The corridor sloped down at a crooked angle, like it had given up trying to stay straight. The walls had once held sacred murals, scenes painted with care—processions of the honored dead, their stories laid out in gold and ochre. But those images were busted open now, clawed straight through by jagged Reaver scrawl. What was left twitched faintly under the torchlight, sacred pigment pulsing in the dark like bruised veins trying to remember their purpose. Black lines slithered through the stone, not just painted but alive, wriggling like worms too bitter to die. They chewed through the silence like it owed them something.
Caylen brushed a fingertip along one of the marks. The cold jumped into his bones, immediate and mean, no time to brace. It wasn't just cold, either—it felt like the mark knew him, like it was reaching for a memory it could pull apart. He flinched, yanking his hand back hard. His voice cracked. "They're… they're draining memory." His eyes didn't leave the twisted lines. "Feeding off meaning. The story. What made this place sacred to begin with."
Verek didn't respond, but he was already cataloguing. The flow of glyphs wasn't random. Not the way they spread, not the places they nested. He muttered something under his breath, a spell fragment maybe, or just the way he kept his thoughts tethered.
Ezreal narrowed his eyes at the ruined art, scanning left to right with the intensity of someone cross-referencing a map he didn't trust. "This isn't what Tamerand wrote down," he muttered. "He said the dead dreamed here. Whatever's dreaming now... it isn't the same. It's something meaner. Hungry."
The tunnel spit them out into a chamber thick with the stink of old magic and something fouler—mildew, maybe, but with an edge of rot that clung to your teeth. Roots sprawled along the walls, wet and colorless, twitching like they had somewhere to be. That green glow again, the sick kind that always came with corrupted spells, pulsed underneath their skin like some terrible heartbeat. In the center of it all, bodies hung from black cords. Not arranged with care. Not buried. Just left there—priests, kings, maybe a child or two, all empty-eyed and slack-jawed like death had knocked but hadn't finished the job.
And at the core of it all, a mass throbbed. It was shaped like a tower or maybe a tumor, all bone and thorns curling inward on itself. No symmetry. No sense. Each slow beat of the thing sent a tremor through the floor that Verek felt in his teeth.
Thimblewick didn't speak right away. For once, the little familiar didn't crack a joke or shift into something unsettling. He just stared, face pale and weirdly still. Caylen's breath hitched behind him.
"This is it," Thimblewick whispered, his voice strange without its usual curl of sarcasm. "This is the source."
Ezreal's eyes lit as the Sight came rushing forward. He blinked hard, like it hurt. "It's not just feeding on them," he said, jaw clenched. "It's using them. Anchoring itself through them. Every soul it's eaten is stitched into that thing. And it's still growing."
Dax took a step forward, shoulders squared like he was already halfway through a fight. "Then we rip it out," he said flat.
Ezreal moved quick to block him, hand out, voice tight. "No. You hit it now, we wake it up too fast, and not in the way we want."
Caylen kept staring at the bone-tower. His voice had gone thin and soft, like he wasn't sure it belonged to him. "How do you kill something rooted in what's been forgotten?"
Behind them, the corridor groaned. The walls rippled, not like stone should. Runes twisted and sank, the whole passage buckling in on itself. The way back was already closing.
"We're losing the exit," Dax growled. He raised his staff, the knuckles on his hands turning bone-white.
Ezreal cut in sharp again. "That's just the mouth. The real Thoughtreaver? Still sleeping. Somewhere deeper."
"Then we wake it," Dax said through clenched teeth. "But it's gonna wake on our terms."
They pushed down.
The spiral steps ended without ceremony, like the world had just dropped out from beneath them. The floor was black glass, cold and perfect. It didn't reflect light so much as absorb it. A horizon of nothing.
In the center, something rose. A ribcage of bone and flickering light, too tall and too wide to belong to anything real. It curled upward into darkness that didn't have a ceiling. Inside it, something hung. It had a shape that hinted at being human, maybe, but only if you squinted through fog and forgot what people were supposed to look like. Thin. Overstretched. Glyphs crawled across its skin like ants on a corpse. Its face wasn't one face. It flickered through too many.
Then it spoke. Not out loud. No sound. Its voice dropped straight into their heads, oily and cold and smug.
The Dreamer wakes... and finds parasites in its marrow.
Ezreal stepped forward, magic already coiled tight around his fingers. "You've turned this into a slaughterhouse. Memory. Soul. It's all gone."
I do not devour, the voice answered, sliding through their thoughts. I preserve. The dead forget. I remember.
