ARCHIVIST FRAGMENT: CODEX IV, THE LAW OF OBSERVATION
"Create your own luck."
The earliest Archivists etched those words into the metal bindings of their journals. They believed belief itself could shape the experiment, that to look for meaning was to bend the outcome toward it. The act of searching made discovery feel inevitable.
In time, they named it the Observer's Law:
The world behaves differently for those who expect it to.
(Recovered from the Core, source unknown. Annotated centuries later by an entity self-identifying as "The Ordinary Human.")
OH's marginal note:
"Create your own luck.
The universe is not stingy, it is waiting for someone confident enough to make the first move.
Look hard enough for treasure, and even the dirt starts to shine."
**
Arrival and Old Ghosts
Khalen stepped out into the clatter and dust of the lower colony yard, boots crunching on chipped stone. The prison sprawled beneath the cliffs like a scar, walls patched with the bones of lost ages, chimneys exhaling ash and fog from another night shift. Lines of men and women in rough tunics shuffled past the bread house, each collecting a palm-sized loaf and a tin cup of water.
The bread smelled faintly of mineral and corecrystal, cheap but hearty. In Bastion, bread was rationed by hunger and politics. Here, everyone ate, provided they kept digging.
Archivists drifted along the walkways in bored loops, robes tucked up for movement, sleeves stitched with ward-thread and ink glyphs. Some yawned. Some watched with the hard patience of people trained to notice nothing until it mattered. Their presence made the yard feel measured, as if every breath had been counted and filed away.
Over the main gate hung a battered sign painted with the Expedition Guild's insignia, a sunburst around a broken arch. Beneath it, a stranger in a fine navy coat scribbled on a slate and ignored the prisoners entirely, like he was counting ore and not lives.
Novek met Khalen at the edge of the crowd, his face older than memory.
"You always find your way back to the edges," he said. Tired voice, crooked smile.
Khalen let his gaze sweep the yard out of habit, counting exits, counting blind spots. "I go where I'm needed," he said. "Or where the bread is best."
Novek snorted. "The Guild makes sure we never run out, so long as you don't mind eating the same thing every day."
His eyes flicked toward the officer, who was arguing quietly with a cook about excavation yields and unreported finds.
Khalen kept his voice low. "You said the anomaly is deeper."
Novek's humour drained. "It started a few days ago. Shifted a whole corridor overnight. A couple miners swear the wall grew a new mural." He glanced again at the officer, then back to Khalen. "He's convinced it's a natural pocket. Nothing worth escalating."
"That's how you want to keep it," Khalen said.
Novek nodded once. "If word gets out we're hiding something, the Guild shuts us down, ships everyone to Bastion, and locks up whatever we found. That's why you're here first. No one else knows these tunnels like you."
Khalen gave him a thin smile. "You mean no one else is foolish enough to chase legends."
Novek's expression softened, then shifted, as if an older version of him had leaned forward.
"Remember those old rune-channels beneath the square," he said. "How we'd race, see who could shadow-step across them before the city watch spotted us. Thought we were clever. Thought we were invincible."
Khalen laughed once, quiet and surprised. "You always claimed I cheated."
"You did cheat," Novek said, and the grin was brief but real. "Said you knew where the broken glyphs were hidden."
Khalen's shoulders loosened a fraction. The ache of old laughter landed in his chest, the kind you carry when the world hardens and pretends it never had soft parts.
Novek's smile thinned. "When Elyas showed up, things got different. Bigger. You two went after real dangers." He hesitated, then added, "Never blamed you. I just miss the days when the biggest risk was getting caught by the lamplighters."
Khalen didn't answer. He didn't need to. The truth sat between them like a third mug on a table.
They cut through the colony's winding lanes, past low communal tables and open kitchen fires. A child, barely old enough to help, ran past with arms full of fresh loaves, breath steaming in the cold.
As they climbed a sloping ramp around the main yard, each step lifted them away from noise and heat. Khalen glanced back. The colony sprawled beneath them, bread house, clustered dormitories, tunnel mouths gaping at the base of the cliff, narrow roads threading toward Bastion's distant shimmer. From this height, the city was only a glint on the horizon, impossibly safe.
Archivists moved along the upper rails in pairs, not chatting, not lingering. Every so often one paused to press two fingers to a ward-stone set into the wall, checking the hum, checking the record, checking that the prison stayed a prison.
Novek spoke as they climbed, voice roughened by wind.
