The day after the Awakening Ceremony began with a silence that didn’t feel natural.

  No barking dogs. No clang of merchant carts on cobblestone. No laughter echoing down Hollowrest’s crooked alleys.

  The city felt suspended—like time itself was holding its breath.

  Shay felt it in his bones before he even opened his eyes: something just beneath the surface, taut and waiting.

  Kara was already gone.

  He found the note before anything else—a scrap of brittle parchment pinned beneath a chipped ceramic mug on their rickety table:

  Going to the guild. Stay out of trouble.

  Her handwriting was jagged and slanted, like it could never sit still. Shay stared at it for a long time. He could almost hear the hesitation in her strokes, like she hadn’t believed the words would reach him in time.

  There was little food left. He gnawed on stale bread, bruised fruit, and the memory of Kara’s steady voice. Then he stood in the silence.

  He didn’t want to return to the ruins. Not yet. Not after what he’d heard there. Or worse—what he might hear again.And he couldn’t bring himself to walk to the church and attempt the Ceremony a second time.

  So, he wandered.

  Through the alleys near the butcher’s yard, where rust still streaked the drains and the smell of old blood clung to the stone.

  Past the boarded chapel of Raneara, Goddess of Light—her statue chipped, her name long since erased.

  To the river gate, where guards leaned half-asleep on their spears, the sigil of Avalon faded and dulled with time.

  No one stopped him. No one asked where he was going. In Hollowrest, people had learned not to look too closely at anyone moving without purpose.

  He walked until his legs ached and his thoughts turned slow. Eventually, he found himself in the shadow of the Church of Light.

  He didn’t step inside. Not yet.

  The twin doors were shut. The ceremonial flames that had danced in the braziers the day before had gone out. Dust clung to the steps like old regrets.

  He lingered near the base of the stairs, then cracked the door open and slipped in.

  Soft light filtered through the stained glass windows, casting fractured colors across the stone floor.

  And there—kneeling before the altar—was Priest Baldric.

  His back was to Shay. His voice murmured in slow, low prayers—too soft to hear, too heavy to ignore.

  His once-pristine robe was wrinkled and stained. His spine bent like a drawn bow. He looked like a man worn thin by silence.

  Shay paused behind a column, unsure if he should stay. Baldric had always treated him with indifference—not cruel, but never warm.

  Still, something in the priest’s posture felt... brittle.

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  Then Baldric spoke, without turning.

  “You’re not as quiet as you think.”

  Shay flinched. Then stepped into view. “I wasn’t trying to spy.”

  “But you were,” Baldric said calmly. “Or maybe you just wanted someone to notice you.”

  Shay hesitated.

  Baldric rose, joints popping like old floorboards. He turned to regard Shay—not with scorn, but with something stranger. Appraisal. Uncertainty.

  “You’re Delmore’s boy. Kara’s brother. The one with no Aspect.”

  “Yeah,” Shay said quietly. “That’s me.”

  “You came to try again?”

  Shay nodded.

  The priest snorted. “Most don’t come back. I’m not sure why you think you're different.” He narrowed his eyes. “So tell me—why are you here?”

  Shay felt heat rise in his chest. He’d come here knowing the risk—and Baldric still thought he was just another coward. He opened his mouth to retort.

  But what came out instead surprised them both.

  “I heard something,” Shay said quickly. “In the ruins. Near the old statue. A voice. It... it said my name.”

  Baldric didn’t move, but the air between them thickened.

  “What kind of voice?”

  “Not loud. A whisper. Like it was in my head. But… it felt real.”

  The priest turned his gaze back to the altar. He was silent for a long time.

  “You’re not the first to wander those ruins,” he said finally. “Most come back with stories. Fear. Madness. Or worse—nothing at all.”

  “But you believe me?”

  “No,” Baldric said. “But I’ve seen enough strange things to know when to listen. Show me.”

  Shay blinked. “Now?”

  “Now. Before I decide not to.”

  Baldric adjusted his robe with a grunt and gave a short nod. When he stepped toward the archway, Shay followed.

  They walked in a quiet, uneasy stride.

  Through the waking streets. Past shuttered homes and soot-covered stoops. Past the hunched backs of the poor and the blank-eyed stares of spirits who hadn’t intervened in years.

  The ruins were quieter than Shay had ever known.

  He led Baldric down a path twisted with broken stone and tangled weeds. The air felt thick, as if the land itself remembered what was buried here.

  “This used to be the city wall,” Baldric muttered, lifting his robe as he stepped over a collapsed pillar. “Before the gods fell. Before the wards broke. People came here to pray.”

  “They don’t anymore,” Shay said.

  “They forgot how.”

  They reached the statue.

  Still broken. Still hunched. Still faceless.

  Shay knelt beside it and pointed. “There. That stone wasn’t always there. I used to sit here. But yesterday—something moved. Something spoke.”

  Baldric knelt beside him. He brushed away dirt from a carved sigil—a circle split down the middle, one half smooth, one half jagged.

  He froze. His face went pale.

  “An old sigil,” he whispered. “Purged from Church records. Not divine. Not demonic.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Aspect-bound magic,” Baldric said, voice low. “But not any form we teach. Not any form that belongs in this world.”

  Shay frowned. “But the Church still performs awakenings. You still have rituals. Power.”

  “We do,” Baldric said. “Barely. But we don’t speak to these symbols anymore. Because the ones who listen back... aren’t gods.”

  Then the ground shifted.

  Just a tremor—but enough to freeze them both.

  A low hum followed. Like a breath caught in stone.

  “Back away,” Baldric warned.

  But Shay didn’t.

  The sigil pulsed.

  His mana surged—uncontrolled. Pressure built in his skull.

  Then a voice.

  You are not empty.

  Shay staggered backward. The sigil dimmed. The tremor faded.

  Baldric grabbed his shoulder. “What did it say?”

  Shay gasped for breath. “It said... I’m not…”

  Then, like a knife through thought, danger spiked in his mind—cutting off the rest.

  “You’re not what?”

  Shay hesitated. “I—I don’t know. I couldn’t hear the end,” he lied.

  Baldric stared at the sigil again, face unreadable. Then turned sharply.

  “We’re leaving.”

  “But—”

  “I said now.”

  They walked back through the ruins in silence. Shay kept glancing over his shoulder. Something had changed.

  Something had seen him.

  At the edge of the ruins, Baldric stopped.

  “Tell no one,” he said. “Not your sister. Not the guards. Not even the priests.”

  Shay frowned. “Why?”

  “Because Hollowrest is not safe,” Baldric whispered. “And because what you heard might be the first true voice this city has known in a hundred years.”

  Then he stepped forward, face hard.

  “And hear me now—never return to those ruins again. Not alone. Not with anyone. Not for any reason. That thing beneath the stone—it doesn’t belong in this world. And it does not want to be found.”

  Shay opened his mouth. Closed it.

  Baldric turned and left, his robe trailing behind him like ash in the wind.

  Shay stood alone at the threshold of ruin, staring back at the statue and the buried sigil.

  He didn’t know what had found him.

  But it wasn’t finished.

  And neither was he.