Date: February 12, 542 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
The darkness in the Hall of Atlanteans seemed alive. Kaedan lay in the crater left by Mirza's blow, feeling the world slowly slip away from him. His left vambrace was gone, and the cuirass was pressed into his chest. Each rasping breath brought a flash of sharp pain.
"Hey... are you alive?" Olaf's voice, coming from the shadow of the corridor, sounded to Kaedan like a sound from another world.
Bert and Olaf, who had been hiding on Iskon's orders, rushed into the hall. Seeing the broken bodies of their leaders, the knights froze for a moment in horror. But the Order's discipline took over. They quickly scooped up Kaedan and Iskon, who were barely conscious, and dragged them towards a narrow tunnel hidden behind a fallen statue.
Iskon, whose left arm flopped limply with every movement, opened his eyes. His gaze focused on the exit from the hall, where the heavy, receding presence of the Orc was still felt.
"Stones..." Iskon whispered, his voice barely audible. "Olaf... gather stones at the entrance."
As soon as they were inside the tunnel, the knights lowered the wounded to the ground. Iskon, overcoming the monstrous pain in his shattered joints, reached his right hand towards the pile of rubble Olaf had hastily gathered. His Vessel was empty, but the young man scraped out the last crumbs of his essence, turning the remnants of his will into a command.
"Scale: Cave-in!"
The small pebbles began to expand rapidly, filling the passage with a crash. Tons of obsidian and granite sealed the tunnel in an instant, cutting the group off from the Hall of Atlanteans. The deafening noise of the collapse subsided, replaced by ringing silence and the smell of stone dust.
Kaedan leaned his back against the cold tunnel wall. The darkness here was absolute, only the dim glow of Olaf's damaged cuirass provided any light. The young man closed his eyes, allowing his Warrior-level regeneration to begin its painful work.
"Broken..." Kaedan touched the spot on his left arm where his basalt vambrace had been only recently. The emptiness where it should have been felt like a real wound. "Mirza didn't just break the stone. He broke my confidence. I thought I had caught up to Iskon, that I was ready to stand alongside the strongest. But the Herald... he didn't even consider it a fight. To him, we were merely trash underfoot."
The feeling of his own inferiority burned Kaedan more than his broken ribs. He remembered how Iskon, even crippled, had found the strength to seal the tunnel.
"Iskon is always a step ahead. Not because his Spirit is better, but because his will knows no bounds. And I... I still rely on the thickness of my stone. If the stone breaks, I become no one."
In this silence, trapped under hundreds of tons of earth, Kaedan began to grasp a bitter truth. To become a Pillar, it wasn't enough for him to simply increase density. He needed something that wouldn't break along with his armor. An inner core, as Grak had once said.
"We can't stay here long," Bert spoke up, bandaging Iskon's wound. "The air density in this tunnel is dropping. We need to move deeper."
"Let's go..." Kaedan responded hoarsely, struggling to his feet.
He looked into the darkness of the tunnel. Somewhere ahead was the Central area of the Temple. And there too were Grak, Liana, and Elwin. Kaedan didn't know what state they were in, but he felt that the time of their childhood had definitively ended in that Hall of Atlanteans. Now their path lay through defeats and pain. And only those who could rise after a Herald's blow would be worthy of seeing what the Temple concealed.
The group moved slowly into the depths, leaving behind the collapsed entrance and the echo of their defeat. Kaedan walked, leaning on the wall, and in each of his steps, there was less pride but much more of a heavy, leaden resolve. He would regain his vambrace. And he would make it such that no Herald in this world could shatter it.