The boy's eyes finally stilled.
Just like the old man's — glassy, unfocused, emptied of even the last flicker of fear.
Kael stared at him for a long, shaking breath, until the bleak silence settled over the chamber again. His own pulse thudded unevenly in his ears, too fast, too heavy, as though his heart was struggling to remember how to beat properly.
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his trembling wrist and grimaced.
If this keeps up… he might be catching up to them sooner than he thought.
His state was miserable: his ribs throbbed each time he drew breath. His entire right shoulder burned from where he'd taken the brunt of the impact earlier. Every scratch, bite, and bruise screamed beneath the dried and fresh blood sticking to his skin. And his shackled hand — gods, that hand — ached all the way to the bone.
He didn't feel alive.
And as if to mock him, the abjection's corpse twitched.
Kael jerked his head up just in time to see it — another dark orb loosening itself from the ruined remains. It hovered in the air like a heartbeat wrapped in shadow before drifting toward him. He didn't even bother trying to step away.
It sank into his chest.
Kael exhaled sharply, nearly scoffing.
"Great. Another one." He rubbed his forehead, eyebrows knitting.
"I don't need those things… I need a damned way out."
Or maybe—
Maybe the orbs did have a use. Maybe he just hadn't figured out how to utilize them. Or maybe they required something… a condition, a trigger, a willingness he wasn't ready to give.
Whatever it was, he didn't have the luxury to puzzle it out now.
This time, a low rumble shivered through the floor.
Kael instantly turned toward the boy's body — only to see both corpses twitching faintly. Stringy veins of darkness began crawling from their wounds, pulling along the floor like tendrils searching for a source.
And all of them were converging toward—
"…the sarcophagus."
Kael stiffened, watching as the black filaments slithered toward the stone structure at the chamber's center. The carvings along its base flickered once, like embers coughing back to life.
"What now…" he muttered under his breath.
The tendrils seeped into the cracks, vanishing beneath the lid as though being swallowed. The surface of the sarcophagus gave a low, grinding groan.
It caught Kael's attention immediately, every sense clawing its way back to alertness.
"That thing…"
He forced himself to stand, and his legs nearly buckled under him. One step. Then another. His breath was heavy, sweat stinging the half-healed cuts on his face. His shackled hand dragged heavily at his side, feeling more like a foreign object than a limb.
Still, he approached.
He inspected the sarcophagus for the second time, slower and more deliberate — as though the answer had been there all along, waiting for him to be desperate enough to notice.
What was it about this thing… This lump of stone… That made men kill?
What was sealed inside that demanded such sacrifices?
Kael placed his trembling, blood-slick palm on the cold surface.
"…show me what you are." Kael grit his teeth, braced his feet, and pushed.
The lid was unsurprisingly heavy — a mountain in his current state. His arms shook violently. His ribs screamed. His injured shoulder almost gave out with every inch gained. But he kept going, dragging the slab aside with stubborn, breathless persistence until—
A final grinding thud. The sarcophagus opened.
With heaving chest, Kael leaned over it.
For something that massive, for all the corpses and obsession surrounding it…Inside lay only a single item.
Not bones. Not a mummified corpse. Not some ancient relic.
"A... weapon?"
Curved like a crescent moon, its blade forged of dark steel that seemed to drink in the faint light of the chamber. Its spine thick, its edge wicked. Its like looking at an ancient soldier's executioner's tool.
"…this?" Kael breathed.
This was what they were dying to get?
With nothing left to lose and no reason strong enough to stop him, he exhaled a shaky sigh and reached toward it.
The moment his fingertips brushed the cold metal—
A tingling shot up his arm, followed by a a jolt.
Then a rush — a surge that crawled beneath his skin, raced along his veins, and exploded through his entire body. His breath hitched. His vision blurred white. His heart staggered in its rhythm as though skipping beats to catch up with something older and deeper.
And then—
Silence.
***
Kael blinked.
He was standing in an empty space of darkness.
No walls. No ceiling. No ground he could see, though something solid supported his feet. Just... endless black stretching in all directions.
Confused, he turned quickly, searching for anything — a shape, a light, a movement, a point to anchor his mind to.
Nothing.
Nothing but the void.
Until a voice — low, familiar, echoing as if spoken both beside him and from somewhere impossibly far away — called out to him:
"Walk forward, little spark, for every step you take teaches the world how it will die."
"Mors Vincit Omnia."