Chapter Text
With Cato’s departure behind them and the mountain winds biting sharper than ever, the remaining four pressed onward.
The path narrowed into a spine of ancient stone, a bridge carved directly into the cliffs, one of many leading to the Frostguard Citadel. It wasn’t the same bridge from Ruilin’s dreams, but walking on it stirred something hollow in his chest. He kept his eyes forward, boots crunching on frost, his scarf tugged high over his mouth.
Braum led the way. Snow swirled around his broad shoulders as he approached the first checkpoint - a gate of blackened steel flanked by sentries in heavy wolf-fur cloaks, their faces half-obscured by frost and vigilance.
The guards stiffened at first sight of the group, hands shifting to weapons - until their eyes landed on Braum.
One of them blinked in recognition. “Braum,” he said, a grin tugging beneath the ice in his beard. “Didn’t expect to see you this far north again.”
Braum chuckled, spreading his arms in greeting. “The world is colder than Braum remembers, friend — and not just the weather.” He clasped the guard’s shoulder with a warmth that seemed to cut through the wind. “We seek entry. Our mission is… important.”
The guards exchanged glances - wary, uncertain.
“You know the Citadel doesn’t open its gates freely,” one said, more cautiously now. “But for you… we’ll make an exception. So long as you stay to the outer ring. The people inside aren’t ready for strangers. Not after what’s happened.”
“Understood,” Braum said, voice softer now. “We will tread with care.”
The gate groaned shut behind them, sealing off the mountain wind with a final, hollow clang. Frostguard Citadel loomed ahead - not a city, not a castle, but something colder. Harsher. Its walls rose like black stone teeth from the snow, pierced by narrow towers and ringed in a silence too complete to be natural. There were no bells. No voices. Only the soft crunch of boots on packed snow.
Ruilin walked close behind Braum, his breath fogging the red scarf around his mouth. Every step echoed faintly off the stone beneath his feet, and with each one, a strange pressure grew in his chest.
This was the place Cato had spoken of only in hushed fragments. The place he'd once called home - before rebellion had cast him out. Before exile had carved distance into bone. Ruilin slowed, his eyes tracing the high towers, the gates of thickened ice, the shadowed windows shuttered tight against the cold.
He could feel it in the silence: the weight of old judgments, of rules carved in ice and never meant to bend. He wondered what memories Cato might’ve left frozen behind these walls. A childhood spent beneath these grey spires. Training yards. Narrow halls. The echo of a voice raised in anger, or in sorrow. Had he loved this place once? Had it loved him back, even a little, before it turned cold?
Ruilin touched the small pouch of sea salt at his hip, the one his father had tucked into hand before he left Bilgewater. The coarse grains shifted under his fingers, a whisper of tide and home. It grounded him, reminded him that not all places were like this - cold and quiet and full of exile. Some homes were made of warmth. Yet, this was where Cato had been made. And this was where he had been broken.
And now, Ruilin walked its paths without him.
The group slowed as they passed another bridge - a line of glassy frost and stone, suspended impossibly above a seemingly bottomless chasm. The ice shimmered faintly, carved with ancient runes, and pulsed with a strange inner light.
He swallowed, unable to look away.
Graves muttered beside him, “If I fall off one of these, I expect one of you magic types to catch me.”
“No promises,” Twisted Fate replied, eyes scanning the expanse ahead. “Though the view’d be something to die for.”
Further in, the Citadel opened up into a wide, frost-bound courtyard. And beyond it - deeper than any of them had imagined - loomed the Howling Abyss.
It was not a simple canyon or crevasse. It was a wound in the world.
A vast scar in the earth, rimmed in rime and silence. The snow didn’t fall into it; it vanished. The wind didn’t howl - it paused, as if uncertain how to cross the threshold. Something down there pulsed. Waiting. Listening.
Even Braum grew quiet.
Ruilin stood at the edge, not daring to step closer. He felt it again - that same hum beneath his ribs, the echo he carried from his visions. Not a memory. Not déjà vu. A promise.
He wrapped his arms around himself.
Twisted Fate whistled low. “Well, there’s your path forward.”
Graves looked at Ruilin. “You sure about this, kid?”
No. Not at all. But Ruilin nodded.
Because it was too late not to be sure.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
As they approached the ancient bridge - a narrow stretch of frost-bound stone suspended over the chasm - the air changed.