"People talk about legends like they're firelight," he said. "Makes everything glow until you're close enough to feel the burn. Everyone's got a story about you now. Most days I'm just glad they don't expect me to have a sword."
Khalen snorted, though the words left weight behind. The stories always made him feel larger and smaller at once.
They rounded another turn. Khalen's eyes caught on something half-buried in the wall, a curve of bone, impossibly thick, with a faint shimmer of old Breath trapped inside. He slowed, one hand catching the rail.
For a moment his mind refused to name it.
Then it clicked.
A rib, nearly twice as tall as a man, fused into the foundations.
Novek saw where he was looking and grinned, a flash of old mischief.
"Took you long enough," he said. "Backbone of the place. Literally. When we broke through to the lower levels a few years back, miners nearly quit on the spot. There's a whole spine down there. Skull is deeper, they say, but we never tried to dig it out."
Khalen ran his hand along the bone. A chill pulse of Breath echoed up his arm, heavy and slow, like something sleeping that didn't want to be touched.
"An Archivist from Bastion came to study it," Novek added, voice dropping. "Only thing she found was a half-rotted scroll. Called it The Dreaming Titan. No mention of what killed it, or what else is buried with it."
Khalen looked out over the colony. The skeleton threaded through every wall. "Legends," he murmured.
Novek followed his gaze. "They always start as someone's problem."
"And end as someone's foundation," Khalen said.
At the top, a balcony outside Novek's office gave a stark view of the yard below, of the bread lines, the scaffolds, the rib of the Dreaming Titan arching above stone, and Bastion glittering far beyond, safe and blind.
Novek paused with a hand on the latch. "You ready to see what's really got everyone spooked?"
Khalen's mouth tilted. "That's why I came."
**
Inside, the office smelled of ink, dust, and old smoke. Ledgers and battered maps crowded the walls. What dominated the room was the great window, a broad pane of crystal set into the east wall. From here Khalen could see everything, the bread lines, the tunnel mouths, Archivists drifting like bored ghosts, the pale curve of titan-bone stitched into stone, and beyond it all, the distant shimmer of Bastion.
Khalen lingered by the glass, watching children weave between cooks and quarriers, their laughter thin as crystal. Two Archivists in the yard paused and looked up toward the office. One muttered something. The other pressed two fingers to a charm at his throat, reflexive, like luck mattered when legends walked past.
Khalen turned away from the window before he could read their lips.
Novek opened a battered cupboard and pulled out a tall bottle sealed with violet wax. "Thought you might appreciate something better than bread brew," he said, and raised the label: Juniper & Breath Gin, aged in crystal barrels.
When he pulled the cork, a curl of blue vapour drifted free and left an electric tang in the air.
He poured two measures into mismatched mugs. The liquid caught the morning light and swirled with a faint pulse of trapped Breath, enough to warm bones without ever burning them.
They drank in silence at first.
Then Novek spoke, voice low. "I always thought we'd end up building something. Not a prison. Something that lasted." His gaze stayed on the yard. "The stories about you, Khalen, they're all teeth and thunder. I remember you before that."
"Stories grow teeth the longer you feed them," Khalen said.
Novek laughed, genuine this time. "Still hate the songs."
"Songs don't remember the rain," Khalen said. "Or the waiting."
For a heartbeat, the Dreaming Titan's rib outside caught a strange light in the haze. Khalen's breath stalled. It looked like the bone shifted, like the mountain exhaled.
He blinked and it was gone.
Old magic. Old memory.
Novek's gaze dropped to his desk, where a faded sketch of Caer' Syllen's crew was pinned beside a ration tally. "I remember you before the thunder," he said again, softer, as if saying it twice could keep it true.
Khalen lifted his mug. "And I remember you pulling me out of the storm."
He hesitated. "Your family. Last I heard, you had a son."
Novek's face brightened. "A daughter now. Freya. Born last spring. Mina's well, though Bastion keeps its walls tighter than ever." Pride and regret braided together in his voice. "I miss them."
Khalen raised his mug. "You'll be a better father than this place deserves."
The quiet that followed was warm, almost dangerous in how normal it felt.
It ended when the door slammed open.
A youth burst in trailing arcs of yellow lightning from a corecrystal band set at his temple. Breath shimmered around his limbs with every step, as if the air couldn't decide whether to cling or flee.
"Sir, Warden, you have to come," he said, words tumbling. "The anomaly, it changed again. The Guild officer's already on his way. People are scared."
