The egg pulsed again.
Not frantic. Not starving. Just steady and deliberate, like it heard some rhythm buried deep under the world. Like it was tapping back.
Verek stood just outside the vault. Rain soaked him straight through, cloak dragging heavier with each drop, the weight of it sticking to his frame. The air had gone dense with that pressure he could never quite name, thick and strange, like when a storm was building and the sky forgot how to breathe. It wasn't just wet. It smelled like iron and something sour, something too old for the nose to make sense of.
Behind him, Ezreal, Caylen, Dax, and Tarrin loitered in that grim silence that never led to good choices. Everyone was still except for Dax, who kept rolling his shoulder like his armor was trying to chew his collarbone.
Verek walked up to the vault door and put his hand on the cold steel. It buzzed under his palm, not violently, but like it recognized him now. Like it had been waiting.
"She's awake, isn't she?" His voice wasn't loud. Didn't need to be.
Ezreal looked off toward the stairs, fingers twitching like they were reaching for flame.
"Not all the way," he said. "But yeah. Something's shifted."
Verek didn't look away from the vault. "It's not her that changed. We changed. The city changed. She was quiet in the Crucible because we hadn't done enough to wake her. Now she listens. Something out there is calling, and she's listening back."
Caylen sagged against the stairwell, arms crossed like a man holding himself together through pure stubbornness. "We locked it for a reason. We said we wouldn't use it."
Verek turned slowly, his stare flat. "Then explain this." He pushed against the steel harder. "The wards aren't resisting anymore. They're twitchy, like they want out."
The ground gave a low, miserable boom that echoed up their bones. Dust floated down in lazy spirals from the ceiling.
Dax cursed. "That came from the eastern court. They're inside the amphitheater."
Tarrin came limping down the stairs. Robes shredded and trailing smoke, eyes red, face slack with wear. "We're out of time," he rasped. "Whatever that egg is? It's the only card left. Ironcrag's boys are hammering every inch except that vault."
Verek looked at Ezreal again. "Think we can bluff a second time?"
Ezreal blinked, slow. But Verek didn't wait for the answer.
"No chance," he said. "But maybe we don't have to bluff. Maybe we let them peek. Let them feel what we're keeping caged."
Dax let out a noise halfway between a snort and a laugh. "That ain't a plan. That's suicide with a side of maybes."
"It's more than silence." Verek's voice carried a scrape to it. "Right now they think we're dry. We let her sing a note, and maybe that shakes them enough to give us breathing room."
Caylen straightened, face carved with worry lines. "And if she takes that as permission? If the war outside sounds like an invitation?"
Ezreal stepped beside the vault. He put his hand on the steel too. "Then we do what we always do." His voice had gone low, nearly a whisper. "We stand between the fire and the rest of the world."
The vault hissed. Gears groaned, magic whining as runes sparked across its surface. Cold rolled out, sharp and dry, the kind of cold that felt buried under rock for centuries.
The door didn't swing open. It receded, quietly, revealing the egg.
It hovered, pale and veined, its skin alive with slow pulses of color. Threads of magic hung in the air around it, drifting like dust caught in oil.
The shards were gone. No fracture. No seams. Just the egg, whole again. Breathing.
Caylen stepped forward, like he couldn't help it. "It's watching us," he said. "Like it's trying to learn."
Verek nodded, slow. "Or copying. Either way, it's learning fast."
Then came the horn.
Not the groan from before. This one was sharp, loud, and far too close.
Screams followed.
Dax bolted, no hesitation. Ezreal slammed the vault shut with both hands, sealing it as the runes screeched back to life.
Smoke clawed down the corridor, thick and slick in the lungs. They broke into the main hall at a sprint.
Chaos had already arrived.
A blood-slick guard ran past. "Something in the west wing!" he shouted. "They summoned—something! Won't stop!"
The air bent.
Not heat. Not pressure. Just wrong.
Then the thing showed up.
Ten feet tall. Plates of rust-colored armor jammed into rotten skin. A skull for a face, bare and clean, with no eyes to blink. Its arms ended in hooked blades, jagged like they'd been carved by teeth.
Ezreal lit fire in both palms.
"Don't kill it," Verek snapped. "Just stop it. Bind it."
Caylen lit the room with blinding white. The monster reeled. Dax drove straight into its midsection with a shoulder charge that should have cracked ribs.
It didn't flinch. Just screamed.
The palace tipped into battle.
Verek drew a loop in the air, the sigil crackling with heat and force. He used the spell to pull the beast sideways, into the wall. Ezreal hurled fire again and again until the stone started to smoke.
Dax, panting and bleeding from the forehead, grinned like it was a festival brawl.
Caylen stepped into the thing's path, hands bare. He shouted something into the world's bones. Light tore through the creature.
It dropped to one knee.
Verek moved quick. He drew a second rune in ash, trapping the beast. Dax kicked both blades out of its reach. Ezreal slammed his last rune into the circle.
It stopped. Still breathing. But locked down.
Everyone stood panting. Eyes wild. The hall looked like a war camp now.
Ezreal wiped soot from his cheek. "They're not playing anymore. They're inside."
Tarrin stumbled in behind them, coughing and soaked in sweat. "Gates are down. West side is ash."
Caylen spit blood. "Then we're it. Us. The egg. This damn hall."
Verek stared at the creature. Its face twitched.
"Or we let her speak," he said. "Just once. Let her say something through us. Not a blast. Not a purge. Just a voice. Maybe there's something left in her that remembers when the world wasn't like this."
Ezreal didn't reply.
His eyes were already locked on the vault.
Inside, the egg pulsed.
Once.
Then again.
Stronger now.
Not angry. Not scared.
Choosing.