It didn’t shift with the wind, or the cold, but with something deeper. A hush fell. Even the snowfall seemed to still.
Then, just ahead of them, the air split.
A jagged tear opened in the very fabric of the world - vertical, pulsing with a sickly violet light, as if reality itself had been unstitched.
From the heart of it stepped a man draped in dark robes, his presence like a shadow cast by something far larger. The tear shimmered behind him, warping the space it touched. His eyes glowed faintly, blue against purple. He had come.
The Prophet stood still for a moment, the cold wind swirling around him yet never touching his robes. In his gloved hands, cradled with reverence, was the relic, gleaming with veins of violet light that pulsed in time with something unseen.
Tobias’ eyes narrowed at once, catching the glint of it. “That’s-” he started, but Graves put a hand on his arm, a silent warning to stay quiet.
The Prophet tilted his head, gaze settling on Ruilin with the weight of premonition.
“I did not come to strike you down,” he said, voice low and calm, layered like a whisper heard through water. “Not yet.”
His fingers trailed along the edge of the relic, and it shimmered.
“I brought you here because the time is drawing near. The Unravelling. You feel it - don’t you?” He stepped closer, each footfall eerily silent on the frost-covered stone. “It trembles beneath your ribs. It calls to you in sleep. The truth, Dreamer. The truth of what you are.”
Ruilin’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
The Prophet lifted the relic slightly. “You are more than you were told. More than they let you believe. The dreams were never mere visions or warnings. They were invitations.”
He smiled, slow and strange. “And you have followed them here. Just as you were meant to.”
He extended a hand.
“Come with me. Embrace what lies ahead. This world is fading, corrupted by its own noise. You and I- we were shaped to become its salvation, and its end.”
There was something almost… tender in the offer. A terrible kind of gentleness that made Ruilin’s skin crawl.
Graves rested a hand on his pistol. ‘You want to run that by us again?”
The Prophet didn’t even glance his way.
“This is your moment,” he said to Ruilin. “Don’t let them steal it from you.”
The Prophet watched Ruilin expectantly for a long moment. Then, as though offering a piece of himself - a gesture meant to build trust, not threaten it - he said:
“My name… is Malzahar.”
Ruilin stiffened. The name meant nothing to him, but the weight behind it chilled him all the same.
“I was once as you are now,” Malzahar continued, his voice low and reverent, ‘A seer. A whisper-reader. A Dreamer. In Shurima, they came to me in droves - beginning for guidance, for meaning. But all I saw was ruin. Again and again, the collapse of empires. The end of time. Until I saw Her.”
His hand brushed reverently over the relic, eyes shining with memory.
“She gave me purpose. Freedom from the lie of choice. I gave hope... And in return, I was given truth”.
Ruilin’s voice cracked, asking through the cold: “The girl - The one from my dreams?”
Malzahar tilted his head slightly, as if plucking through distant memories, “No. Not the girl. My empress.”
Ruilin paused, considering this for a second, then pressed ‘Since I was a child, a girl was always present- then she was here, at this bridge. You used her face to lure me here. Why?”
“She was another.” Malzahar said simply. “Touched by the Void, as you are. But not like us. Not Chosen. Trapped. Her mind is hers… for now.” He gave the smallest shrug. “We borrowed her face because you trusted it. Because you followed it. She served her purpose.”
A sharp pain bloomed in Ruilin’s chest. He had searched for that face for years. A thread through every dream. And now it was revealed as nothing more than a mask. A lure.
He swallowed hard. “Where is she now?”
Malzahar’s expression did not change. “Alive. Struggling. But irrelevant.”
Ruilin took a step back, toward Braum, whose shield stood ready by his side. Revulsion curled inside the dreamer’s gut: “You used her.”
“You would do the same, once you understand,” Malzahar replied calmly. “You already do, in your heart. That is why you came.”
Tobias stepped forward, one hand drifting toward his cards, eyes fixed on the relic. “That thing - what is it?” he demanded. “How did some scum in Zaun even know about it? What does it do?”
Malzahar didn’t even look at him. His gaze remained fixed on Ruilin, unwavering.
“This relic is a vessel,” he said, almost reverently. “Born of the void, Forged not by hand, but by Her will. It allows the boundaries between worlds to thin… and open. As it did here.”
