The wind in the Skel-Hollow Canyons howled like dying beasts—long, stretched screams echoing off the jagged stone walls. Kael crouched low behind a crumbled ridge, his cloak wrapped tightly around him, eyes fixed on the canyon's throat.
The ground here pulsed like it had veins.
Everything felt wrong.
Not corrupted. Not infected.
Just… hollowed out.
Like something had scooped out the soul of the place and left its skin behind.
---
> Objective Active: Locate Sigil Fragment (3/7)
Location: Skel-Hollow, Southern Rift Fault
Status: Unstable - Beacon Intermittent
Adversaries Present: Unknown Sigil-Bonded Entities
Kael moved carefully through the canyon's lower paths, his boots crunching over shattered Pact armor—old units, long dead. Black glyph-burns marred the corpses, their Veils fused to their faces.
Something had burned them from the inside.
---
Hours later, Kael reached the ruins of an old Pact Listening Post. The building had caved inward, its comms towers melted like wax. But in the center of the devastation, one signal remained—soft, rhythmic.
The shard.
He descended into the rubble.
Every step closer made the Revenant Edge quiver on his back.
Then, suddenly—
A voice rang out.
"You shouldn't be here."
Kael stopped.
The speaker emerged from the shadows—tall, lean, pale skin covered in swirling red tattoos. His mask was cracked down the center, and his eyes glowed violet with Echo-madness.
But what chilled Kael most was the sigil on his chest.
Whole.
Rotating.
Alive.
---
"Who are you?" Kael demanded.
The stranger smiled faintly. "I was the third. Before they called us Harbingers. Before I let the Dream speak through me."
He held up a long, silver spear laced with bone—its tip shaped like a twisted shard.
> New Adversary Encountered: Varn, the Hollow Voice
Class: Sigil-Bearer (Fragment 3/7 – Bound)
Status: Hostile – Cognition Merged with Dream Entity
---
Kael stepped forward, drawing the Revenant Edge.
"I'm taking that shard."
Varn tilted his head. "Why? So you can feed it to the Silence inside you? So you can become what they all fear?"
Kael didn't respond.
He just launched forward.
---
The fight was brutal.
Kael's blade howled through the Echo-thick air, each strike clashing against Varn's spear with shrieks of distorted pressure. Varn moved like water—effortless, unearthly.
His voice echoed with every motion, not from his mouth but from inside Kael's skull.
> "You think you fight for purpose. But all vessels drown in the Dream."
Kael growled, shifting the Revenant Edge mid-swing. The blade bent, becoming a wide crescent, glowing with his blood's resonance.
He slammed it into the canyon floor.
A pulse erupted, shaking the rock.
Varn staggered.
And Kael drove forward, cutting deep across his chest.
Varn screamed—not in pain, but in ecstasy.
> "It remembers you! It chooses you!"
Kael didn't stop.
He drove the blade into Varn's heart—and the sigil ignited, then shattered.
---
> Sigil Fragment Claimed (3/7)
New Trait Unlocked: Echo Pulse – Silence Amplification (Lv. 1)
Warning: Corruption Level — 19%
Entity Varn – Neutralized (Status: Memory Echo Imprinted)
---
Varn collapsed, his body crumbling to ash and light.
Kael stood over the remains, chest heaving, sweat and blood mixing on his brow.
He didn't feel victorious.
Just heavier.
---
Then, the silence spoke again.
Not Varn.
Not the Harvester.
But… Renna.
> "You're getting closer."
Kael froze.
"Where are you?"
> "Where I've always been. At the end of the Dream."
The voice vanished.
Leaving behind only the sound of his heartbeat.
And the quiet ticking of the next sigil calling him forward.
---