The cavern breathed.
Not in the way living things did, but with a slow, ancient rhythm—stone expanding and contracting as if the world itself slept uneasily beneath Kael's feet. Faint veins of luminous crystal ran through the walls like frozen lightning, pulsing dimly in response to something deeper than sound.
Kael stood at the cavern's threshold, cloak torn at the hem, blood dried along his knuckles. The trials beneath the Obsidian Pass had already pushed him past exhaustion, yet the Star Mark on his chest burned hotter with every step forward.
This place was calling him.
"Don't trust it," Lysara muttered behind him, her hand never straying far from the hilt of her blade. "Anything that calls usually wants something back."
Kael didn't answer. His eyes were locked on the massive stone dais at the cavern's center. Runes older than the clans themselves spiraled across its surface—broken, rewritten, layered atop one another by generations that had forgotten their own history.
At the dais's heart hovered a shard of fractured light.
It wasn't large. Barely the size of Kael's palm. Yet its presence bent the air around it, warping shadows and tugging at the mana in his veins like a tide.
"The Star Fragment…" murmured Elder Thorne, leaning heavily on his staff. His voice trembled—not with age, but awe. "I believed it lost. Buried when the First Ascension failed."
Kael finally turned. "Failed?"
Thorne's gaze darkened. "History calls it a sacrifice. Truth is… the clans were afraid of what came next."
Before Kael could press further, the cavern shuddered violently. Cracks split the floor, spilling pale light from below. The shard flared in response, its fractured edges spinning slowly, as if awakening.
And then—
Pain.
Kael dropped to one knee as something tore through his senses. Not mana. Not aura.
Memory.
He saw stars collapsing into themselves. Towers of crystal shattering under waves of corrupted light. Warriors bearing marks like his—burning, screaming, ascending… and then breaking apart as their bodies failed to contain what they had claimed.
A voice echoed through it all.
Power without purpose is extinction.
Kael gasped, clutching his chest. The Star Mark had changed—its familiar glow now threaded with thin lines of silver, spreading like roots beneath his skin.
Lysara rushed to his side. "Kael! Hey—look at me. Stay with us."
"I'm here," he said, though his voice sounded distant even to himself. "But… it's not just power. The fragment—it's a warning."
Before anyone could respond, slow applause echoed through the cavern.
"Well done," came a smooth, amused voice. "Most people only hear screaming when they touch relics like that."
From the shadows stepped a tall figure wrapped in ash-gray robes. His presence chilled the air, suppressing the natural mana flow like a suffocating fog. Pale sigils crawled along his arms—inverted runes, warped versions of the clan markings Kael recognized.
Elder Thorne stiffened. "Voidbound."
The man smiled. "Ah. You still remember us. How flattering."
Kael forced himself upright, eyes narrowing. "You've been following us."
"Observing," the Voidbound corrected. "Guiding, if you want to be generous. We needed to be sure the Starborn heir still existed."
Silence fell.
"Heir?" Lysara repeated sharply.
The Voidbound's gaze locked onto Kael with unsettling intensity. "You carry the incomplete ascension. A living bridge between what the clans fear and what they buried."
Thorne slammed his staff into the ground. "Enough riddles. State your purpose or leave this place."
The man laughed softly. "Leave? After centuries of waiting?"
The air twisted. Black veins of energy erupted from the cavern floor, forming jagged spires that blocked every exit.
"We're taking the fragment," the Voidbound said calmly. "And the boy—if he survives the extraction."
Kael felt it then—a pull far stronger than before. The fragment responded to both of them, torn between starfire and void.
No.Not torn.
Balanced.
Kael stepped forward before anyone could stop him. "It doesn't belong to you."
The Voidbound tilted his head. "Correct. It belongs to what comes after you."
Power surged through Kael's veins, wild and unfamiliar. The silver threads within his Star Mark ignited, weaving into a new pattern—unstable, incomplete, but alive.
For the first time since his awakening, Kael understood something terrifyingly clear.
The clans had not failed the First Ascension.
They had interrupted it.
And whatever Aerin was becoming out there in the world……this fragment was part of the same path.
Kael clenched his fist as starfire erupted around him, cracking the dais beneath his feet.
"Then you'll have to go through me," he said.
The Voidbound's smile widened.
"Oh, Starborn," he whispered. "That's exactly what we were hoping for."
The cavern screamed as power collided—and the world took its first step toward an ascension it was never meant to survive.