The wind changed first.
It swept across the city of Biringan in whispers—soft, almost melodic, yet hollow at the core. The kind of wind that carried omens. The kind that made even the most ancient wards murmur in unease.
Grim stood at the edge of a marble cliffside balcony, his gaze fixed eastward where the ocean shimmered not with sunlight, but with something older—something deeper. The Hollow Sea stretched out like a memory no one dared to remember. Smooth. Silent. Unmapped.
Elyse joined him, her boots barely making a sound against the crystal-white stone. The scent of salt hung in the air, but there was no movement across the waves. No gulls. No breeze. No ripples. Just a vast, unnatural stillness.
"They call it the Sea Where Stars Go Silent," she said quietly. "Because even light doesn't know how to reach its depths."
Grim nodded, but said nothing. The seals on his arm pulsed softly beneath his sleeve—three marks of trials passed, four still waiting like slumbering gods. And somewhere in that abyss, Dungawan—the Watcher of the Void—waited.
From behind them, a low hum echoed through the stone halls of Biringan's High Archive. A gate shimmered open briefly, revealing a robed emissary who bowed and spoke without raising his head.
"The Elders bid you farewell, Prime Summoner. No guide will follow you past the Veiled Steps. What lies ahead belongs to the realm between."
Then, as quickly as he came, he vanished. The message was clear. This was no longer the realm of scholars and blessings. They were walking into legend.
Elyse clutched her spear tighter. "Do you feel that?"
Grim did. Not just in the air, but in his bones. A pressure, subtle but growing. The kind of pressure that bent the edges of reality itself. He turned his head slightly, scanning the still sky—and froze.
A ripple. Just beyond the clouds, like a crack in space. It was brief, but he felt it in his soul. Watching.
"He's stirring again," Grim said, his voice colder than he intended.
Elyse tilted her head. "Who?"
"…Xavier."
He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. A shadow, long and coiled like a serpent, had flickered across his vision—not from the sky, but from somewhere beyond it. An ancient presence watching through Xavier's eyes. It had seen Grim. And it remembered.
**Apep.**
A god long thought dead. The Enemy of Ra. Devourer of light. Whisperer of eternal night.
Grim could feel the imprint now, faint but spreading. The blessing Apep had branded onto Xavier's soul was not meant to empower—it was meant to corrupt. To drown the man he once was and mold him into something else.
A herald of darkness.
"Xavier's no longer just a summoner," Grim murmured. "He's become… a disciple. Of something old. Something foul."
Elyse's expression darkened. "Then he's not the Xavier we knew. He's just a vessel now."
Their attention was drawn suddenly to the waterline.
Something moved.
Far beneath the glassy surface, the Hollow Sea stirred—not in waves, but in tremors. As if something vast had awakened far beneath the floor of the ocean. A distant hum vibrated through the soles of their boots.
Grim stepped forward. "It's time."
Together, they descended the spiral path carved into the cliffside. Each step was lined with quiet runes that flickered as they passed—wards meant to hold back whatever dwelled beyond the shore.
At the base of the cliffs, they reached the Veiled Steps—twelve stone platforms that floated above the ocean, each one glowing faintly with starlight. The final platform ended in nothingness. Just open sea and a horizon where no stars dared to shine.
Grim summoned a flicker of Silagan's shadow—a small wisp that twisted into the form of a bridge, guiding them to a hovering skiff constructed of lunar metal. It pulsed faintly, responding to his seal.
Elyse climbed aboard first. "Feels like the silence is alive."
"It is," Grim replied. "They say Dungawan's gaze strips away everything—your lies, your hopes, even your voice."
"And if we pass?"
"Then we get answers. Maybe even truth."
As the skiff glided forward, the silence deepened. Time felt slower. The sky dulled into a grey-violet haze, and their reflections in the water twisted—warped versions of themselves stared back from the depths.
Then came the sound.
A heartbeat.