He held it aloft again, and though Tobias bristled, Malzahar remained utterly still.
“How it's known in Zaun does not matter,” he added, “Those who know of the Void have always sought its tools.”
He turned the relic in his hand, its dark core pulsing like a slow heartbeat. “We are not so different, you and I. Both touched. Both dream-led. Both carrying the seed of something far greater than ourselves. You see it too. Our joint destinies. The cliff at the end of it all. Where the sky cracks and the last light folds inward. She has chosen us, Dreamer. And soon… You will understand.”
Ruilin’s breath misted harshly through his teeth. “You’re wrong. I’m nothing like you.”
The Prophet smiled faintly. “Perhaps the gifts She gave me will change your mind.”
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
He raised a hand, and the void pulsed. The tear behind him widened into a gaping wound of roiling violet and black, and from its depths, shapes spilled forth: twisted silhouettes dragging clawed limbs, their bodies flickering between substance and shadow. Nightmarish figures with too many limbs, eyes like molten glass, and jaws that split too far.
They shrieked, wet, scraping sounds, and rushed toward the group.
Braum moved first. He stepped in front of the others, shield raised high - not just a slab of enchanted steel, but a defiant wall of will. The first creature lunged; Braum caught it mid-leap, shield crashing down to send it tumbling into the abyss. Another came. Then two. Still, he held. “Stay behind Braum!” he bellowed.
Twisted Fate drew a trio of cards, their edges humming with kinetic energy. “I’ll buy us some space!” A gold card crackled in his fingers and flared outward in a streak of golden light, striking the lead creature in the temple. It reeled back - but more surged in behind it.
Graves let out a sharp curse and fired into the horde. The blast from his shotgun scattered the front line, smoke curling upward from the cracks in the stone. “You got a whole nest back there, or what?”
Ruilin’s hands burned violet.
He stepped forward, exhaling sharply, and let instinct take over. He blinked - a sudden ripple of air - and reappeared behind one of the voidspawn. Before it could turn, he drove his elbow into the side of its malformed skull, the way Cato had shown him. It screeched, and Ruilin spun low, conjuring a burst of violet energy with one hand and slamming it point-blank into its chest. The thing folded in on itself with a crackle of collapsing light.
Another came at him. This one faster. Ruilin ducked beneath its lunge and drove his knee into its jaw, following with a sharp uppercut crackling with psychic force. The movements were fluid, disciplined, learned, and practised.
But overhead, Malzahar lifted the relic. Ruilin’s stomach turned. Twisted Fate’s eyes locked on the object. “That thing - he’s usin’ it to keep the rift open!” He drew a single card, gold again, and took careful aim.
“I’m on it,” he muttered, then vanished in a flash - blinked, not unlike Ruilin. He reappeared behind Malzahar and hurled the card like a dagger.
It struck true. The relic jolted in Malzahar’s grip, tumbling from his hand and clattering against the icy stone, landing just beside Tobias’ feet.
The gambler huffed with surprise, then dove, fingers curling tightly around the cold, humming artefact. He held it close, retreating back toward Graves with a breathless curse under his breath.
Malzahar turned, eyes flashing with disquiet — but not anger.
Behind him, the rent in reality began to seal itself. The void-born rift hissed and flickered, its edges folding inward like the closing petals of a dying bloom. The air crackled as the last sliver of blackness stitched shut with a low, resonant snap, leaving only the brittle wind in its wake.
The Prophet shifted his hand toward the gambler. A purple haze shimmered outward, curling toward Tobias like smoke that thought. Twisted Fate recoiled as it struck, staggering back with a strangled noise, one hand clutching his head, the other locked around the relic. “Ah- hell-!”
Graves lunged instinctively, grabbing Tobias by the shoulder to steady him. The sickness leapt.
Graves jerked as if burned, eyes wide as the violet corruption bled into him too. He dropped to one knee, gasping, his chest heaving. Veins pulsed with unnatural light beneath his skin.
Around them, the remaining void-creatures paused mid-lunge, then twisted toward the gambler and the outlaw as if drawn by scent. Braum roared and widened his stance, dashing towards the two and intercepting the creatures. His shield rang like a bell as he braced against their advance, blocking them from the afflicted. “Stay with Braum, friends!” he barked.
