They rode without pause.
Mist clung to the fields, creeping low along the grass like a crawling fog, as if trying to pull them back toward Gorehill. But Leon pushed them forward. South-east, past the old timber fences and rusting river mills, following the broken map etched into Tomas’s mory. A place where the land bent unnaturally—a forgotten scar.
The site of the fourth seal.
By midday, the sun never rose. Only a grey veil stretched over the sky, thick enough to choke the horizon. Birds stopped singing. Even the horses breathed quieter, nostrils flared, hooves careful. The road twisted into forest.
The caravan slowed. Trees here weren’t right. No leaves. No bark. Just black limbs—bone-thin and slick with a sheen that refused to reflect light. Elena glanced to her side and realised sothing worse.
No one rembered entering the woods.
She reined in her horse. "Leon. This isn’t right."
He looked around. Riders stirred. Blank stares slowly shifted to unease. "We crossed no marker. No border. Nothing."
Tomas muttered, "But I dread of this place."
Leon nodded. "We’re here."
They dismounted.
No camp this ti.
Just weapons drawn and every breath sharpened.
They found the monunt half buried beneath moss and stone. A monolith with no markings—until Elena stepped close. The surface pulsed. And a single word erged, carved in ash
REMBER.
She fell back.
The air shifted.
And around them, the forest stirred.
Just for a heartbeat. But when it did again, three riders were gone.
No scream. No warning. Just space where they had been.
Leon growled. "Stay close!"
Elena clenched her fists. "It’s feeding."
"On what?" Tomas asked, shaking.
"Us."
A cry echoed through the trees—Nora’s voice.
But they all knew Nora was gone.
Elena whispered, "It’s copying them now."
They circled up. Backs to each other. Eyes on every shadow.
The monolith pulsed again.
Leon stepped toward it. "We break it. Now."
He raised his blade—but it froze in the air.
His hand shook.
And then... he forgot why he’d drawn it.
Elena rushed forward, grabbing his wrist. "It’s inside your mind!"
Leon blinked, eyes clearing. "Right. Right."
She turned to the monolith, pulled a dagger, and drove it into the ash word.
The ground scread.
Trees bent backwards. The wind spiraled, ripping through clothes, slicing through sound.
And the fog exploded.
When it cleared, the forest was gone.
They stood in a crater.
And in the centre, the fourth seal lay broken—its core a glass eye, cracked and weeping black fire.
Leon knelt beside it. "One more sealed."
Tomas fell to his knees. "How many more before we run out of people?"
Elena didn’t answer.
The wind above the crater hissed—a thin, threading sound that slithered across their skin and dragged through their thoughts like nails across wet cloth. Tomas still knelt by the seal, rocking slightly, mumbling nas under his breath. His own. His brother’s. His mother’s.
Elena didn’t move.
Because the seal wasn’t just broken.
It was alive.
The cracked glass eye twitched.
As if it was focused.
Leon stepped between her and it, blade low, voice even. "Back away."
She didn’t.
Instead, she stepped closer.
"Elena—"
"It knows now," she said softly, almost srized. "It’s choosing..."
Leon swore under his breath and grabbed her arm, pulling her back just as another pulse radiated from the eye—like a silent bell. There was no sound. But every rider in the clearing staggered, clutching heads or gripping weapons as nausea crashed through them.
One rider vomited.
Another scread and ran—only to trip and vanish the mont she crossed the crater’s edge.
The fog returned.
Fast.
From beneath the earth this ti.
Elena spun in place, eyes flickering with sothing half lit from within. "It’s coming."
Leon turned to the others. "Form ranks. Protect the edge. Whatever cos through that fog—don’t let it reach the seal."
Tomas scrambled up, still trembling. "What if it’s already inside?"
"Then we fight from the inside out."
The fog surged again.
Shapes began to form.
But they weren’t monsters.
They were familiar.
Illusions.
A mother carrying a basket. A rider who’d fallen two days ago. An old teacher from Elena’s childhood.
Each figure looked wrong.
Their mouths moved too fast. Their feet didn’t touch the ground. And their eyes—
—they were mirrors. Perfect, silver black reflections.
"They’re not real," Leon growled.
Elena’s hand tightened around her dagger. "They don’t have to be. They only need you to believe they are."
The illusion figures stepped closer.
And one of the younger riders, Alden, dropped his sword. "Mum?"
He took a step forward.
Leon moved—fast, too fast—and slamd his blade into the ground between Alden and the illusion. "No. That’s not your mother. That’s what took her shape."
The illusion paused.
Smiled.
Then turned to ash.
But it wasn’t retreating.
It was learning from them.
Each illusion lted and reford—faster now, sharper, shedding false skin for shapes they hadn’t seen before.
The man with no shadow stepped into the fog.