Slow. Heavy. Wet.
It echoed from beneath the sea. Not one heart, but many—beating in time. The sea rippled at last.
And far beneath them… something blinked.
A single, massive eye. Cold. Predatory. Ancient.
Krakus.
The second general of the Underworld.
His presence alone made the water churn with phantom screams. Tentacles like abyssal towers coiled below, shifting with unnatural grace. Not attacking. Not yet.
Just waiting.
Grim's pulse quickened. He clutched his sleeve where the seal pulsed, the silver threads glowing faintly.
"That's not just a monster," Grim murmured. "That's Krakus."
Elyse turned toward him sharply. "You know its name?"
He nodded slowly. "During the last trial... Silagan whispered it. A warning. He said if the seal grew stronger, the ones below would take notice. The second general of the Underworld—Krakus, Sovereign of the Drowning."
She frowned. "So this one… is not like Berbalang."
"No," Grim said. "This one doesn't wear faces. It wears oblivion."
And then, the sea moved.
A wave that didn't crash. It rose silently, parting the clouds and sky with gravity-defying force. A tidal wall taller than mountains—but it didn't fall. It froze midair, held in place by a presence older than balance.
**A test. A message. A warning.**
The skiff trembled, the very air vibrating with pressure. The runes along the platform dimmed. A single, abyssal tentacle breached the surface—scaled like night, covered in runes that burned with inverted flame.
It didn't strike.
It reached.
**Toward Grim.**
The seal on his arm glowed violently, pushing back the abyss. Light and shadow clashed like dueling wills in midair.
Grim narrowed his eyes. "He's testing me."
"No," Elyse said, raising her spear. "He's remembering you."
The tentacle retreated. The sea calmed. But the presence remained.
Watching. Waiting.
Krakus had seen enough.
Grim exhaled slowly. "They know we're coming."
"And they're ready," Elyse whispered.
The Underworld was no longer sleeping.
And somewhere beneath the Hollow Sea, the stars were still screaming.
The skiff sailed forward as if pulled by something unseen—drawn deeper into a silence that wasn't just absence of sound, but the very negation of presence.
The Hollow Sea shifted.
Its surface shimmered, no longer reflecting the sky, but instead a void-like mirror showing constellations that didn't exist. Then the skiff slowed, hovering above an anomaly in the water: a perfect circle where the sea did not ripple, did not reflect, did not breathe. It pulsed with an invisible hum.
Beneath it—a spiraling gate of stone and light, engraved in symbols that bent the eye to look at them. It opened slowly, folding inward like the petals of a dying star.
"Ready?" Grim asked, though the words came out muffled, as though they were already underwater.
Elyse nodded. "Let's not drown before the truth."
They dove.
The skiff submerged effortlessly, encased in a translucent barrier woven from Silagan's shadow and Elyse's stabilized gravity field. The world turned blue, then indigo, then black. Depth had no meaning here—only descent.
Their descent ended in a silent chamber beneath the sea: a vast, domed temple suspended between worlds. Pale stone arches framed an endless void beyond cracked glass-like walls. This was the Sanctum of Silence—the final resting place of a forgotten faith.
Floating ruins circled the core chamber like orbiting debris, frozen mid-collapse.
Then, sound disappeared.
Not dulled. Gone.
Grim opened his mouth to speak, but no voice came. Even the beat of his heart became a memory. The seal on his arm began to glow softly, and with it came pressure behind his eyes—visions, cold and precise, crashing into him like tidal waves of memory.
**Stars falling. Constellations bleeding starlight. The Maw rising.**
Then came Dungawan—not in form, but in presence.
A pillar of twilight and void, cloaked in layers of time and distance. It did not speak in words, but thoughts that *bent*. Its gaze pierced through the veil of illusion. Through flesh. Through fate.
"The stars do not fear death," the echo intoned within Grim's mind. "They fear being forgotten."