Ruilin’s eyes widened. He blinked again, reappearing between the Prophet and the others, hands raised defensively. His magic coiled and lashed - he sent a ripple of void-born force straight toward Malzahar. It struck. But it didn’t move him.
Malzahar only tilted his head. “Curious,” he murmured. “I thought it was the hunter who tethered you here. But perhaps… it is something deeper.”
Ruilin’s heart stopped. The dream. Malzahar had seen it too.
Ruilin’s voice broke in a near-sob. Then, he steadied it. “Leave the people I love out of this.”
Ruilin ran forward, closing the gap between himself and the Prophet, legs coiled like springs, eyes locked. But Malzahar was already waiting. He turned, hand outstretched - and Ruilin stopped mid-sprint.
No - was stopped.
A force clamped down around him like invisible jaws. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t even scream. Magic choked in his throat, unravelling into silence.
Malzahar’s voice pressed cold into his mind: “You will see it soon, Dreamer. You were always meant to kneel.”
A low, resonant groan echoed from beneath the stone - not from Malzahar, not from any spell, but from something older. Something vast. Cracks laced outward from the centre of the bridge, not from the Prophet’s hand, but the foundation itself - as though the mountain had shifted in its sleep. Ruilin felt it in his bones: this was not conjured. This was awakening. The bridge shuddered violently beneath their feet. Ice splintered like glass.
Malzahar faltered.
Just for a moment, the Prophet’s brow twitched, the corners of his eyes tightening. His hand remained outstretched, still channelling that awful violet tether - Ruilin frozen within it, unable to move, unable to breathe, but his gaze shifted. Not in triumph. In recognition.
Something else was here. Ruilin felt it too, not in his body - still locked in place, but in his mind. A sudden chill, colder than the wind. A ripple behind the veil of the world. Watching.
Their eyes met. Neither spoke. But in that shared silence, something passed between them, not understanding, but awareness. Whatever was turning the bridge to ruin was not Malzahar. And it had only just begun to wake.
Tobias cried out, shaking off the sickness. “Ruilin!”
Graves staggered toward him. “Move, kid! Move!”
But Ruilin was frozen, eyes wide, limbs locked, pain sprouting through every limb.
Braum moved fast. With one hand, he grabbed Tobias by the collar, the other hooking Graves under the arm. “Hold on!” he growled, dragging them both back just as the ground gave way.
Chunks of the bridge fell into the void. Dust billowed. Screams echoed. Ruilin teetered on the edge, still held in place by Malzahar’s will. His body was no longer his own - locked in place, his limbs numb, lungs crushed beneath an unseen weight. His fingers twitched uselessly, every nerve alight with a cold, searing pressure that stole even the sound from his throat.
A crack split the silence.
The bridge groaned beneath him. Thin fissures spidered out along the ice, veins of impending collapse. Somewhere in the haze, he heard Braum yell, someone else curse - but the sound reached him as if from underwater. Still, he couldn’t move.
Then - suddenly - the pressure snapped. The Prophet’s grip dissolved like smoke, and Ruilin stumbled forward with a choked gasp - Just as the ice beneath him gave way.
The ground dropped.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Ruilin fell, the air punched from his lungs, until his hand, burning, barely responding, caught the jagged edge of the broken bridge. His body swung hard, slamming into the brittle underside of the ledge. A sharp cry tore from him.
He tried to pull himself up. His arm trembled violently. The pain from Malzahar’s annihilation still clung to his chest and shoulders like frostbite, every movement sending spikes of agony through his muscles. His grip began to slip.
A boot skidded nearby.
“Hold on!” Graves' voice - hoarse, desperate.
Then Braum's massive hands clamped around Ruilin’s wrist, powerful and warm even through the cold. Graves caught his other forearm with his good hand, teeth clenched as the lingering sickness still glowed faintly along his skin.
Together, they hauled Ruilin up, inch by agonising inch, until his knees scraped over the ice and he collapsed against them, shivering and gasping. His vision swam with light and shadow.
He turned his head, dizzy.
Where Malzahar had stood… There was nothing.
Only a shimmer in the air, like a heat mirage folding in on itself - spiralling downward, vanishing into the abyss.
The Prophet was gone.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The wind howled like a mourning voice as the group settled near the shattered end of the bridge, far enough from the collapse to feel safe, but not far enough to forget what had happened. The jagged ice still bore the cracks of recent violence, a reminder of how close they’d come to losing everything.
