They buried the Seed under six inches of ash-gray soil.
It wasn't a grave.
Not really.
But it felt like one.
The unit had gone silent after the Herald dissolved, its frame cracked, glow extinguished. Whatever had passed through the crater had overloaded the system's last safeguards.
Elian didn't say anything during the burial.
He just stood there, eyes half-lidded, mind distant.
The girl said a few words. The rotborne woman didn't. She watched the sky like it owed her blood.
By the time they finished, night had fallen.
Except…
…it wasn't night.
The sky still glowed in places. Dim veins of rotlight curled overhead like dying constellations, and the clouds no longer moved with the wind — they circled something unseen, spiraling slowly inward.
The wind had returned.
But it wasn't natural.
It whispered.
Not in sound.
Not in language.
In intent.
Elian heard it before the others. A pulling at the edge of his thoughts, like invisible claws tracing his skull from the inside.
He didn't flinch.
Instead, he sat at the edge of the crater, legs crossed, back straight.
The girl approached him slowly.
"You should rest."
He didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was calm. Too calm.
"There's no rest left for me."
She crouched beside him. "You keep saying things like that."
Elian turned his head toward her — not fully, just enough for her to see his eyes.
They were darker now.
Not in color.
In weight.
"Because they're true."
Before she could respond, a tremor rolled through the ground — small, brief, but wrong.
Elian stood.
A shimmer passed across the air — a flicker like oil rippling over fire — and then, the ground opened.
But not with violence.
With invitation.
A narrow crevice split beneath his feet, revealing a spiral of dark stone stairs descending into pitch black.
System messages blinked alive:
[Unauthorized Descent Opportunity Detected]
[Location: The Whispering Deep]
[Warning: Path exists beyond mapped layers]
[Threat Assessment: Impossible]
[Do you wish to proceed?]
[Y/N]
Elian exhaled.
"This again."
He looked at the girl.
"Stay here."
"Elian—"
He was already moving.
Down.
Into the dark.
The staircase coiled like a spine into the earth, and the farther he descended, the colder it got — but not physically.
Conceptually.
The world lost meaning the deeper he went.
No sound.
No color.
No threadlines.
Just raw, unshaped space.
He didn't light a torch. Didn't summon thread.
He walked with silence, and silence accepted him.
Until…
…a light.
Not real.
Memory.
It pooled across the stone like spilled thought — glyphs scribbled into the walls in languages that had never been taught.
And in the center of the final chamber:
A mirror.
Tall. Cracked. Covered in black thread like veins across glass.
It didn't reflect him.
It reflected another version of him.
Older. Scarred. Smiling in a way that promised only ruin.
The mirror whispered.
Not words.
A truth:
"You become what breaks them."
Elian smiled back.
He didn't touch it.
He didn't need to.
The path forward had already opened — and the world above didn't know it yet…
…but something had stepped in.