He staggered, vision fracturing like glass. He saw futures—dozens, hundreds—branching and collapsing like dying suns. Himself kneeling, bleeding, roaring. Elyse falling. Xavier triumphant. Xavier broken. Cities torn open by something deeper than magic.
Each vision was a choice. Each thread a consequence.
Grim gritted his teeth and focused on a singular presence.
Elyse.
She floated at the far end of the chamber, surrounded by broken moons suspended in stasis. Her hands trembled. Her eyes wide. She was seeing her own illusions.
Grim pushed forward, shadows wrapping around him protectively. He reached out—his fingers brushing hers—and the temple *responded*.
Light surged.
Reality warped.
The illusions shattered.
Elyse gasped as sound rushed back into the world in a wave of distorted wind and ringing echoes.
"…Grim?"
"I'm here," he said softly.
A pulse erupted from the chamber's heart. The void shifted.
A new shape emerged.
Dungawan's echo—its will coalescing into a vaguely humanoid silhouette cloaked in ever-changing stars. No face. No voice. Just a radiance of cosmic silence.
It stepped forward, gaze fixed on Grim.
"You seek the truth," it whispered—not aloud, but within. "Then take my eye, and see what cannot be unseen."
A droplet of starlight hovered before Grim's chest.
Without hesitation, he touched it.
The moment he did, the chamber exploded with visions: timelines bleeding into one another. Threads of fate snapping like strings. Xavier kneeling before Apep, crimson eyes alight with madness. Krakus waiting with unfathomable patience in a sea of bones. And behind it all… something vast. Something with many mouths. The Maw.
Grim screamed, staggering as blood dripped from his nose.
Elyse caught him, grounding him with her grip.
Dungawan's voice echoed once more:
"A disciple seeks a door. But it is not Xavier who shall open it. It is you, Prime Summoner—unless you choose to lose everything."
The echo began to fade, the Sanctum dimming as the star-thread dissolved.
Elyse whispered, "Grim… what did it give you?"
He opened his eyes—one of them now tinged with violet starlight.
"I can see… possibilities," he breathed. "But they come with a cost."
She didn't ask what that cost was.
Instead, she nodded, resolute. "Then we make sure the future we choose is worth the price."
Together, they turned from the altar as the Sanctum began to collapse behind them, drifting upward through the dark.
And far below, Krakus stirred again—watching, calculating.
The sea would not remain silent for long.
As Grim and Elyse broke the surface of the Hollow Sea, the sky above them shuddered.
No storm. No lightning. Just a *tremor* in the heavens—like the stars themselves had blinked.
Unseen by mortal eyes, the constellations twisted subtly. Ancient patterns realigned, their meanings forever altered. Somewhere across the archipelago, gifted children cried out in their sleep. The moon pulsed once, then dimmed.
And far from Biringan—within a shadow-wreathed sanctum where even the wind refused to linger—Xavier opened his eyes.
He had been meditating, hands bleeding into a summoning circle carved with glyphs not meant for this world.
But now, something had changed.
He felt it.
A tug—not of summoning, but of synchronization. Something had aligned… or awakened.
A slow smile curled across his face. Not triumph. Not relief.
*Recognition.*
He stood, eyes glowing a deep crimson laced with shadowy silver.
"So," he murmured, gazing into the void beyond his temple, "he touched the Eye."
Behind him, the shadows twisted.
The Crimson Crescent's inner circle gathered in silence, cloaked and reverent.
"What does this mean, my Prophet?" one of them asked.
Xavier turned slowly, his voice low and filled with something ancient.
"It means the last veil is thinning. The Maw is stirring… and the Prime Summoner just took one step too close to the abyss."
He raised his hand.
A portal opened—one made of crackling lines etched in reversed constellations.
"Send word to Sitan. Begin the Rite of Sundering. If Grim Arclight insists on chasing fate…"
A pause.
"Then let us break fate before he reaches the end."
The temple's walls bled shadow as the gate pulsed.