They walked through the gate. Behind them, the sigil carvings on the pillars twisted one last time and settled into a pattern like a grin.
One moment Marcus stood in the prismatic glare of the crystal labyrinth. The next, his boots struck the hard black floor of the plaza. The gate had carried them back to the central altar's true architecture within Floor One. The air was heavy and thick, vibrating with the wayward chant of the Nameless Choir. They had reached the heart of the Shattered Threshold, where colossal brutalist pillars rose into the open dark like the ribcage of something enormous.
Marcus did not speak at once. A cold, ghostly weight rested in his left palm. The sigil's blue light had not ignited; a dull beat moved beneath his skin.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Slow, heavy, and painfully even. A foreign pulse beat in time with the Spire's foundations.
"Marcus?" Taryn moved closer. She saw him gripping his wrist. "Is the sigil acting up again? You look like you've seen something."
He straightened and resisted the urge to find a wall.
"It's heavy," he said. "The floor feels like it's breathing. The sigil's trying to breathe with it."
Taryn's hand went to the red sigil at her neck, then to the vials on her belt. "The sensing step. It knows something before we do."
Marcus let the gaps in his memory provide an excuse. "My head's still a maze, Taryn. You keep saying it, and the Keeper whispered it too. What is the Shattering-Sigil, really? Is it different from the others?"
Taryn went quiet, weighing a question that should have been obvious. Her expression softened into the patient grief she showed whenever he admitted to the holes in his mind.
"Before I tell you about the Shattering-Sigil, you need to know about the Shattering itself." Taryn lowered her voice. "Aetheris, Ecliptis, all the realms, once formed a single whole. Something broke it. Some say pride caused it. Others say a rebellion that was never meant to win. I know only that the world broke, and the Spire grew from the wreckage to hold the pieces together before they drifted too far apart."
Marcus listened. He had never lived through it, but he understood the failure's shape: the original structure had failed catastrophically, and what remained had been built to contain it.
"And this Shattering-Sigil?" He raised his hand as the leaden beat continued. "How many climbers carry one, or am I the only one?"
Taryn gave a half-breath of a laugh. "You've never been short on impossible questions, even with half your memory gone. There's only one Shattering-Sigil. It's the anchor. That's why the clans fought over you. Most climbers carry lesser marks: fire, rifts, shadow. Yours is different. When the Spire tears something apart, yours is the only one that can hold the flow together."
Unique, Marcus thought. The only key to a house on fire.
He turned his palm over and studied the sigil slowly, without a fight's urgency. He had learned three things. First, it answered the body's active state rather than a conscious command. Pushing directly produced nothing or a shallow burn. Second, it met him partway when he gave it a pattern to work with. Close attention, framed as a problem with a shape and solution, gave it purchase. Third, it had a limit, and he was beginning to sense that boundary.
He still had to identify the sigil's remaining functions and the body's unused techniques. The altar was the wrong place to investigate that question, with the floor breathing beneath his feet and Lysara watching from the edge of the plaza.
The weight in his hand quickened. It was no longer a heartbeat. A warning.
He narrowed his eyes at the columns. Silence here never meant peace. When a place went quiet, a threat was usually waiting.
Here, the mist crawled across the floor. A patch of liquid shadow peeled away from the gray fog fifty yards to their left. It had no shape, but it had purpose. Another patch formed to the right. They were flanking the group.
"Something's watching us." Marcus pointed low through the mist.
"I don't see anything." Taryn's sun-weathered skin looked pale in the half-light.
"Don't look with your eyes. Look at the mist. There. Low to the ground. Liquid shadow. They're already out."
The shadows ignited.
Dozens of eyes opened in the fog-choked plaza, glowing like dying coals. Shadowborn Hounds emerged, thin bodies made from the darkness clinging to the pillars. They padded forward with silent, predatory grace.
The Choir's chant climbed until it drowned every other sound. Heat began crawling outward from the mark in Marcus's hand.
"Marcus." Taryn's vials clinked as she tightened her grip. "Give the word."
His body wanted to run; he forced his attention onto the Hounds' spacing. They were herding the three of them toward the central altar.
He drew his daggers. The silver blades caught the dim light. Left foot back. Right shoulder forward. He set the stance deliberately before adrenaline could undo it.
"Hold until they commit to the lunge." Marcus set the timing with two fingers. "Clear the fog on the left, Taryn. Lysara, have a portal ready if they swarm. Do not let them reach the column."
The first Hound crouched, its liquid-shadow body coiling like a spring.