Caylen clutched his holy symbol tight. "You silenced them," he said. His voice shook, but it didn't break.
They were noise. You are noise. But you served your function. The Warden is broken. I will rise.
From the floor, shadows peeled upward. Gray figures, more suggestion than substance, their faces smeared like old charcoal sketches left in rain. Their mouths didn't open, but the hunger in them was loud.
Dax stood his ground. His voice came calm and mean. "You're not a god. You're just some leech too bloated to starve proper."
Then burn, candle.
And the world came apart.
The glass was gone. The catacombs too. They were somewhere else—someplace that wasn't place at all. Ezreal heard his mother whispering lies with the same voice she used when she'd held him as a child. Caylen saw his father stepping through a curtain of fire, eyes full of blame. Dax stood back in that cavern. The one where Kalea had died.
But this time, they knew.
Ezreal's hands flared, twin fireballs roaring to life, light flickering in his teeth. He threw them hard into the illusion. "Not again," he snarled.
The Reaver flinched. Barely. But it did.
Caylen raised his symbol, voice steady now, sharp. "You built your throne out of stolen stories," he shouted. "But we're writing the ending."
The ghosts wailed—not in fear, not in pain. In release. Names poured from them like sparks, each one a name they hadn't heard in years. Each one cracked the Reaver's shell wider.
Dax moved. Staff spinning like a storm. "We end it now!" he roared. Every blow split a ghost in two, but not to destroy—they were being freed.
You fight like men. I am made of ages.
A tendril lashed out, curling around Ezreal's ankle. It spoke with his father's voice. The soft one. The manipulative one.
You were always meant to kneel.
Ezreal's lip curled. "You don't get to wear his voice," he hissed. He burned through the tendril and stepped forward.
"It's using our grief," Caylen shouted. "Twisting it. Feeding on it."
"Then we give it something worse," Dax barked. "We give it fury."
The pillar cracked. Memory shards rained down, each one burning with a face, a sound, a time. Too many to catch.
"Incoming!" Ezreal snapped up a ward. Caylen followed with a hymn, quiet but strong, twisting the attack aside.
Dax kept climbing the bone tower. His grip cut blood into his palms, but he climbed. The spire shook under him, trying to throw him loose. He didn't budge.
The Reaver shrieked. It pulsed. You cannot end me. You are made of what I consume.
"And we're still here," Caylen said. Flat. Final.
It swelled bigger, no shape left now—just a smear of time and hunger trying to wear form. One strike slammed Dax in the chest. Kalea's face floated above him again.
"I wasn't fast enough," he choked.
"Dax!" Caylen's voice snapped him back.
Dax pushed up. "Not this time," he said. Then he let go of everything but the fire inside and brought the staff down like a goddamn verdict. The illusion shattered.
Ezreal opened a rift with a sound like steel screaming. "We can't kill it like this," he called. "It's rebuilding!"
"Then use the dreams," Caylen said. His voice no longer trembled. It anchored.
Ezreal blinked. "The dreams... they're memories. Symbols. Messages we didn't understand."
"We understand now," Dax said. "So let's finish it. Not with pain."
"With meaning," Caylen added.
Ezreal nodded. "With memory."
The Reaver took its final shape. Massive. Unclear. Time made flesh and given appetite.
Ezreal stepped into its center. Closed his eyes. Saw his mother, whole. His father, silent. Not monsters. Just memory. Just his.
You were born in shadow.
"But not for it," he whispered.
His hands moved. One last sigil. One no one should have known.
You bind yourself.
"Exactly."
Caylen sang. A lullaby. Old. His mother's, maybe. The ghosts stilled. They remembered.
"You don't own them," he said. "They remember now."
Dax stood tall. His grief was no longer a weight. It was ground. "I don't want revenge," he said. "I want peace."
He slammed the staff into the glass.
The world cracked open.
The Reaver didn't die. It came apart. Slowly. Memory peeled it away.
Ezreal. Caylen. Dax. They stood in what remained, breathing like they'd just earned the right.
Together, they said it. Not angry. Not loud. Just true.
"You don't own what was never yours."
And it was gone.
No echo. No trace.
The silence that followed didn't hurt. It felt right.
Murals healed. Names whispered. Cracks sealed.
Above them, something roared. Not in pain. In pride.
Change didn't crash in. It crept. Soft. Real.
It started small. A shimmer. Warmth.
Ezreal saw the runes first. Whole again. Uncorrupted.
Caylen stepped forward, brushing gold ash aside. His voice barely held.
"It's… waking up."