Kael stood before his parents beneath the violet-flamed braziers of the estate’s inner hall, his cloak already slung over one shoulder, the Hollow Grimoire floating silently at his side like a loyal shade.

  “I’ve made my decision,” he said.

  His father, still shirtless from training, crossed his arms, the greatsword on his back humming faintly with residual heat. “Which one?”

  “Both.”

  A single brow rose. His mother, lounging with a glass of blackroot wine, tilted her head, intrigued.

  “I’ll go to the Howling Cysts first,” Kael continued. “Scout it. Test my strength. Then the Crimson Hollow. I’ll be away for a few days. Maybe more.”

  A beat of silence passed.

  Then his father smirked. “Ambitious.”

  His mother raised her glass in a quiet toast. “Don’t die before you become famous, darling.”

  Kael said nothing more. He turned and left, boots echoing against the stone floor as the great doors of House Vire closed behind him.

  The skies above Duskar Cradle churned with black clouds as Kael descended from the floating mountain. He rode a skycart—an open rune-anchored platform of polished darksteel, tethered to a mana rail that shimmered like veins of lightning. The wind howled around him, tearing at his cloak, but Kael stood still, hands folded behind his back, golden eyes locked forward as the world below drew closer.

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  The lowlands were a different world. Dense pine forests sprawled like a dark ocean, and jagged hills rolled with shadows that hid far more than beasts. The Howling Cysts lay somewhere within the Deadroot Valley—a cursed ravine marked by old plague and unnatural decay.

  As the last hour of travel slipped by, the Hollow Grimoire began to stir.

  Rustle.

  The pages turned on their own, though the wind could not touch them. Runes bled across the cover like ink in water. Then—a whisper.

  “Blood calls to blood… They buried the cursed there, but not all stayed buried…”

  Kael raised an eyebrow.

  The Grimoire’s voice was subtle but layered—like multiple voices speaking from within a well, overlapping, some feminine, others monstrous.

  “The soil is stitched with bones. Don’t drink the black water. The gnawing ones remember fire. They fear it. Starve them of sound and they wither...”

  He nodded slowly. The tome had never spoken unprovoked before—but the closer he drew to the dungeon, the more it began to breathe like a living thing.

  Another page turned.

  “At your level, you may shape two undead. Choose carefully. Rotted things are weak, but driven. Bone remembers faster. Sacrifice for strength—if you dare...”

  Kael placed a hand on its spine, and it calmed.

  He could feel the dungeon ahead. Even without the map etched into his adventurer’s card, his soul knew it. The air thickened. The wind felt colder, heavier. Birds no longer sang.

  By sundown, he arrived.

  The Howling Cysts looked more like a wound than a cave.

  A massive gash in the earth, half-collapsed and slumping into a spiraled pit. Jagged black stones jutted from the rim like broken teeth. Faint green mist spilled from within, trailing into the woods like ghostly fingers. Around the entrance, rusted warding sigils had been carved into the trees—half-faded, most cracked, none active.

  As Kael approached, the wind shifted.

  A distant wail echoed from the depths. Not a scream. Not wind.

  Something else.

  The Grimoire trembled at his side.

  Kael stepped forward.