Something started humming in the air. Not like a sound, not really. More like a sickness just behind your ears—low, wet, full of heat that didn't belong. It pressed into Verek's head like a fever looking for a way in, warping his sense of up and down until he wasn't sure if he was about to vomit or pass out. The noise didn't stay still. It twisted, off-key and uneven, like a broken organ left to rust in the corner of a flooded chapel. The moss along the walls curled up and shriveled as if it knew what was coming. Even the faintly glowing stalks that had clung to the ceiling, soft and shy as stars, dimmed down to pinpricks. They seemed afraid. And they weren't alone.
The stones started to sweat.
Something yellow, thick as syrup and twice as foul, oozed from the cracks, settling in slow globs between the floor tiles. It clung to their boots. It stank of copper and rot. Verek's nostrils flared before he could stop it. The stink hooked into the back of his throat and made his teeth ache.
Then the thing came.
Not walking. Not flying. Just... moving, wrong and quiet, pulled by something that didn't care about gravity or sense. It slithered out of the dark without a sound, arms stretched long past natural limits, like wax limbs left too close to fire. Ceremonial robes still clung to it here and there, hanging like wet bandages, shredded and useless. Whatever it had once been, it wasn't anymore. Its skin was too tight, thin and stretched over veins that pulsed like they remembered a heart that didn't beat anymore.
And its face—Verek couldn't stop looking.
There wasn't one. Just a swirl. A mirror-slick churn of shapes and light, not reflections, but memories. Or pieces of them. A girl's scream. A wedding vow. A crown cracked in half and tossed away like it never mattered. The images came fast, overlapping, flickering like fire in a jar. They didn't belong to the thing. Or maybe they did. It didn't care. It wore them like a joke only it found funny.
The voice hit them all at once. Not out loud. Not even a whisper. Just there. Inside their skulls.
You will suffer unformed. Welcome.
The corridor clenched like a stomach before it vomited. The walls bent in with a creaking moan, stone folding like flesh around bone. Then everything let go. Just snapped loose like reality forgot how to hold together.
The creature moved.
It lunged, not at them, but at whatever made the world make sense. It hit their thoughts, their minds, their shared understanding of what "here" meant.
Verek's vision twisted. The ceiling cracked like sugar glass, rained down, and then stitched itself whole again before it could hit the ground. A staircase appeared in front of him—smooth, spiral, ancient—and then it dissolved into a swarm of pale moths that vanished into the floor. Glyphs along the wall lit up red. Not bright. Sticky. Alive. Like open wounds that hadn't decided if they wanted to bleed or scream.
Dax didn't wait. He just ran straight into it. Roared like something primal had ripped its way up from his gut and launched a punch full of years of pain. But the thing bent the air around him. Space twisted. His fist didn't land. He hit nothing and everything at once, and the force broke him. He crumpled like a man struck by his own ghost. The sound that came out of him was all wrong. Too empty. Like his breath had been sucked through a different set of lungs.
Ezreal slid to Dax's side, boots skidding on the slime-slick floor. "Don't fight it like it's got a spine," he shouted, face pale, mouth tight. "Anchor it. Force it down. Don't feed it anything!"
Verek was already moving. He gripped his staff, fingers slick with sweat, and spun it in a wide arc. The air popped, sigils cracking into place like sparks off flint. Bright shapes flared out around the creature, forming a loose cage of sharp light and math older than time. Lines of power wrapped around it. The thing jerked, hissed, and for a blink, it stayed still.
Then it didn't.
It slid through the cage like fog through a closed fist. Not broken. Just... beyond it.
And it laughed.
Not a sound. A feeling.
A nightmare you didn't know was yours until it curled its fingers around your spine. The realization that one day you'd die and no one would remember why you mattered. That sick weight of knowing your life could vanish like dust off a shelf.
Caylen stepped forward.
He didn't cast. He didn't attack.
He sang.
Just one note. High and cracked, raw like a skinned knee on stone. It came from the center of him, and it hurt.
"This is not your audience," he said through gritted teeth. "Not your dream. Not your end."
The music didn't bounce off walls. It stabbed into them. It hit the thing's mirror-face and made the surface twitch. Like a pond getting punched. Ripples peeled out. More images spilled loose. A child's drawing torn in half. A scream in a sealed room. The smell of pine needles soaked in fresh blood.
Ezreal darted to the wall. His hand moved fast, dragging something sharp—bone?—across the stone. He didn't bother looking up. Every line he drew caught fire behind him. The flames didn't burn hot. They hissed like wet meat.
