The ship scraped in against the pier like it had regrets. Phokorus loomed above the harbor, all jagged towers and quiet that had gone stale. The skyline hadn't changed—but the color was off. Looked sick. Like a face gone pale before a fight breaks loose.
Dax was first down the gangplank. His boots landed solid on the dock, no fuss, no pause. His gaze swept the streets like he expected something to shift if he stared long enough. "Smells off," he muttered. "Used to be spice and ink. Now it's all salt and burned rope."
Ezreal came next, coat wrapped tight, eyes narrowed like he was reading the skyline for trouble. "Fewer lamps lit. Either they're out of oil or someone's cutting corners on purpose."
Caylen hopped down after them with a bit more drama than necessary. Tried to land light, caught a loose stone, stumbled, then smoothed his coat like nothing had happened. "Can't really blame them," he said, pretending his ankle wasn't sore. "City looks like it's waiting for something ugly. When's the last time a gate guard met your eyes?"
"Didn't see any guards," Dax said. "Just silhouettes holding spears."
They didn't stick around. Streets felt stretched thin. Tension hung in the air like pitch that didn't dry.
Verek brought up the rear, eyes locked on the black spire driving up from the center of the city like a nail through a heart. The Spire was still there. Still watching.
Thimblewick shifted on Verek's shoulder, ears twitching. "Smells like things meant to stay buried are shifting again," he muttered.
"You don't have to be here," Verek said, voice low.
Thimblewick just grinned. "And miss the part where it all falls apart? Not a chance."
They took the backways. Narrow alleys, half-collapsed bridges, doors bolted shut behind dusty curtains. Not much traffic—just a few scholars moving too fast, heads bowed, whispering prayers into sleeves. An old woman sweeping her doorstep stopped as they passed. Didn't speak. Just stared, like she already knew how this ended.
The steps to the archive were older than most of the city. Cut deep into the hillside, slick with water that never dried, cold and close. They went down without a word. The torches on the wall still flickered fresh. Someone had beat them there.
Caylen broke the quiet. "We really doing this?" His voice barely carried.
Dax didn't stop. "We're here for answers. They're below."
"You sure about that?" Caylen's voice softened. "Places like this... they don't always offer answers. Sometimes it's just more questions with knives."
Ezreal gave a short laugh, no humor in it. "Then we dig politely. Still dig."
Verek reached the bottom first. His hand hovered over the seal in the stone—runes scraped and worn, still pulsing faintly.
He didn't look back. "It's already open."
The rest followed.
Caylen cracked his knuckles. "Alright. If we're walking into a dead archive, might as well make it one worth remembering."
The seal lit up. Stone shifted. The archive breathed, and the passage beyond exhaled dust.
The door didn't groan or whine. It just gave way. A wall sliding aside like it had been told to stay quiet. Nothing behind it but black. Not empty. Heavy. Like the dark wanted something.
Verek stepped through first, hand testing the air like it might hit back.
Thimblewick's fur bristled. "Walls remember," he said. "And not in the nice way."
They went single file. Even Caylen kept quiet. One hand rested on the hilt of his blade, the other ran along the damp stone like he needed the contact to prove he was still here.
Ezreal walked close, jaw clenched. He wasn't scared, not exactly—but there was something familiar in the way his eyes scanned the dark, like he expected to recognize it and didn't like that idea one bit.
At the bottom, the tunnel widened into a long chamber filled with stale air and thick dust. Torches flickered green. Shelves rose crooked with the weight of old texts and rusted steel. Relics lay half-buried in ash and webs.
Dax crouched beside what used to be a reading table, pushed ash aside with the back of a glove. "No footprints," he said.
"No dust disturbed," Verek added, studying the wall like it owed him something. "But someone passed through."
Ezreal crouched next to a broken reliquary. His hand hovered above a cracked seal. "More than one someone," he said. "They weren't subtle."
Caylen paced slowly, hands twitchy. His gaze jumped from sigil to sigil, something sharp in it. "This layout's wrong. Archives like this aren't supposed to spiral. They grid."
Verek didn't glance back. "This one spirals because it was built after the war. Not for scholars. For containment."
Caylen frowned. "You say that like it's a good thing."
"It's not."
No one spoke for a while.
Caylen stopped by a slumping lectern. One scroll had curled open, age cracking the ink but leaving it legible. He leaned in.
"Here," he said. "This one's too old to forge."
The others gathered around.
He scratched at his jaw, rough stubble under his fingers. "He wouldn't need an army," he said. "Just the right names… and the right bloodlines."
Silence fell like a weight. Heavy. Watching.
Dax spoke first. His voice was a hammer. "So he's using us."
Caylen looked at him, eyebrows pinched. "Using us how?"
Dax gestured around the room. "You said it. He's chasing relics, old blood, broken treaties. If Ezreal's family line leads to this mess, if you're connected by name or blood or both… maybe we're not a problem. Maybe we're pieces on his board."
Ezreal didn't move for a moment. Then his voice came cold. "Or bait."
They found the second vault later.
Its name had nearly rotted away—Sepulchra Arca, barely readable. The kind of name that only survived through bureaucracy and bad luck.