Not a copy this ti.
The real one.
And this ti, everyone saw him.
No footsteps.
No breath.
Just presence.
His voice—when it ca—was wind and gravel, a dry rasp that echoed in bones, not air.
"Elena Greystone. Leon Thorne. Tomas of Gorehill. All are nad. All marked."
Leon stepped forward. "We don’t care about your marks."
"You should."
The shadowless man raised a hand.
And the seal behind them cracked further.
Elena scread.
The pulse from the eye was no longer a signal.
It was a summon.
And sothing had answered.
From beneath the crater, the ground split, like jaws parting.
Leon lunged forward and drove his blade into the seal’s edge. "Now, Elena!"
She moved.
Both hands gripped her dagger.
She closed her eyes.
And willed herself to rember.
Every na she’d ever heard. Every one she’d ever spoken. Every one she’d lost.
The dagger burned.
Her voice rose.
"By the weight of mory and the binding of breath—you will not take what was never yours!"
She drove the blade into the crack Leon made.
The eye shattered.
The ground scread again—but this ti it was the seal screaming.
And the shadowless man—
He staggered back.
Flickered.
And vanished.
The fog collapsed inward, sucked into the broken seal like smoke into fla.
When it was done, the crater was silent.
The riders were coughing, shaking, alive.
Tomas stood—barely.
Leon turned to Elena.
But she had already fallen to her knees.
Her eyes glowed faintly, and for a heartbeat, her voice wasn’t hers.
Then she collapsed.
Leon caught her.
Held her.
And for the first ti since the Hollow, he was afraid, not of death.
But of what might live inside her now.
Of the remaining riders, only five could still speak.
They gathered under a blackened ridge at the crater’s edge—faces pale, breath shallow, eyes fixed on the motionless girl in Leon’s arms. The wind had stilled, but the air around Elena Greystone was thick, like it bent away from her skin. As though sothing unseen coiled near, watching.
Tomas paced nearby, clutching a waterskin and muttering again.
"Is she... alive?" Alden whispered.
Leon didn’t answer imdiately. He touched her throat—steady pulse. Her breath shallow, but there.
Then her lips moved.
A na.
"Vel... lash."
Leon leaned in. "What?"
Elena’s eyes didn’t open.
"Velash," she repeated, almost like a whisper from soone else’s lungs.
One of the older riders flinched. "That’s an old word. From the highlands."
"What does it an?" Leon asked.
The rider swallowed. "It doesn’t. It’s not a word. It’s a... binding. They use it in oaths, in rituals ant to keep sothing in. Not out."
Leon looked back at the shattered seal.
The cracked eye still bled faint curls of black fla. But now the fire moved slow—almost tasting the air.
"Elena," he said softly. "If you can hear —let go of it."
Her hand twitched.
A spark danced down her arm, glowing briefly through her veins. Then it vanished.
And her eyes opened.
But they were not the sa.
They glowed faint violet. Not with magic—but power.
"I saw it," she said, voice hoarse. "The na that doesn’t belong."
Leon steadied her. "Whose na?"
Elena stared past him, into the ruin. "Mine."
Before he could speak again, the monolith—long silent—shuddered.
It had no more runes. No more ash. But it turned.
Not physically.
Just in their minds.
All of them felt it.
Like it faced them.
Like it noticed them.
Leon stood and drew his blade again. "If there’s more, we end it now."
But the eye of the seal did not stir.
Instead, a sound rose from the wound in the earth.
A laugh.
Soft. Distant.
Then
"Four fallen," the voice murmured. "And yet you still you hope."
It wasn’t the shadowless man.
This voice was colder. Female. Ancient and amused.
Elena’s face went pale.
"What is it?" Tomas asked.
Elena rose shakily. " It just wants to act as a witness."
Leon frowned. "To what?"
She looked him in the eyes.
"To what cos after the gates."
No one spoke.
Then a gust of wind swept the crater—harmless, but scented with iron and ash.
From the edge of the black fla, sothing flickered.
A mark.
In the dirt. Just beside the shattered seal.
Leon stepped forward and knelt.
It was a sigil.
Crude, jagged—cut into the stone by hand.
A single stroke, three points. Not magical.
But old.
And recognizable.
"Veyreth’s mark," he muttered.
Tomas stared at it, shaking. "Then this wasn’t his voice."
"No," Leon said grimly. "This was sothing older."
Behind them, the horses bucked nervously.
And one by one, the riders began to forget why they had gathered.
Their mories began to slip again.
Faces blurred.
Leon turned sharply to Elena. "We need to move. Now."
She didn’t protest.
But as they mounted and turned from the crater, her hand never left the dagger at her waist.
The seal was broken.
But sothing had stepped through.
And it had its eyes on her first.
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