The Whispering Wastes stretched before them like the carcass of a fallen world. Mountains of rusted metal, shattered spellcraft, and forgotten relics loomed in jagged silhouettes against the sickly yellow sky. The air tasted of decay and old magic, thick with the scent of scorched earth that hummed beneath the skin, like the echo of a long-dead spell.
Eryk Thorn walked with the dragon egg cradled against his chest, its warmth seeping through his tunic, the faint pulse of its heartbeat a constant reminder of the life inside. The crack in its shell had grown no wider, but the whispers had not stopped. They coiled around his thoughts, soft and insistent, a language not of words but of feeling.
Cold. Dark.
Each time the sensations stirred within him, they brought with them a peculiar ache that had nothing to do with fatigue. It was a resonance of empathy so deep it felt like mourning. The egg's pain echoed his own in ways he couldn't name.
He tightened his grip, as if he could shield it from the weight of the Wastes.
Beside him, Sera moved with purpose, her boots crunching over broken machinery and discarded armor. Her knife was out, its edge glinting as she poked at the debris, searching for anything salvageable—food, weapons, anything that might give them an edge in this graveyard of lost things.
"You're wasting time," she muttered, kicking aside a dented helmet. "We need supplies, not a pet."
Eryk didn't answer. He simply adjusted the egg against him and scanned the horizon.
He wasn't looking for supplies.
He was looking for him.
Riven.
The last of the original Spellbreakers. The one who had slipped through the Council's grasp centuries ago. The one who might understand the void inside him.
But the Wastes offered no answers. Only shadows, moving, wandering around.
A flicker at the edge of his vision, there and gone in a breath. A figure, dark and indistinct, darting between the skeletal remains of broken constructs.
Eryk's breath hitched.
"Did you see that?"
Sera didn't look up. "See what?"
"There was someone—"
"Probably a scavenger." She shrugged. "Or your imagination. This place messes with your head."
But Eryk was already moving, his feet carrying him forward before he could think. The shadow had been too quick. Not a trick of the light. Not a phantom of the Wastes.
Real.
The egg pulsed in his arms, as if urging him onward.
"Eryk!" Sera's voice was sharp, but he didn't stop.
The shadow flitted ahead, always just out of reach, leading him deeper into the labyrinth of ruin. The ground sloped upward, the debris shifting underfoot, threatening to send him sprawling. He climbed, his muscles burning, his breath coming in short gasps.
Every now and then, he heard the whispering again—not from the egg, but from the Wastes themselves. Ghostly echoes that clung to rusted walls and shattered spires. Words lost to time, names chanted in forgotten tongues. The Wastes remembered, and it was remembering him.
At the top of a rusted tower of scrap, he paused, scanning the wasteland below.
Nothing.
Then, there! A flicker of movement near a collapsed archway, half-buried in the wreckage.
Eryk descended, his pulse pounding in his ears. The archway loomed before him, its edges jagged, its surface etched with faded runes. Beyond it, the ground dipped sharply into a pit, a yawning mouth of darkness, ringed by broken machinery.
The shadow stood at its edge.
For the first time, it didn't flee.
It turned, its face hidden beneath a tattered hood, its form wavering like smoke. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, it pointed into the pit.
Eryk hesitated.
The egg trembled in his grip.
Danger.
He took a step forward.
The ground gave way.
"AHHHHHHHH!!!"
A scream tore from his throat as he fell, the world tilting violently, the egg clutched desperately to his chest. The darkness swallowed him whole.
~○~
Above, Sera heard the shout.
It cut through the heat-stained silence like a wound.
She froze, her knife buried halfway through the rusted lip of a crate, the metal groaning beneath her pressure. Sweat dripped from her temple, catching on her jaw as the wind stilled.
That voice.
Eryk.
His name cracked through her like dry lightning.
She straightened slowly, muscles coiled, eyes scanning the horizon where the sound had come from. Her grip on the blade tightened until her knuckles whitened.
"You've got your own club, Stray Dog?" she muttered under her breath, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. Her lips twitched with a familiar half-smile, one she wore like armor.
But no other voice came back. No laugh. No footsteps. Nothing.
Only that stillness, heavier than silence. Wrong, like the air before a storm. The kind that carried ash instead of rain.
Sera cursed, low and vicious, and jammed the knife into her belt. She vaulted over the crate and landed in a crouch, her fingers brushing the scorched earth for balance.
"Stray Dog?!"
Then she ran.
~○~
Elsewhere in the Wastes, Kael Thorn walked with the Mythblade at his side.
The sword hummed like a distant memory, its ancient runes flickering with the echo of flames long gone. It was more than a weapon. It was the last proof he had once burned with purpose.
Now, it was weight.
The Council's enforcers trudged behind him, iron-shod and silent. They didn't trust him, and he didn't blame them.
Not after what Eryk did.
Not after what you allowed him to become.
That thought, his own voice, dug deep. He welcomed the pain. At least it reminded him he was still human.
Then it came a sound, so sharp and distant. Not just noise. A voice.
Kael stopped mid-step. His breath hitched.
He turned his head slowly, scanning the horizon—cracked stone, skeletal trees, the eternal haze of dust that hung over the Wastes like a forgotten prayer.
Then, above them, a flock of crows exploded into the sky, their black wings slicing across the yellow horizon in chaotic spirals.
The lead enforcer narrowed his eyes.
"There," he said, pointing toward the jagged silhouette of ruined towers. "That came from the Bonepass."
Kael was already moving.
He didn't wait for orders, didn't care if they followed. His boots kicked up plumes of dry earth as he sprinted toward the sound.
Behind him, curses flew, armor clanked, but he didn't look back.
He had no right to hesitate anymore.
Then, a shadow was weaving between the crumbled remnants of a sunken world. Too fluid to be a beast. Too fast to be a man.
The lead enforcer hissed, drawing his blade. "Eyes sharp! Shadowbound!"
The hunters split without command, instincts honed by war. Half veered into the ruins, weapons drawn, spells ready. The others continued forward, toward where the shout had risen like a ghost from the ground.
Kael didn't slow.
The Mythblade vibrated faintly at his side, reacting not to danger but to recognition.
He reached the pit first.
Its mouth yawned wide before him, jagged and irregular, like the ground had been torn, not eroded. The dirt around the edge was blackened and fractured, as if something had clawed upward in desperation.
Kael dropped to one knee, staring into the hole. The darkness was thick. Alive, somehow, pressing up at the edges like it wanted to spill out.
No blood.
No tracks.
No Eryk.
Just the pit.
Kael's chest tightened.
He reached for the Mythblade, and the runes flared—briefly, violently—then dimmed.
He knew that magic. Had felt it before.
Eryk had touched this place.
Or something had touched him.
He stood slowly, staring into the pit as if it might speak again.
Behind him, the enforcers arrived.
"Where is he?" one demanded.
Kael didn't turn.
"He's not here," he said quietly.
The wind picked up, dragging grit across his boots, the scent of iron and ozone swirling in the air.
"He might wander somewhere."
The Council nodded on him. After a while, they told Kael they're gping to find tracks around. While Kael was only looking at the pit trying to see what's in the dark.
But after a few seconds, three rats appeared out of the pit, so he removed his gaze there and try to wander around the Wastes, too.