It was colder here. Not sharp cold, but the kind that nested under skin. The passage narrowed, spiraling tighter. The air got thicker the deeper they went. Shelves gave way to alcoves, and the walls filled with crystal-sealed relics—pendants, broken armor, hollow-eyed statues. Every single one gave off a pulse, faint and steady.
Caylen paused at one of the niches. A small object glowed inside. Dull gold through frost-glass. He sucked in a breath. "I know this one."
Ezreal stepped beside him. His eyes had that unreadable gleam again. "That's Ves'harad's Mark. The Mourning Song."
Caylen shifted, something old clicking into place in his posture. "My mother used to hum it," he said. "Said it kept her blade steady."
Ezreal turned to him quick, something hard creeping into his voice. "Was she military? From the old vanguard?"
"I don't know," Caylen said, laying his palm flat to the crystal. "Just flashes. But if she followed someone who mattered…" His voice trailed off.
"He'll come for you," Ezreal said, quiet. Flat. Like a fact.
Elsewhere, Dax moved alone.
He found a pedestal. On it sat a white ceramic cup, filled with ash. He didn't touch it. Didn't need to. The plaque read:
Orsil's Chalice.
He didn't know why it hit him so hard. The name meant nothing. But it rang in his ribs like someone had just hammered metal behind his lungs.
He remembered blood. Bronze. A dying man. A whisper.
Return it, before the tide wakes.
Dax stepped back slow, breath catching in his throat.
When he rejoined the others, his voice was quieter. "We're caught in something older than we are. Like history's just decided to pick up where it left off."
Ezreal arched a brow. "You a believer in fate now?"
Dax snorted, rough. "Not fate. But consequence? That I understand." He shrugged. "Close enough."
Beyond the crystal walls, the old road unraveled west, swallowed by a valley draped in silver mist. The hills beyond curled like broken spires of a shattered city—waiting and watching. Behind them, Phokorus shimmered—city of light and learning—but even its white towers seemed dull beneath a sky that refused to move. The Spire sat cold.
Inside the highest chamber, past stained-glass runes and a dais carved with ancient vows, five thrones circled a central flame. They were not empty.
King Torvald sat among them.
No crown weighed on his head. Only the deep indigo robes of Kings Port's oldest house, braided with silver from the fleet that once ruled the eastern seas. His eyes, closed moments before, snapped open sharp and clear. The years hadn't left him, but they no longer bent his shoulders.
The gates had opened.
The fleet had returned.
The king no longer stood apart from the Accord. He had come not to bow, but to strike.
"We can't assume," Torvald began, fingers steepled before him, "that trade alone will settle the lowlands. My marshals report cairns unearthed, stone markers broken. This isn't unrest. It's excavation. Violent and deliberate."
From his ironwood throne, Vargus Ironcrag grunted, arms folded over a battle-scarred breastplate etched with soot. "Things have always stirred in the dark," he said, voice like gravel scraping rock. "Only now the dark's looking back."
Loren Vinescar shifted beside him, eyes distant, voice soft like dry leaves. "The trees are twisting wrong," he said. "Roots turning under the city. There's a hush beneath Phokorus." He looked up sharply. "And it's not peace."
Torvald turned to the stained mosaic window behind them. A shard of morning light, cut down from the tower's spire—the Spire's shadow—fell like a pale blade across the marble. It pointed west.
Elsewhere, Phokorus pulsed with new life. Ships, gone for too long, crowded the harbor, sails flaring in winds that hadn't stirred in years. The skyline was heavy with banners from old trade houses returned. And yet…
At the Seventh Quay, the dockmistress woke every night gasping, lungs filled with phantom salt. Afterward, the only sound left was bells ringing deep beneath the harbor—bells from drowned spires no map could show.
She told no one.
But she started sleeping in her boots.
At the city's edge, Aelwryn no longer moved through the trees like she used to. She watched. Where once she danced on the wind, she now drifted like a half-remembered thought, brushing between warnings. Suspicion hung on her breath.
She had felt it.
Verek had entered the sanctum.
And the sanctum had responded.
She traced his name across her old records, fingers finding patterns no one else would've noticed. Something moved behind the details. Another presence. Not his. Hungrier. Older.
In the pool before her, waters thick with magic, she saw two monarchs' shadows—Kaelith wrapped in firelight, and the King of Salt and Stone standing beside her.
Their alliance had begun.
She turned from the scrying pool, face unreadable.
Behind her, the forest held its breath.
Far west, Marshal Tarrin Greystone studied campaign maps in flickering torchlight, half a goblet of wine forgotten at his side. The lines across the western range held—for now.
But his soldiers whispered in their tents.
Voices in stone. Roads that looped and vanished. Bells ringing where no steeple stood.
With the Accord reforged, reinforcements marched from Kings Port.
Hope stirred in his chest.
But when Tarrin closed his eyes, he saw only a valley of graves, stones etched with names he did not know.
And farther north, Vargus's spies brought rumors stranger still:
A tower had appeared.
Not built.
Grown.
Stone uncut, windows blind, rising from bare earth. Inside—light.
No one who went inside ever returned.
Vargus lit a cigar with trembling fingers. He blamed the wind.
But the wind was dead still.