CHAPTER 153: UNDER THE BREATHLESS SKY

When they finally climbed over the shattered rise, the air felt strange. It wasn’t thin like the sharp cold of a mountain’s peak, nor was it heavy and suffocating like the caverns they had just crawled through.

It was different—emptier, as if the sky itself had stopped breathing. Each inhale felt wrong, like they were stealing air that didn’t belong to them, borrowed from a world that no longer wished to give.

The silence of it pressed against their lungs, reminding them that even breathing here was an intrusion.

Kaito was the first to slow his pace. His boots dragged across the strange ground, which looked like black glass mixed with burnt stone.

Every step made a sharp crack, the sound echoing far longer than it should have, as if the land itself wanted to remind them of their presence.

Nyra moved up beside him, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. The gesture was almost meaningless—there was nothing to fight, no enemy waiting in the open. It was only the land itself that seemed alive, rising and falling with a slow, steady breath, watching them in silence.

Before them, what remained of a city. Not a city alive, nor one that the Fork had shown them before. Its spires curved upwards like twisted fingers of bone, reaching for a sun that did not care.

Pieces of broken towers dangled in impossible angles, poised halfway to the ground. Between them, the streets ran in zigzag paths that led nowhere, some terminating at steep drops, the others turning in circles as if the rock had folded under the weight of too many memories.

A world in a held breath.

Nyra’s voice pierced the silence. "This... is where the dragon went, isn’t it?"

Her tone was not uncertain, only recognition. Kaito did not answer right away. His eyes tracked the shattered horizon where night blended with the heavens, a horizon that pulsed faintly, alive.

"It’s more than that," he breathed. "This is what’s left when something like this breathes too deeply."

Nyra shot him a sharp scowl but held back from shoving him aside. She knew better by now. Both of them did. In this place, words carried weight. Speak carelessly, and reality itself might twist to match what was said. It was a dangerous truth they had already learned the hard way.

They started down the slope together. With every step, the silence grew heavier, pressing closer around them.

There was no wind to stir the air, no distant sound to remind them they weren’t alone. Even the crunch of their boots against the smooth, glass-like stone seemed to vanish too quickly.

The echoes didn’t linger or return—they simply dissolved, as if the world refused to let any sound remain.

Farid stood rooted at the bottom of the slope, his figure bathed in a gentle glow emanating from the rift in the ground at his feet.

He did not look up until they approached, and when he did, his eyes wore that half-fanatical gleam that Kaito had learned to recognize as the signature of the curse.

"You feel it too," Farid declared matter-of-factly.

Nyra folded her arms. "Feel what?"

"That it isn’t gone," Farid replied. His gaze flicked to the sky, though there was nothing to see—no dragon, no stars, only a pale, unmoving expanse. "It left its breath here. Its shadow. That’s enough to bend everything."

Kaito studied him. "And you’ve been waiting here alone?"

Farid’s brief, humorless laugh. "Not alone. Never alone. It speaks sometimes, in the shifting ground, or in the repetition of my thoughts. But I had to know if you would appear. If you’d survive."

His words lingered in the still air, heavier than the emptiness pressing around them.

Kaito felt it then—the pull beneath their feet. The chasm below wasn’t just a crack in the ground. It glowed faintly, pulsing like an open wound that refused to close.

The light inside seemed alive, beating with a rhythm that made his chest tighten. It wasn’t only broken stone lying open before them.

It felt deeper, stranger—like a hidden passageway, or the echo of a memory carved into the earth. And if he stared too long, he could almost believe it was something else entirely: a mouth waiting to swallow them whole.

"Down we go?" Nyra questioned.

Farid nodded once. "There is no other way left. Not if we desire answers."

The descent was unlike the caverns before. No walls, no roof. Only a seemingly infinite tube of black glass that warped them into grotesque reflections as they fell.

Their bodies elongated thin, doubled, split into dozens of half-created selves that crawled along beside them on the glassy surface. Kaito tried not to look too closely.

He felt Nyra’s hand touch his once, lightly, grounding him. He did not respond, but curled in his fingers, the only thing he could do.

They came down without realizing they had reached the bottom. One minute, they walked down an endless spiral.

The next, they walked on a flat expanse of white ash. Above, the shaft was gone, covered instead by a swooping sky, cracked through with thin lines of seared light.

Here, sound once more. But not theirs. Whispers traversed the air, interweaving through their steps, beyond their ears. The voices were recognizable, yet never quite clear, like recollected words in a language not their own.

Nyra’s spine braced itself. "Do you hear—"

"Yes," Kaito cut in, more brusquely than he meant. His jaw ached with tension from how firmly he kept it clenched. "Don’t answer. Whatever it says, don’t answer."

Farid’s expression became serious. "It already recognizes our voices. Answering simply teaches it how to put them on."

As if to demonstrate his point, the whispers shifted, gliding closer to the sound of Kaito’s own voice. His name rolled over the ash in a voice that could have been his, if he’d spoken it in a dream.

Kaito shoved his feet forward. All of his senses pleaded to stop, but to stay where they were was worse, like being sucked into a bog.

The ash clung to their boots, curling in wispy clumps that tended upwards instead of falling downwards, scattering into the shattered sky.

Something stirred on the horizon.

It wasn’t the dragon—not quite. It was broken in shape, suspended between matter and memory. Wings spread out and folded in, scales glinted and vanished, and its head split into a dozen shattered shapes that never came together. It was more of an echo trying to remember itself.

And yet the weight of it was undeniable. The air pressed harder. The ash trembled. Kaito’s breath thinned further, every inhalation an effort.

Nyra’s hand went to her blade again. This time, Kaito caught her wrist.

"No."

Her eyes flashed. "We can’t just—"

"It’s not whole," Kaito said, forcing the words through the pressure in his chest. "Strike at it, and you’ll only strike the part of yourself it’s feeding on."

Farid’s gaze did not leave the shattered dragon. "He’s correct. This isn’t the monster. This is the wound it inflicted. And wounds don’t bleed when you cut them."

The thing changed, or seemed to. Its shattered form sloped forward, and reality did the same. The ash wastes pulled, distorted, then creased inward so that they were standing at the base of its shadow.

And the whispers became words.

"You hold me. You breathe because I allow you. You exist because I ordain it. So why struggle?"

The voice cut like a blade through Kaito’s head. He stumbled, grasping on the cry that burst into his throat. His vision faded.

Nyra called his name, but her voice warped, drawn out, until it belonged to the dragon again.

Farid scooped him up, his hand clenching on Kaito’s shoulder. "Struggle!

Kaito tried. He thought about the climb, Nyra’s hand holding him back, the times he’d refused to yield. But the windless blue pushed in more strongly, demanding, suffocating.

And with that suffocation, a truth whispered against him—one that he wasn’t sure was his or the scar’s:

What if uprising was just another form of following?

It just was.

The plain shifted again. The streets rose up out of the ash, curving into the same impossible cityscape they had looked down upon above.

The towers curled, fell, and rose again, curling on and on. Each curve led them back around to the dragon’s broken shape.

Nyra’s sword now glowed softly, its edge bleeding shadowlight. "Then what do we do? Stand here and let it kill us?"

Farid’s answer was low-key, almost swallowed up by the city’s endless folding. "No. We endure it. Until we understand what it’s truly requesting."

Kaito’s voice cracked as he posed the question. "And if what it’s requesting is that we be it?"

Farid faced him then, his eyes blank but resolute. "Then the question is—what do we become if we decline?

The sky groaned overhead, cracking farther. Ash churned like cloud. The shattered dragon bent closer, its throaty breath moist against their flesh though no lungs moved it.

The trial had begun.