Braum set down Ruilin gently against a slab of stone, fussing with his coat, pressing a water flask into his hand. His usually boisterous expression was quiet, tense.
“You are alive,” he said, as if needing to speak the fact aloud to believe it.
Ruilin didn’t answer. His fingers trembled as he unscrewed the flask. His throat still burned, and there was a strange numbness in his chest that hadn’t lifted. Like something had been taken.
Ruilin sat cradled by furs which Braum had wrapped around him, trembling from pain and exhaustion. His limbs ached from the Prophet’s magic - still raw, as if his bones had been wrenched from inside. His breaths came in shallow pulls, yet the worst of the pain wasn’t in his body. It was somewhere deeper.
Twisted Fate crouched nearby, the relic clutched tight in one gloved hand. He hadn’t let it go since the Prophet dropped it.
“I hate magic,” he muttered, not looking at anyone. “Void stuff doubly so.”
Ruilin looked down at his hands.
Graves broke the silence, eyes fixed on the relic. “He wanted you to join him.”
Ruilin nodded, barely. “He said it was fate.”
“Bullshit,” Tobias spat, “You still got your own say. That thing-” He gestured toward where Malzahar had vanished. “He don’t get to decide who you are.”
Braum rumbled softly in agreement. “No destiny is so strong it cannot be refused.”
Ruilin exhaled, staring at the abyss. He wanted to believe them. He really did.
Across from him, Tobias held the relic between two gloved hands, inspecting it like it might bite. The surface still pulsed faintly with that unnatural hue, like bruised starlight. He turned it over, careful not to press anything.
“Well,” he said finally, “hell of a souvenir.” A pause, then he added with a faint grin, “Might be the most cursed antique I’ve ever stolen. Waste of a trip, really.”
Ruilin managed a weak laugh, but there was warmth in the sound. “You don’t mean that.”
“No,” Tobias said, softer now, glancing up. “I don’t.”
Graves nudged him. “You gonna try using that thing?”
Tobias gave him a flat look. “What, and end up like purple-head back there? No thanks. I like my limbs unpossessed.”
There was a beat of quiet before Graves asked, more seriously, “Back on the bridge. That thing Malzahar said - about the hunter keeping you tethered here. What the hell was he talking about?”
Ruilin looked down, fingers curling tighter into the blanket. The silence stretched.
“In one of the dreams,” Ruilin started, voice barely audible above the wind, “I saw him - Cato. Captured. Tortured. Malzahar said he was the reason I hadn’t surrendered to the Void. That he was… anchoring me.”
He didn’t raise his eyes. “That’s why I ended it. I thought… if I pushed him away, he’d be safe. He wouldn’t get dragged into this.”
There was a long pause before Graves muttered, “Damn.”
Tobias spoke next. “You know that bastard’s trying to get in your head, right? That’s what all of this is - fear. Misdirection. Make you break your own heart so he doesn’t have to lift a finger.”
“You think pushing people away will stop the Void from taking?” Graves said. “That ain’t how it works.”
“It’s not wrong to want to protect someone,” Tobias added. “But you- you’re not him, Ruilin. You’re nothing like that creature. You still care. That’s what’s gonna keep you from becoming him.”
“And it’s okay to love,” Graves said, gentler than usual. “Even when it hurts.”
That was when his tears came. Quiet at first, then harder, until they slid down Ruilin’s cheeks without permission. His face crumpled, shoulders shaking as the exhaustion and grief spilled out in choked sobs.
Braum moved without a word, pulling Ruilin into a firm, warm embrace. He tucked the boy beneath one arm like a cherished brother, letting Ruilin cry into his chest. The big man stroked his hair with a tenderness few would have expected.
“Braum has got you, little one,” Braum murmured. “Let it out.”
When Ruilin didn’t stop, Braum sniffled - loudly - and wiped his own eyes. “Oh dear. Now Braum is crying too.”
Graves coughed into his fist, trying not to laugh. “Big softie.”
“Braum is soft,” Braum declared proudly, cradling Ruilin tighter. “On the outside and the inside.”
It was enough to pull a laugh from Ruilin, watery and broken but real. And when Tobias reached over to squeeze his shoulder, the pain didn’t feel quite so sharp anymore.