Novek moved before the sentence finished, mug forgotten, eyes sharpening into command.
Khalen set his own cup aside. Fire woke in his palm, a low flicker that didn't throw light unless he let it.
"Show us," Novek said.
Together they stepped into the hall.
Old ghosts and new legends followed close behind.
**
The boy's lightning flickered through the corridor, sparks biting stone as he bounded ahead. He didn't blur, not quite, but he moved like a thrown thing, sprinting in short bursts, stopping hard, spinning back, then launching again. Sometimes he ran along the walls or sprang to the ceiling, boots sparking as if the tunnels couldn't hold him.
His laughter was edged with nerves, more eager pup than hero.
Prisoners in the barracks looked up as he passed. Conversations faltered.
Some muttered. Others spat the word like a curse. "Deathtouched."
It was a classification in Archivist ledgers, a warning label written in careful ink: Breath capacity unbounded, channel behaviour unstable, intervention protocols required. It was also a slur in places like this, tossed by people who only knew the aftermath, not the mechanism. The history was full of names that burned bright and short, power that cracked its own bearer, then everything nearby.
One old miner leaned back from his bowl and hissed, "Deathtouched, mark me. He'll bring the stone down on all of us."
The boy's grin faltered. His hand tugged the cloth band on his forehead tighter, hiding the faint pulse of yellow crystal at his temple. For a breath, his lightning guttered and he slowed, shoulders hunched with shame.
Novek caught up and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Easy," he murmured. "It's a term, not a sentence."
The boy's eyes lifted, uncertain. Then his smile returned, smaller but stubborn, and the air lit again as lightning crawled along his arms.
He launched forward.
Khalen followed in silence, fire whispering in his palm. The boy's bright defiance tugged at an old memory he didn't invite, Elyas laughing beneath Caer' Syllen's arches, turning fear into motion, making the hesitant step forward.
The descent twisted deeper and the air changed. Yeast and smoke fell away. Mineral damp took their place, charred crystal dust, the sharp tang of ozone. Breathlights glowed amber and green along the walls. Shadows stretched too far, then twitched, reluctant to stay still.
From deeper within came stone grinding like teeth.
Then silence.
They passed a circle in the floor ringed with scorched runes. The air above it shimmered, as if dust motes had been caught in a slow dance. Loose pebbles near the rim rose and settled again. A thin hum pressed into Khalen's teeth.
A miner strained with a cart of ore and stepped into the circle. The load lifted with him, weight forgetting him. He drifted upward in careful hops from ledge to ledge, then slid out into a shaft above, breath held tight like he was praying not to be noticed by the wrong thing.
Novek's expression tightened. "At least once a week, one of these wells overcharges," he muttered. "Last month a man hit the ceiling so hard we had to scrape him down." His mouth twisted. "Breathtech, they call it. An Archivist at Caer' Syllen claimed she reverse engineered it from an artifact the third expedition dragged up. That team flew out of the Deep like sparks from a forge with Breathlings on their heels. Bastion's wards barely held. Since then we use it, dangerous or not."
Khalen let his fingers graze the wall as they moved past. A deep vibration thrummed beneath the stone, slow and deliberate, like a buried heartbeat.
He pulled his hand away.
They went deeper.
Prisoners and Archivists watched them pass, some curious, some with the wary stillness of people who had seen shifting stone and lived long enough to stop asking why.
At last they reached the gate.
Iron blackened. Timbers braced across it. Scorch marks licked the frame from within. Charred runes scarred the bars, meanings fractured and half-lost. Beyond, the air wavered like heat on sand and the tunnel distorted into a trembling mirage.
The smell of scorched air leaked through, metallic and sweet.
The boy skidded to a stop, lightning snapping from his boots to the iron. Chest heaving, he still stood tall. "Here," he said. "It's just through. The Guild officer went in already."
Novek placed his palm on the gate. The metal hummed faintly under his touch.
He looked at Khalen, face stripped of bravado. "Ready?"
Khalen flexed his fingers. The fire in his palm guttered into smoke, then coiled back into heat deep in his chest, where it belonged until it didn't.
His eyes stayed fixed on the shifting air ahead.
"Let's see," he said, voice level, "what your anomaly really wants."
**
Prison Colony: The Anomaly
Part One
The boy bounded after them, sparks flashing at his boots as if he meant to dash straight through the gate.
