They left the Witherstep Flats behind, the brass shard tucked deep inside Ezreal's pack. It was buried between old, folded maps and whatever pieces of himself hadn't been scorched hollow by the vault. The quiet that settled over them after wasn't the kind of calm that comes from finishing a fight or earning a moment to breathe. No, it just was—like smoke trapped in lungs that can't find its way out. It hung thick in the air, clogged the throat, seeped into the soles of their boots, and crawled beneath their armor. It was the kind of silence no one ever chooses. The kind that sticks around long after something important breaks.
Verek kept them moving west. The land thinned, like it was giving up on itself. The grass lost its green and turned the color of bleached bone, then ash, and finally a brittle gray that snapped underfoot like frostbitten skin. No birds called overhead. No insects buzzed or clicked in the underbrush. Even the wind seemed to have died, or maybe just forgotten how to sound alive. Instead, there was an endless stretch of cracked ridges and dry gullies, like the world had been scraped bare, scraped right down to its rotten roots. But the sky was worse than the empty ground. It wasn't just wide—it was flat and blank, like a page left untouched, swallowing up every noise and every color, taking whatever scraps of warmth you thought you had left. The kind of sky that made you feel like you'd already disappeared, and just hadn't noticed yet.
By the third day, their voices gave out. Not because their throats were sore or their bodies tired. The words simply... evaporated. Like steam rising off a cold river at dawn, vanishing before anyone could catch it. Caylen stopped asking which way the trail forked. Dax didn't grunt when his boot caught on a loose stone. Ezreal no longer hummed, and didn't curse under his breath when his coat snagged on the thorny brambles. Only Verek kept walking—always ahead, like forward motion was the only thing holding him together. Like maybe if he stopped, he'd shatter.
Ezreal fell behind most of the time, his coat flapping in the weak, half-dead breeze as if it didn't know how to sit right on his frame. His eyes flicked sideways too often, twitching like there was something just outside the edge of his sight—something he didn't want to admit he was watching. Dax brought up the rear, his mouth set hard like he'd swallowed gravel, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, more out of habit than any real need to draw it. Or maybe he needed the weight of something solid under his fingers, something to remind him the world still had edges. Caylen stuck to the middle, not out of strategy but because the others gave him no choice. He watched the dead ground, squinting like it might cough up a secret if he looked hard enough.
The land started to change. Slow, like rot working from the inside out. The kind of change you don't notice until you're already neck-deep in it. Grass began bending the wrong way, like it was listening for something. Breathing became harder, like the air pulled in when you did, but forgot to give itself back. The wind stopped altogether, which might've been fine if it didn't feel like something watching had finally paused to catch its breath. No one said it aloud, but they all knew. The silence grew heavier. More personal. Like something had shifted inside the bones of the world.
Verek was the first to slow down. His eyes lifted toward the peak ahead—jagged slate and bruised stone, jutting out like a snapped bone. It wasn't tall, but it felt impossibly high. Like the world had been torn open there and something dark spilled out. No name marked it. If it ever had one, no map carried it anymore. A goat-path curled along its edge—just wide enough for a foot, or maybe a fool's hope.
He didn't say a word. Just stared. Into the face of something no one else seemed to see. The air thickened around them, clogged with an ancient kind of silence—older than words, maybe older than thought. It wasn't magic exactly, not the kind that burns or sparkles. It simply was. Ancient and inverted, like it had forgotten how to belong to the world. It crawled into their chests and stayed, sinking low, dragging on their lungs.
Verek started climbing.
That night, there was no fire. Not one of them wanted to test whatever laws ruled that place. Even the snap of kindling felt dangerous, like it might wake something that hated noise. They squeezed into a shallow cave punched into the mountain like a fist with a grudge. The ceiling barely cleared Caylen's head. Thin threads of cold water seeped from the stone walls, whispering secrets no one could catch.
Ezreal thrashed in his sleep, mumbling something raw and broken that didn't sound like language. Caylen rolled over, pressing his face to the rock. Dax didn't close his eyes at all. He sat just inside the cave's mouth, sword laid across his knees, eyes locked on the dark like it owed him a debt.
Verek lay still with his eyes open. He didn't dream. Didn't sleep. Just listened.
Before dawn, Dax slipped away.
Caylen found the tracks by the weak, colorless light of morning. Not footprints exactly—more like pressure scars in the frost. They wound upward, following the thinner switchbacks toward a long crack split into the cliffside. The wind there wasn't sharp or biting, just miserable—like an animal trying to crawl back inside its own skin.
Nestled inside the crack was a stone shelf, flat and cruel. Dax stood there, his broad back hunched, staring down at a pile of rusted helmets. They were stacked carelessly—some cracked open like rotten eggs. A few still bore dried stains in the shapes of fingerprints or spattered arcs. No one had cleaned them. No one had even buried the memory.
Verek came up behind them without a word. He looked at the pile like it was a wound reopening.
"They followed me," Dax said after a long pause. His voice was slow and thick, like he had to fight every word free. "Every last one of them. They shouldn't have. Gods know I didn't earn that kind of faith. But they did. Followed me straight into the dirt."
The wind shifted through the helmets. A few rattled softly—not loud enough to be certain, just enough to sound like bone tapping bone.
"People talk like guilt fades," Dax went on. "Like it gets lighter with time. It doesn't. It just digs deeper. Burrows behind your ribs. You stop noticing the weight, but you still walk bent."
Verek met his gaze. "It's not supposed to fade. You carry it. You learn to walk straighter anyway."
They stood there longer than either expected. No one came to judge them. The mountain didn't ask questions. Eventually, they turned and made their way back down.
Ezreal was already awake, sitting cross-legged near the cave wall. His face looked pale and drawn, eyes hollowed like someone had taken out pieces of him and forgotten to replace them. Still, he tracked their approach without a word.
That night, Caylen took the long watch.
Verek climbed a side ridge after him. Found him sitting beneath a twisted tree, one that looked like it had tried to escape the rock but got stuck halfway. It leaned out over a cliff that would have snapped a man's bones clean through if he slipped, but Caylen didn't care. He sat with his back pressed to the rough bark, knees pulled tight to his chest, breath fogging in the cold air.
The wind shifted again.
Then, for just a flicker, Verek saw it. Caylen's brother, younger than he should have been, hair wild from wind, face split wide in a grin that hadn't existed for years. He was laughing, standing on the cliff's edge like gravity didn't matter. Then the vision was gone—back into memory and silence and all the things Caylen could never fix.
Verek said nothing. Just sat beside him, letting the silence stretch out without breaking it.
By the time they came back down, the sky was bleeding gray.
No one spoke. They packed camp, checked their gear, tightened cloaks against the stillness, and headed down the far side of the peak.
The trail fed into a valley that hadn't been on any map before. Maybe it hadn't existed yesterday. It curled low and quiet, like a cut vein across the land. The bowl of the valley held no wind, no birdsong, no breath of anything alive. Just silence.
At its center stood a stone.
Taller than a man, twisted and moss-cloaked like it had been dragged out of the earth mid-scream. It hummed—not loud, just enough to feel it buzzing against your teeth.
Verek stepped forward.
In the hollow of the stone, green light pulsed—dim, slow, steady. Like a heart that didn't belong to anything living anymore.
He reached in.
The shard didn't fight him.
He lifted it out.
The light shimmered across his face but didn't make him look any warmer.
Ezreal exhaled, short and low. Caylen nodded once. Dax said nothing.
No one said a damn thing.
They turned and walked away.
The silence didn't follow them.
It stayed.
Not a curse exactly. More like something carved in deep, impossible to scrape away.
Some trials don't end. They just live in your bones.