Not gone. But held. Together.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
They left the Frostguard Citadel in silence, the ruined bridge behind them like a wound in the world. The sky above had begun to clear, the pale sunlight glinting weakly off the snow as they descended into the mountains once more. Braum half-carried Ruilin while Graves and Tobias followed close behind. No one spoke much. No one needed to.
By dusk, they found a place to rest - an alcove of ancient stone nestled into the mountainside, wind-battered but quiet. Braum built the fire, his hands practised and warm, while the others laid out the remaining furs from Liren’s Rest. The cold pressed in sharper now, sharper without the comfort of Cato’s arms at Ruilin’s back.
Graves sat down with a grunt, tearing into a strip of dried meat. “Reckon once we hit the next town, I’ll be heading back toward Zaun,” he said, casually. “Got some unfinished business. That bounty payment’s still on the table. Chembaron won’t wait around forever.”
He glanced at Ruilin, not unkindly. “You’re welcome to come along, if you’re not sure where else to go.”
Ruilin offered a faint nod but didn’t reply.
Twisted Fate raised an eyebrow. “Not even a drink first?”
Graves smirked. “There’ll be plenty of those once I get paid.”
Braum stirred the fire and looked up. “There is a place not far from here,” he said thoughtfully. “A large settlement. Traders, hunters, even scholars pass through. It has a Hexgate. If you wish to reach Zaun quickly, it would take you there.”
Graves nodded. “That’d do.”
Tobias shifted where he sat, pulling the relic from his coat and holding it up, eyeing it in the flickering firelight. The strange object caught the flame oddly—like it was swallowing the light instead of reflecting it.
“So,” Graves said, chewing, “what’re you planning to do with that thing, anyway?”
Twisted Fate sighed. “Unfortunately, it’s useless to me. Doesn’t respond to my magic, and I’m not about to start whispering to the Void just to figure it out.” He turned the relic over once more in his hands, then looked toward Ruilin. “But it’s too valuable to sell. Can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”
He offered a faint grin. “Seems like you’re collecting cursed Void junk these days anyway.”
Ruilin blinked, surprised, but accepted the relic when Tobias passed it over. It was cold in his hands—heavier than it looked. The edges hummed faintly with the same strange tension that lived inside the tome tucked deep in his satchel.
Braum nodded, satisfied. “Then it is where it belongs. For now.”
Graves leaned back, stretching. “Just don’t start growing extra limbs.”
“And you, Dreamer?” Braum asked gently, turning to Ruilin. “What path do you take from here?”
Ruilin sat wrapped in a Lirenei fur, eyes distant in the firelight. He didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t know yet,” he said at last. “Not until I dream again.”
The others nodded, respectful in their silence. No one pushed for more.
Twisted Fate leaned back beside Graves, their shoulders brushing in quiet familiarity. “Then we wait,” he said simply.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
That night, they slept beneath the stars, the wind whispering down from the peaks. Braum laid the furs across them like a father tucking in his children. Tobias kept his hat tilted over his eyes.
Ruilin lay on his side, a space left empty beside him where another body might have lain. The fire cracked nearby, but the cold still found its way in.
He wondered if Cato had made it safely back to Liren’s Rest. If he’d taken Iri down the forest trails. If he’d gone to the hot spring. If he’d returned to the stream where the fish liked to hide, or the pine grove where the snow fell quieter.
If he was thinking of him too.
The ache in Ruilin’s chest wasn’t the same as the one Malzahar had carved with his magic. It was deeper, quieter, more human.
He pulled the furs tighter and turned his face from the wind.
Sleep took him slowly, full of questions, of longing, and the painful wonder of whether love could survive the paths we choose to walk alone.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
When sleep claimed him, Ruilin was pulled into a dream unlike any before.
A memory, but not exactly.
He stood on the bridge again, but from a distance, as if watching himself. Below, the chasm yawned, and snow drifted in slow, suspended spirals. Frost glittered on the broken stone. The mountains towered all around, hushed and high as judgment.
And there he was, himself, pinned beneath Malzahar’s outstretched hand, caught mid-motion in that final moment before the world had cracked open. The Prophet loomed over his still body, cloaked in seething dark, a presence both human and not, flickering like a shadow cast from a deeper light.
Ruilin, the Ruilin within the dream, watched it all in eerie stillness.
