The wind had stopped screaming.
Only breath.
Only heartbeat.
Toyum stood still in the aftershock of battle, blood drying on her hands, the whispers around her retreating into a distant murmur—like a sea pulling back before the wave crashes. Her dagger dripped with the last of the inhuman creature's essence, which dissolved into dust the moment it fell.
She looked down at her hands.
They were glowing.
Not brightly, not enough to light the ruin's dark chambers. Just a faint pulse, like something sleeping inside her had opened one eye. It faded fast—but she had felt it. The way energy had surged into her bones, like drinking lightning. She should've collapsed. Instead, she felt alive. More than alive.
She moved forward, deeper into the catacomb's heart.
The silence here wasn't empty—it pressed in. Heavy. Thick. Old.
Beneath her boots, bones. Human. Not all of them whole.
Some crushed. Some scorched. One had symbols carved into the skull.
She didn't flinch.
A half-broken mural stretched along the wall, colors faded but still whispering their story. A woman in white. Veiled. Surrounded by shadows that screamed without mouths. A blade in her hand, light pouring from her chest. Beneath the mural, an inscription:
"The world was broken by sound. Only silence remained pure."
She touched the wall. The stone was warm.
A whisper hissed behind her ear: "You should not be here."
She spun, dagger raised—
—but no one.
Then the ground trembled.
Not a tremor. A heartbeat.
From the far end of the chamber, a sealed door groaned. Not mechanical. Not magical. Alive.
Her voice barely escaped her lips:
"Something's waking up."
Suddenly, pain flashed through her skull—like knives made of sound. She dropped to her knees, gasping. The whispers returned, louder now. And this time, they weren't just voices.
They were memories.
A battlefield. A scream. Her scream. Blood on her veil.
A name. Her name—
—but it shattered before she could catch it.
Then: blackness.
And a voice, deep and monstrous:
"You carry the last silence. You carry the end."