The scent of spiritburn lingered in the air—acrid and faintly metallic, like scorched ink. Kier brushed his fingertips together, watching as the violet ash crumbled between them, resisting even decay.
This was no ordinary remnant.
Someone had died here—but not completely.
He moved deeper into the corridor, tracing the faint threads of essence that spidered through the cracks in the stone. They pulsed weakly, as if reluctant to admit their presence. Kier didn't force them open. He followed, like one walking beside a stream toward its buried source.
Beneath the stone, something pulsed. Not the soul engine—it was too old, too deep to respond so quickly. No, this was fresh. Wounded. Hiding.
A being on the verge of collapse... or rebirth.
He reached a chamber half-consumed by roots. They twisted from the ceiling like the veins of a buried giant. At the center sat a broken ritual basin, blackened by energy discharge. Inside it: a skeletal figure wrapped in cracked spirit-bindings, their glyphs flickering dimly.
It turned its head at his approach. Slowly.
"You're... not Dominion," it rasped.
Its voice wasn't entirely real—half echo, half memory.
Kier didn't answer immediately. He studied the figure's bindings, noting the melted sigils, the fractured soul-locks.
"You tried to inherit the engine," Kier said. "And failed."
The figure laughed, a thin dry wheeze that ended in silence. "I succeeded... in part. Enough to see. Enough to burn."
Kier knelt beside the basin, inspecting the ash circle scrawled around it. The lines were smudged—but not ruined.
"You left the circle intact," he said.
"I left a warning," the figure replied.
Kier's gaze was cold. "Warnings are for people who intend to return."
A flicker passed through the figure's hollow eyes. "So what are you? Another seeker of forgotten thrones? Or just a corpse waiting to understand?"
Kier didn't blink. "Neither. I'm the thread that pulls. Not the hand. Not the knife."
He reached into his robe and drew a second shard—bone-white, faceless, unlike the obsidian shard from before.
"This can absorb the remainder of your thread," Kier offered. "Painfully. Or—" he paused, "—you can anchor to me. Briefly."
The figure blinked slowly. "And become your tool?"
"Don't flatter yourself. You're barely a remnant."
The silence stretched. Then the bindings pulsed, and a whisper of essence detached from the figure's chest—threadbare, flickering. It hovered, wavering.
"Take it," the figure said, voice fading. "But it remembers... too much."
Kier captured the thread between two fingers. It writhed, not out of resistance—but memory. The shard accepted it, pulsing dimly before going dark.
The figure collapsed, finally at rest.
Kier remained kneeling for several minutes, the shard in his hand vibrating faintly. Through it, whispers passed—not language, but sensation. A tower collapsing. Names torn from stone. Someone weeping into saltwater.
And at the edge: a symbol he did not recognize.
A spiral, not coiled—but open. Leading outward, not inward.
Not Dominion. Not known.
Something older.
He stood, the ruin pressing inward again. The air was colder now, less welcoming. The engine had felt the contact.
And it wasn't pleased.
Kier smiled faintly.
Good, he thought. Let it resist.
He turned to leave the chamber—but paused.
On the far wall, etched beneath vines, something shimmered. Barely visible. Not made by tools.
A handprint. Perfect. Blackened into the stone itself. Its edges burned inward, not out.
Kier stared at it for a long moment.
Someone else touched the core before me... and survived it.
Or maybe they didn't survive at all.
He left without touching the print.