Novek chuckled and set a broad hand across the bars before the boy could slip past.
"Not this time, pup. You will have your chance when you are older. For now, let the men walk into the dark."
The boy frowned and drew breath as if to argue, but Novek only laughed again, warm and proud, as if the boy's eagerness reminded him of his own child.
"Save that lightning for the yards. You will outpace us all soon enough."
The boy's frustration melted into a grin, his crystal flaring again. He backed away, bounded up the wall in a crackle of arcs, and held there, eyes never leaving the sealed gate.
Novek sighed, tugged off his sweat stained hat, and rubbed the bare dome of his head. He wiped his palm on his tunic, exhaled slowly, and shouldered the gate open.
Inside lay silence.
No blood. No bodies. Only change.
The chamber had collapsed into a raw wound, a crater tearing through forgotten stone and plunging into blackness. Breath streamed upward in violent ribbons, violet and blue vapour twisting like smoke drawn from a forge. The rim of the pit shimmered. Shadows bent inward and light bent outward, as if the laws that held the mine together had cracked. Pebbles skittered in slow spirals and vanished into the dark.
The air pressed heavy with copper. Khalen's tongue prickled. His fire stirred without consent, eager and hungry.
Behind him, prisoners and Archivists staggered back and shielded their eyes.
Novek muttered, voice tight.
"This is new. Stone should not bleed."
Khalen stepped closer, fire whispering along his arm. His chest tightened, not just from the anomaly's weight, but from what it promised.
He thought of Elyas. The whispers that followed him, always near the strongest Breathlings, always at the edge of impossible danger. If Khalen meant to catch him, to stand beside him again, he would have to become stronger than he had ever dared. Strong enough to survive this. Strong enough to face whatever Elyas was chasing.
Forbidden power would help with that.
At the edge, the abyss seemed to breathe with him.
Novek's eyes swept the chamber. The Guild officer was gone. Only a broken slate lay at the threshold, chalk lines smudged to nothing, and a coat slumped against the wall as if its owner had fled, or been unmade.
The Breath thickened and rose in waves. It made no sound, yet the chamber quivered with pressure, as if waiting for someone to answer.
Silent. Watching. Too present to ignore.
**
Part Two
The chamber hummed and the abyss below breathed like a wound. Breath rose in violet and blue streams and curled around the shattered stone. Pebbles drifted, then snapped back down. Shadows bent the wrong way.
Novek planted himself at the rim, broad arm outstretched.
"Khalen. No farther. Whatever did this swallowed a Guild officer whole."
Khalen's boots scraped closer, fire whispering along his palm. His eyes did not leave the void.
"You called me because you knew I would not back down. You need answers, Novek, and you know the Guild will demand them. If they do not get them, they will send someone else, someone who will bury this place along with your people."
Novek's jaw tightened. He wanted to argue, but his silence gave Khalen the space to step nearer.
"You have always been the stubborn one," Novek said at last. "But Mira will skin me alive if I let you come back hurt."
Khalen turned at that, a flicker of a smile breaking through the heat of the chamber.
"Tell Mira I went in on my own. That way she only kills me, not you."
Novek snorted, but his hand stayed firm on Khalen's chest.
"You think strength is walking into every fire you see. You do not know what is down there."
"I know enough." Khalen's voice dropped, words meant for Novek alone. "Elyas left a trail through ruins like this. Every time someone whispers his name, there is a monster in the story big enough to crush cities. If I am going to stand beside him again, I need more than what I have been. I need to be stronger. This is how."
The fire in his palm flared, not wild but steady, drawn to the Breath that poured upward.
For a heartbeat, Novek's face softened, old pride and old fear. Then his hand fell away.
"Then go. But Core help you if you make me explain to your ghost."
Khalen nodded once. He turned back to the abyss. The air pulled at him, copper sharp, like a forge drawing its ember. The weight of the crater pressed into his bones, the waiting pressure of something below.
He inhaled, steady.
And jumped.
**
Descent: Into the Titan's Domain
The abyss seized him.
Violet and blue Breath streamed upward like rivers running the wrong way, twisting heat, light, and stone into a churning flow. Khalen's fire guttered sideways, dragging like a sail in a crosswind. Heat licked his cheek, then his boots, then the back of his neck, as if flame itself no longer remembered its place.
Air thickened. His ears popped. Silence crushed in, then his own grunt echoed back a heartbeat late, as though another man had fallen after him.
