
…or maybe it didn't move at all. Maybe the world moved around it.
She stumbled back.
The walls shifted, shuddered, and closed off the corridor behind the creature, trapping it with her.
"The labyrinth is reacting!" the Veil yelled. "Move, Leira! Now!"
She ran.
The stalker followed, in horrifying jumps, appearing closer each time she blinked. Her eyes burned, the heat warped her vision, turning the hallways into spirals.
She collided with a wall…no, the wall moved into her path.
The labyrinth was working against her.
"I need help!" she called out to the Veil. "Which way?!"
"I…I do not…Leira, I cannot sense! The labyrinth is cutting me off!"
Of course it was. Of course she was alone.
The stalker's limbs scraped the ground behind her, joints twisting like broken hinges.
Leira took a sharp turn…The bond yanked her sideways.
She fell hard, palms scraping against blistering stone. The shard skittered across the floor. She lunged for it… but it was too late.
The stalker's arm stretched toward her throat, moving like melting metal.
Leira rolled, grabbed the shard, and drove it upward on instinct.
The crystal met the creature's limb this time and a crack of blinding light erupted. But this had happened to it before so it was ready for her this time. This time, it got enraged. It let out a loud and sharp shriek, and reached for her throat with his other limb.
Leira forced her eyes to stay open, but the creature moved regardless.
"Why isn't it working?!" She asked the Veil. But before the Veil could respond, the stalker replied.
"We know who you are…and we will never let you go." It got very close to her face that she could smell the evil off of it. Its voice was so deep and harsh that the sound of it made the walls and floor vibrate, even the surface of her skin.
The stalker began choking Leira, choking the life out of her. She couldn't breathe, her eyes began bulging and getting teary, she couldn't get a word out to the Veil, she tried to peel its hands off but nothing worked, the shard fell out of her hand, she felt herself slipping. And as her body slowly began giving in to this attack, the bond in her chest tugged ever harder this time, and now, it was as if she heard his voice in her head, screaming for her to save him.
This gave Leira a sudden and short jolt of energy, enough for her to reach for the fallen shard, pick it up and stab the creature in its face…or its shifting masks, which shattered them, it began moving distortedly and then just like that…it simply stopped existing between one blink and the next.
Leira staggered to her feet, breath sharp. The bond pulsed in her chest again but it now felt weak, limping, fading.
"No," she whispered. "Kael, don't you dare give up."
She followed what was left of the pull, deeper into the labyrinth, corridors curving and collapsing behind her. The ground cracked as she ran. The air shimmered. Keeper fragments flickered into existence, watching silently as she passed.
The walls opened into a massive final corridor that led toward a boundary unlike anything she'd seen.
It looked like a sky, but not a real one. It was a swirling dome of shadows and light, colliding in violent spirals. The air beneath it trembled, vibrating with the faintest hum of power.
Leira stepped toward it, heart pounding, the bond inside her chest tightened…
Then severed. A snap so sharp she gasped, clutching her ribs.
Silence…cold, terrifying silence.
Then…the sound came again. But this time, it was not in her head.
A scream. It was raw, agonized, shattering the air.
It was his voice…Kael's.
Leira froze, her entire body trembling.
The sky split open. She looked back and there were three stalkers at the far end of the corridor behind her, it seemed like they were waiting and watching to see what she was going to do next.
Leira lifted the shard, jaw clenched, then turned back to the sky.
"Kael," she whispered, voice cracking, "I'm coming."
And she stepped toward the broken sky.