The moment Kai, Lyra, Torvin, and Elara stepped onto the dark path, the world shifted.
The air grew thick, so dense it clung to their skin like oil. The forest sounds behind them fell away, smothered into silence. Even the wind refused to follow.
The ground beneath their feet was not soil, not stone, but something in between, cold and soft, like walking on the remains of forgotten things. The trees twisted overhead like skeletal arms, their bark flaking like ash, their branches reaching as if to grasp.
Fog coiled around their legs, low and dense. Every step felt like a descent, as if the path weren't a road through a forest, but a vein burrowing deeper into the world's wounded heart.
Kai's hand found the haft of his spear.
"Stay close," he murmured. "There's something here… watching."
They pressed forward, breath visible despite no wind. Eyes stung. Every sound was distant, muffled, except for the occasional rustle. Something moving just beyond sight. Shapes shifted in the fog. Not animals. Not people.
Shadow demons.
When they finally emerged, half-formed things, with limbs too long and mouths full of jagged, glistening teeth, Elara's whisper barely carried.
"They feed on fear. On regret. They will try to unmake you."
Then the demons attacked.
It began as a ripple through the mist, then chaos.
Claws slashed through fog, teeth snapped at throats. Lyra loosed arrows with cold precision, each one a quiet death. Torvin's axe rose and fell, cleaving nightmare into smoke. Elara's hands burned with fire and light, her spells snapping like thunder through the trees.
Kai fought at the center, his spear a living thing in his hands, thrust, pivot, block, sweep.
But the shadow demons kept coming.
And worse, they whispered.
Not in words. In memories.
A breath at Kai's ear that wasn't there.
A vision of a clearing in the Everwood, empty.
A child alone, calling out, unheard.
"You are not enough," they breathed.
"You were never meant to lead."
He stumbled. A claw grazed his side. Blood bloomed.
The mist thickened around him, pressing in. His fingers trembled. The spear felt heavier now. Too heavy.
He saw them againhis parents, faceless and fading. The people of Eldoria, broken and starving. The forest, dying under ash.
Kai dropped to a knee, gasping. The whispers swarmed. His fear fed them. The world dimmed.
And then, A voice.
Not Elara's. Not Lyra's.
Older. Warmer.
"Stand, child of the line."
He knew it.
The voice of his blood. Of his father. Of the kings who had walked before him.
"We did not die for you to kneel."
The whispers faltered.
Kai rose.
His eyes burned, not with fear, but with fire.
"I am Kai," he roared, the spear raised high. "Son of the ancient kings. And I will not be broken!"
The Sunstone ignited, brilliant and golden, its light punching through the darkness like a rising sun. The shadow demons shrieked, their forms unraveling, smoke ripped from bone.
One by one, they dissolved into mist. The path cleared.
The silence returned, not empty now, but waiting.
Ahead, the fog thinned. The land rose.
The ruins of the Old Capital awaited.