The chamber beneath Rain-Gilded Hollow was not designed for comfort.
Its architecture was devotional, not functional — a sanctum carved for the containment of secrets. Walls of cold scripture-bound stone stretched high into vaulted shadows, humming with sealed intent. The faint scent of scorched incense lingered like the ghost of past rituals. In the center, an obsidian dais rose like a fang from the ground, and above it hovered the central scrying mirror — its silvered surface rippling with broken threads of light.
Water dripped from somewhere unseen. Each drop echoed against the stone like a slow, irregular heartbeat.
Elder Sen Varien of the Thirteen Petal Accord stood motionless before the mirror, his hands folded in front of him. His breath misted faintly in the chill air, though he barely noticed. He had not slept since the first shatter.
Three times the mirror had broken coherence in a single night.
Not cracked — but spiritually fractured.
He didn't need to ask what caused it.
A fractured medallion now lay before him on a bed of crushed soul-glass, placed with the reverence of a relic. It pulsed with a pale green flame, flickering between stability and oblivion. The final echo of the Seeker's soul-tether.
Several envoys of the Accord stood at a respectful distance — unmoving, silent, their faces veiled and unreadable. The only motion in the room was the flame, the drip, and the faint shimmer of the mirror.
"Seeker Lurei has failed to subdue the target," Sen Varien said at last, voice like a blade dulled against stone. "But she is alive. Her seal flared and then dimmed—restrained, not ruptured."
The silence broke into scattered whispers, like wind stirring brittle leaves.
"She was bested?" asked Envoy Juren, voice clipped, skeptical.
Sen Varien didn't answer immediately. He turned to the mirror and brushed a finger across the glyphs etched into the dais. With a sputter of spiritlight, the mirror surged again, vomiting forth a jittering image — half-scryed, half-memory.
Mist.
A flash of motion.
Twinblight's curved edge.
The shattering of a mask.
Seeker Lurei, unconscious, her aura flickering. And Kairo's figure — indistinct, veiled in haze, but undeniable.
Sen's voice cut through the vision. "She wasn't defeated through power alone. She was outmaneuvered. The Codex didn't consume her techniques — it warped his. Corrupted qi bent his strikes into impossible vectors. She couldn't read him because he didn't follow a readable path."
A cold ripple passed through the envoys.
"The Veilwither survivor…" someone murmured. "Still alive, after all these years. Still bearing the Codex."
"Not just bearing it," Sen corrected. "The Codex is responding to him. It is malleable. It adapts around him. He isn't a host. He's a catalyst."
That was when the fear returned.
Not panic — not openly. But a tightening in shoulders. A shared, unspoken weight.
"Then he must be destroyed," snapped Envoy Alyen. "Before the Pale Sun Convergence. If he reaches another vault—"
"He won't," Sen Varien said.
There was no arrogance in the tone.
Only certainty.
"He's already moving. South. Toward the Whispering Cenote."
"Send more Seekers," someone offered.
"Three? Four?"
"No," Sen said softly. "We escalate."
He turned, slowly, toward the room. His eyes were dull, but glinted with something ancient beneath the weariness.
"We send a Hunt Bloom."
The words struck the room like thunder.
Silence. Then sharp intakes of breath.
"A sanctioned slaughter?" Juren asked, almost disbelieving. "That is… not quiet work."
"It was never going to be quiet," Sen replied. "A Hunt Bloom isn't just suppression. It's a warning. To the Codex. To the world. To us."
"It will draw eyes."
"Let them watch," he murmured. "We'll frame it as a cursed site purge. We've done worse."
He looked back to the mirror, but the image had already faded — swallowed by static, threads of spirit unraveling from its frame like torn silk.
His fingers tightened around the edge of the dais.
"In truth, we are chasing a myth," he said, more to himself than to them. "But if we let it bloom unchecked…"
He let the words fall.
"Prepare the Bloom. Inform the Tribunal. The Codex is no longer dormant."
Far to the south, beneath clouds heavy with unshed rain, Kairo paused beside a weathered cairn of bones wrapped in crimson string. He knelt, brushing snow from the base of the marker — not out of reverence, but instinct.
A border marker.
This was it. The edge of the Vale of Withering Pines.
The moment he crossed this threshold, he'd be past the Accord's reach — and deeper into the forgotten folds of the world.
The air here didn't move right. The silence breathed.
He rose.
The trees ahead were skeletal, half-buried in permafrost, their branches tangled like grieving hands. Even through his cloak, he felt the pressure — like walking into a memory that resented being remembered.
Somewhere beneath this cursed forest…
The Whispering Cenote waited.
Not asleep.
Just listening.
He gripped Twinblight tightly and moved forward, one breath at a time.