Pebbles spun around him like sparks caught in crooked orbits, then vanished into the dark.
As the walls drew into shape, murals swam across the stone, not still carvings, but Breath-lit scenes that writhed and shifted as he fell.
He saw a city of fire, towers wrought from bone and slag, streets paved with ash that glowed like coals. People knelt before a towering figure of charred ribs and ember eyes, a crown of flame splitting its skull. The same people feasted in its light, bellies full, coffers spilling coin. Then the cycle twisted. The same streets drowned in chains and smoke, villagers bound and fed into pyres. Their screams burned into jewels along the city walls, each gem a trapped Breath.
The murals did not only show, they responded. When his flame flared, painted fires bent toward him, stretching like hungry tongues eager for his spark.
Once, in the ruin's loop, something vast stirred. A shape too large for stone strained at the mural's edge, ribs collapsing like towers, ember eyes watching until the scene reset and left only a smear of heat.
The smell rose with it, scorched copper, sweet rot, the stink of burned marrow. His fire shivered in his palm and threatened to go out.
The Breath-streams thickened into ribbons. They slowed him, spun him once, then dropped him.
He struck stone on one knee. The floor rang like an anvil, not dead rock, but alive, humming with a buried pulse. His flame collapsed to a coal, nearly smothered by the chamber's breath. He clenched his fist until his knuckles cracked, forced the ember to bloom back into fire.
The ground exhaled, hot and slow, as if something vast slept beneath.
Khalen lifted his head. The chamber spread around him, rib-bone arches fused with glowing crystal veins. Murals lined every wall, burning with the tale of a city that had crowned a monster as king.
And somewhere in the dark, that monster still breathed.
The chamber convulsed as if the mine had swallowed its breath. Murals along the walls flared alive, figures writhing in sequences too quick to hold. Whole stories blazed and died in heartbeats, cities rising, rivers of flame, men bowing to something vast and crowned in fire. Then the visions blurred, sped, and burned themselves out.
The abyss below answered.
A tremor climbed through the soles of Khalen's boots, up his legs, rattling bone. Heat rolled upward, not steady, but sideways, as if the laws of weight had bent. Ash spiraled off the rim and clung damp to his skin. The air pressed copper sharp against his tongue, thick as blood. His throat rasped dry in a single breath, and sweat turned to steam on his brow.
Something moved in the dark.
The murals froze mid blaze, every figure pointing downward. Silence pressed against Khalen's chest like stone. Then the pit bloomed with fire, not clean flame, but a rotted furnace glow, orange streaked with black veins of smoke.
From it rose the Titan.
First came its head, skull like, crowned with a mane of living fire that dripped embers like blood. Its ribs unfolded from the pit, jagged and burning, each one larger than the scaffolds that held the colony above. Flesh clung in strips, half stone, half charred sinew. Its eyes opened, molten pits that poured light into the chamber.
Khalen staggered back and set a hand to the wall. Heat blistered his palm where it touched stone, fire hissing through his skin in reflex. His chest clenched, as if his own fire recoiled in recognition, the way prey knows its predator.
The thing kept rising. Chains of melted crystal hung from its arms like ornaments from a buried empire. Its chest was hollow, ribs gaping around a furnace heart that breathed with each exhale, the sound grinding like stone devouring stone.
Khalen's thoughts spun. Was this the same king Novek's scroll had named, the Dreaming Titan? If so, its dream had never ended. It had only turned to fire.
The ground buckled. Murals shattered, stone cracked open as if trying to escape the presence of its own subject.
Khalen whispered, voice broken though none could hear over the roar.
"So this was the problem behind the story. Not a legend. A hunger with teeth."
The Titan turned its gaze upward, and the chamber dimmed beneath its fire.
**
The Titan's First Strike
The chamber trembled before it moved.
Heat came first, a wave rolling through stone and marrow alike. The murals rippled as if soft clay. Painted worshippers twisted in their poses, mouths opening in silent screams. Then came the sound, a low groan like the world grinding its teeth. Pebbles skittered across the floor, drawn not by gravity, but by something older.
Only then did the Fire Titan rise.
It did not charge. It leaned, dragging itself up from the pit. That simple shift made the cavern lurch as if the mountain had decided to stand. One arm, thicker than a mast, tore free, ribbed with fused bone and slagged crystal. Light bled from the fractures in its body, furnace fire caught in stone plates. The air soured with a tang like scorched iron and rotten marrow. Heat struck Khalen like a tide, blistering his skin before he could raise his flame.
