We ran.

Not just ran fled, lungs tearing, legs screaming, the forest howling behind us like a living thing denied its meal. Branches lashed at our faces, roots grabbed at our ankles, and the ground seemed determined to trip us just to see who would fall first. No one spoke. There was no breath to waste on words, no space in our minds for anything except forward.

Forward or die.

The rupture Nora had found wasn't a glowing gate or a clean tear in the world like the ones in stories. It was a wrongness in the land, a subtle distortion where trees bent inward, where sound dulled and mana slid sideways instead of flowing straight. You wouldn't notice it unless you were already half-dead and desperate enough to feel the world rather than look at it.

We burst through it like drowning people breaking the surface.

And fell.

Not down, in, a straight drop to hell.

The ground vanished beneath our feet, replaced by cold stone and rushing air. We tumbled, rolled, slammed into one another, curses and sharp cries echoing as gravity seemed to remember us all at once.

I hit hard, shoulder first, stone biting into my shoulder, tearing through cloth and revealing red.

Then... stillness.

The sounds of pursuit vanished as if someone had slammed a door on the world.

For a long moment, no one moved.

I lay there, cheek pressed to stone, chest heaving, counting breaths I wasn't sure I deserved. My heart was trying to escape my ribs. My hands shook so badly I had to dig my fingers into the ground just to feel real.

Why was my stamina so bad? I was supposed to be an ascendant who was about to break through to C-rank. What the hell was wrong with my body?

"Everyone… alive?" I finally asked, my voice hoarse.

A series of groans, coughs, and muttered responses answered me.

They seemed to be 10 feet deep in pain and regret, but hey, they were still alive.

For now.

I pushed myself up and froze.

The cave stretched across my gaze, impossibly long and wide; it should not have been this big.

From the outside, the opening we'd dived into had been narrow, barely wide enough for two people side by side, half-hidden by roots and shadow. A place you could miss if you weren't actively searching for a miracle.

Inside, it was a behemoth.

The space stretched outward in a way that made my eyes hurt, like my brain refused to accept the geometry. The ceiling arched impossibly high, lost in darkness, while the floor extended forward in a single, perfectly straight path that vanished into shadow. No side tunnels. No branching routes. Just one road, carved cleanly through the heart of stone.

The walls—

I swallowed.

They were glass.

Not smooth crystal, not polished gem. Jagged, layered sheets of translucent glass fused into the rock itself, catching and bending the faint light we brought with us. Colors refracted and slid across the surface as we moved, ghostly reflections that lagged just a heartbeat behind reality.

It felt like walking inside a mirror house from those horror movies, the one where half the cast dies.

Someone behind me whispered, probably Liam, cause who else would ruin the moment except that useless bastard, "This… this isn't possible."

No one contradicted them.

In the center of the cave, directly in our path, stood a massive stone tablet.

It rose taller than two men stacked atop one another, thick and ancient, its surface worn smooth by time, or by hands, though I couldn't imagine who would come here willingly often enough to leave marks like that. Strange symbols and words were carved deep into its face, the grooves darkened as if inked by shadow itself.

Rules.

That was my first thought.

Because, of course, there were rules.

Caves like this didn't just exist. They demanded things.

"Sebastian," Annalise said quietly behind me.

I knew what they wanted.

I sighed and stepped forward.

Every footstep echoed too loudly, my boots tapping against stone and glass, the sound stretching farther than it should have. I stopped a few feet from the tablet and conjured a ball of flames, bright enough to read without flooding the cave in light.

The words were written in clean, sharp script. A language I and the previous Sebastian had grown up reading, English.

I read aloud.

"Never split the group walk as one, or be undone."

A chill ran down my spine.

"Don't stare down tunnels, cracks, or seams; if you lock eyes first, it locks on you."

I frowned, my gaze flicking instinctively to the glass walls before I forced it back to the stone.

"If a sound feels near, it's far away; if it sounds far, it's beside you."

Someone behind me swore under their breath.

"When something calls your name, don't reply; it wants inside, not a word, but you."

My grip tightened on the stick I was using as a sword.

"Keep your light alive and burning bright. When darkness falls without a fight, stay still, stay quiet, wait it out."

The silence in the cave thickened, as if the stone itself were listening.

"Don't sleep where chambers open wide; press to stone or hide inside, wake exposed and leave at once."

I swallowed.

"Speak no ill of cave or crown of rock; stone remembers, stone will mock."

That one made my skin crawl. What the hell did they mean by stone will mock, it's a piece of fucking rock!

"If paths repeat, you're in a loop, turn back before it tightens."

I glanced down the single, unbroken path ahead of us.

"What feels tame by day turns cruel by night; if you can leave before the dark takes hold, do so, because when the cave decides it's night, it never loosens its grip"

I lowered my light.

No one spoke.

The rules hung in the air, heavy and final, like a verdict already passed. I could feel everyone behind me shifting, uneasy, eyes darting to the walls, the ceiling, the darkness ahead.

I felt it too.

This place wasn't just dangerous.

It was aware.

My gaze drifted lower on the tablet, past the rules, to where the stone darkened further. There, etched more delicately, almost lovingly, was something else.

A poem.

My heart skipped for reasons I couldn't explain.

I read it silently at first, then aloud, the words settling into my bones as if they'd been waiting for me.

This is the mouth where worlds begin,

The breath that draws the living in.

Step forward once, and mark the line

The way you enter is the way you leave.

I felt suddenly, acutely aware of the cave entrance behind us.

No other doors, no hidden seams,

The cave is both the end and means.

All paths return, all circles close,

The entrance waits where exits pose.

My chest felt tight.

Remember this when hope runs thin:

The door you crossed still watches you.

At the bottom, carved smaller than the rest, was a name.

Black.

I stared at it.

Black.

The name rang no bells.

In the novel, there was no one named Black. No character, no side note, no footnote buried in lore. I knew the world I'd read. I knew its gods, its monsters, its hidden threats.

This name belonged to none of them.

That scared me more than the rules.

I stepped back from the tablet and turned to the group.

They were watching me.

Not the tablet.

Not the cave.

Me.

Their faces were drawn tight with exhaustion and fear, eyes reflecting the fractured light of the glass walls. Annalise's strings were coiled close, tense. Nora's jaw was clenched, her gaze sharp and calculating, but even she said nothing. Xavier stood with his arms crossed, blood dried dark on his sleeve, waiting.

Waiting for me.

The realization settled heavy in my chest.

Somewhere along the way, between running for our lives, making calls under pressure, surviving things we shouldn't have survived, they had decided.

I was the one who chose.

I let out a slow breath.

Great.

I looked back at the tablet.

At the rules.

At the poem.

At the name that I had never heard, a legacy untold.

A cave that was bigger on the inside. Glass walls that watched. Rules that punished curiosity. A promise that the way in was the way out—and that there was no other door.

And behind us?

A forest full of monsters, a Gemini-stage abomination, the Jötunn moving ever closer, and an Entity that did not forget.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

Thought.

If we stayed outside, we died.

If we went forward, we might die.

But we might not.

And right now, that was enough.

I opened my eyes, met their gazes, and felt the weight of it settle fully onto my shoulders.

It seemed that, somehow, they had made me the de facto leader.

I sighed.

And I decided, we were going in.

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