And then the dream shifted - deeper.
Beneath the bridge, far below where Malzahar stood cloaked in silence, a battle raged.
There was the girl.
Lithe and fast, her skin faintly luminous beneath armor like living chitin, grown not forged. She moved like instinct made flesh, ducking and weaving through a strange, inverted world - a place of spiraling terrain, of spined stone and gravity that bent in ways that defied reason. Purple energy flared at her heels as she leapt, each motion purposeful, honed.
And her eyes - her eyes burned. Not with hatred. With something fiercer. Purpose.
Ruilin watched her, heart pounding with a kind of terrible hope.
He had seen this face before, for years, in dreams and visions twisted by the Void - but never like this. Never with such clarity. Since his encounter with Malzahar, he had questioned if she was even real - or just another veil draped over his mind, another trick.
But here… here she was free. Malzahar was on the bridge. He wasn’t using her face. He wasn’t the one showing her to him. This wasn’t a trick.
This was her.
And she wasn’t alone.
Beside her moved something else - another figure, but monstrous where the girl was sleek. Vast wings folded around a body of impossibly shifting angles, and eyes like split amethysts gleamed from a faceless void. The creature did not move with grace, but with hunger, measured, deliberate, vast. Not human. Not pretending to be.
The two did not fight like comrades. They fought like rivals forced to face the same storm. Side by side, but never together. Ruilin watched them clash in tandem, not in sync, an unspoken truce bound by necessity, not trust.
And around them… The dark pulsed.
Vast shapes loomed beyond sight, things too ancient for names, too cold for understanding. Ruilin didn’t need to know what they were. He felt their presence like a great pressure behind his eyes. Hunger. Endless. Boundless.
One of them moved.
A hulking mass of armor and emptiness lunged forward, its limbs trailing frost. The girl met it head-on, a blast of violet light erupting from her core and catching the creature’s face. It reeled, just long enough for the monstrous one beside her to strike. Spires of unnatural growth - teeth? Bone? - lanced upward, pinning it to the voidground with sickening precision.
It screamed without sound.
Above it all, Ruilin’s vision-self arched in pain on the bridge. Malzahar, caught in the same instant, flinched - just slightly. His head turned, like an animal hearing a sound too deep for mortal ears.
He sensed it too. The bridge beneath them groaned. Cracks spiralled outward from Malzahar’s feet like veins. The Prophet looked down. So did Ruilin.
And in that split second, both versions of Ruilin - the watching dreamer and the one trapped on the bridge - lifted their eyes.
Malzahar looked back.
Their gazes met. There was no hatred in the Prophet’s expression. Only… recognition.
Not of each other. Of something else. Something older. Deeper. Watching. The cracks widened. A tremor split the silence. The bridge began to fall.
And then—
The vision changed again.
Ruilin stood now on warm, shifting sands. Gold dust glimmered beneath his bare feet, rolling in soft dunes beneath a sky streaked with amber and violet. The air was dry, sweet with the scent of dust and sun-bleached stone. Ancient stories whispered on the wind.
Ahead, the girl moved with quiet grace - the same girl from the previous dream. The same face he had seen so many times.
He paused, watching her. He searched for signs of truth. The faint, knowing smile that softened her features. The way her hair caught the sunlight like strands of dark silk. The small tilt of her head when she looked at something too closely.
This was her. She was real.
Another figure moved beside her, not the same creature from the Void - a girl younger than the first, with hair like river stone and quick hands that stirred the ground beneath her. Rock and earth responded to her gestures as though answering a language only she could speak. Her movements were precise, shaped by rhythm and care. She held herself like someone who knew the world beneath her feet - and shaped it as she pleased.
She crouched to touch the sand, fingers brushing a twisted, unnatural burrow in the shape of a spiral. The other girl leaned in, curious. They weren’t in a hurry. They weren’t afraid. They were exploring.
There were no whispers here. No eyes in the dark. Only the wind.
Ruilin felt it - the difference. This dream was not like the others. It was warm. Gentle. Not a warning. A guidance.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Ruilin awoke just before dawn, the fire low and the wind outside the shelter calm for the first time in days.
His heart beat steadily.
For the first time in many long nights, there was no ache in his chest. No dread curling in his stomach. Only clarity.
He knew where he had to go.
Shurima.