Verek followed, chanting words that didn't belong in the world anymore. The syllables hurt his mouth. The wall groaned. The runes bent, caught, held.
Caylen's voice cracked again. Worse than before. The note hit air like a bottle breaking, jagged and off-key. But it kept the creature back. Barely.
Dax shoved up from the ground, lip split, nose bent wrong. His hands were raw and bloody from catching himself on the stone. He looked up and snarled like a man who'd stopped caring whether he survived.
"Enough."
"Drive it," Verek barked, never looking away from the sigils. His voice didn't shake. Not yet. "Push it back, down the tunnel!"
The thing recoiled. Not in fear. More like it was being forced out of a place it thought it owned.
Ezreal's runes locked. They snapped shut with a dry crack like bone splitting. Caylen's song sealed the gaps. Verek whispered the last word of the spell. It wasn't in any known tongue.
Banish.
The creature didn't scream.
It stole their screams instead.
Pain tore up from every old wound, every scar they'd ever earned. Verek gasped. His soul felt like it had been sanded with glass. His teeth rang. His fingernails burned.
Then it was gone. Sucked away like filth down a drain.
Silence dropped on them like a weight.
Dax sagged into the wall. "I hate this place," he panted. His hands shook. He didn't hide it.
Ezreal let out a cough and wiped soot from his cheek. "It hates us right back. That's how you know we're making progress."
Verek looked at his hand. The sigil he'd traced there wasn't fading. It moved. Not fast, but steady, like it had its own pulse now. The lines twitched red, forming new shapes without him. It whispered. Not hums. Words. He didn't understand them. He understood them anyway.
He clenched his hand into a fist and said nothing.
They kept moving.
The tunnel narrowed. The light dimmed to a nervous flicker, pale blue and slow. The air thickened again, damp and oppressive. Every breath felt like sucking fog through cloth.
Then came the chime.
Not a footstep. Not metal. Just a sound like glass ringing underwater. Pretty, but stretched wrong. Like a lullaby hummed by something with too many teeth.
The path split.
To the left: a tunnel that spiraled inward, its ribs curling like they didn't want to let go.
To the right: a slope slick with moisture, shining like a throat that had been waiting too long to swallow something.
Verek's sigil flared. It lit from the floor this time, bright as a match struck in a cave.
"It's guiding us," he said, wary. He didn't like the way the light moved. It felt... smug.
Ezreal didn't stop. "We're not choosing anymore," he said. "We're already chosen."
They went right.
As soon as their boots hit the incline, all light vanished.
Caylen's orb winked out.
Darkness wasn't the word for it.
This wasn't dark. This was nothing. Hungry, endless, full of teeth.
Ezreal reached for the wall. Found it slick. Cold. "Stay close," he snapped.
No one answered.
He turned.
Nothing.
No one.
The dark pressed into him, inside his thoughts. He tried to summon light, magic, anything.
It burned.
Then he heard footsteps.
Not his.
He turned again.
A shape stepped through the dark. Fire around the head. Smoke rolling off broad shoulders.
Ezreal froze.
His father. The demon-lord. Tall. Smiling like he already knew the ending.
"Still running?"
Ezreal backed up. The corridor behind him sealed shut like skin knitting over a wound.
"You're not real," he whispered.
The thing grinned wider. "Neither are you."
Elsewhere—
Verek stood over a chasm. But it wasn't shaped like a chasm. It blinked. A thousand times.
Eyes.
One opened wider and spoke.
His voice.
"You never left the Morning Star," it said. "You are the spell. You were never meant to survive it."
His book burned to ash in his hands. The ash whispered. He knew the words.
Caylen—
Snow. Endless. Silent. Glass-pain in every breath.
She was there.
His sister.
She turned.
Tears. Frozen on her cheeks.
"Why did you leave me?"
He ran. She didn't. The distance grew.
She faded. Like fog.
Dax—
A field. Corpses.
His old crew. His brothers. All of them.
They wore his face.
He screamed.
Stepped forward.
They stirred.
Whispered.
They remembered.
One by one, they returned.
Cold. Trembling. But not gone.
The corridor breathed in.
The floor collapsed beneath them.
Not down.
Inward.
No noise. No impact.
Just space.
A chamber. Vast. Hollow.
The ceiling burned.
Stars. Real ones. Not illusions.
Lanterns drifting in a sea that had no name.
In the center...
The light bent.
And something waited.
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