He swung on instinct, a whip of fire searing across its chest. The strike hissed, sputtered, and vanished as though it had never been. The Titan's furnace core seemed to drink it in, fissures glowing hotter.
"Too big," Khalen muttered, breath catching. His knees shook. His own fire roared wild, sparks scattering uncontrolled along his arms. Prey recognizing predator.
The Titan came down with the speed of falling stone.
Khalen dove. Impact pulverized old scaffolds into splinters. Shards of Breath-lit crystal screamed through the air. One kissed his cheek, hot and sharp, and he felt blood before he felt pain. Another ripped his greave and opened his shin to the bone.
He forced himself up, chest heaving, and threw a wall of fire to buy a breath.
It did not work.
The heat bent wrong in the air, pulled sideways, as if the chamber had decided fire belonged to something else. The Titan's furnace core inhaled. His flame thinned, then vanished into the fractures in its ribs like smoke being swallowed. The fissures in its body brightened, pleased.
Khalen's stomach dropped. "It's feeding."
He backed, boot scraping stone. The murals on the walls shuddered, painted worshippers stretching their arms toward the Titan as if the rock itself remembered what it was made for.
A claw of molten iron swept low.
Khalen braced. Too slow.
Instinct yanked his left hand up anyway, palm out, like every drill he'd ever learned. Shield. Push. Survive.
Fire flared.
The Titan drank it.
The heat-wall collapsed into nothing, and the claw hit.
There was no clean cut.
There was a moment where the world became white and silent, as if his body forgot how to translate sensation. Then pain arrived all at once, enormous and stupid and absolute, and Khalen heard himself make a sound he would have mocked in anyone else.
He staggered, looked down, and his mind refused what his eyes said.
His left hand was gone.
Not missing, not ruined, gone, erased at the wrist by a burn so hot it had sealed as it destroyed. A blackened stump spit sparks and wet shine. The smell slammed into him a heartbeat late, charred flesh and copper and something like scorched bone.
His ring hit the stone with a bright, ridiculous clink and skittered away, spinning like it was trying to escape the story.
Khalen's knees buckled. He caught himself on his right hand, the only one still obeying him, and the stump throbbed with phantom fingers that weren't there to curl.
He tried to breathe. The air tasted of iron.
A laugh punched out of him, broken and raw, halfway between disbelief and rage. "So much for being the hero."
The Titan's furnace eyes narrowed.
A sound rolled out of it, not a roar, not speech, something between a chuckle and a landslide. The chamber answered with a tremor. Above, somewhere far beyond the pit, Archivists and prisoners would be watching a hole in the mine and thinking the earth had simply shifted again.
Down here, Khalen swayed, blood pooling beneath him, fire guttering wild in his remaining palm.
He threw a gout at the Titan's face. The flame bent, then slid into the cracks in its skull, feeding it instead of burning.
Khalen's throat tightened. "Not fair," he rasped. "Even monsters cheat."
The Titan leaned closer.
And behind the pain, behind the heat, Khalen felt it again, colder than the Titan's glow, patient as stone. Something else watching. Waiting for the exact second he ran out of options.
The chamber collapsed further. Murals shattered. Painted priests writhed as if alive, then split apart. Pillars buckled. Breath poured upward in rivers, feeding the Titan, swelling it with every heartbeat. Khalen's legs buckled. His strength was gone.
For the first time in years, he thought, I cannot win this.
He hit the stone hard. His stump burned. Blood pooled beneath him. Through the haze he saw it, half buried in rubble, waiting.
Not white bone. Crystal.
A skull, larger than a man's, facets interlocking like shards of deep sea ice. Beneath the surface, violet light pulsed faint as trapped starlight. From its crown rose a mane of obsidian and silver spikes, etched in runes, polished like midnight glass. Beneath the left socket, a spiral glyph glowed blue, steady and deliberate.
It pulsed once, not a glow, a glance. Violet light flicked across him like an eye half open. The watcher he had felt all along.
Something in his soul lurched. His fingers clawed at the stone, dragging him closer, leaving a trail of blood. The Titan loomed, savoring him, furnace eyes narrowing as if it meant to take its time.
Khalen heard Elyas's laughter, Ayame's sharp rebukes, Liren's quiet steadiness, his father's hand on the tiller. All the legends, all the names that were not his.
Still, his hand reached.
The Titan's shadow swallowed him whole.