CHAPTER 1525: STORY 1525: THE WEIGHT OF THE KEY

The keep quaked like a dying beast, each tremor tearing new wounds into its walls. Stones groaned, banners crumbled to ash, and from the yawning cracks below rose a stench that curdled the air—birth and rot entwined.

Kael pressed a shoulder against the broken column to steady himself, his gaze fixed on Elara. She cradled the Ashborn Child against her chest, its body fragile yet glowing faintly with inner fire. Each pulse of that glow mirrored the deep tremor beneath their feet, as if tethered to the Unborn’s heart.

“We can’t carry that thing,” Kael snarled, his voice raw with exhaustion and fury. “Every step we take with it, we drag him closer to us.”

Elara’s arms tightened protectively around the creature. “And if it is what it says? A key? Then abandoning it could doom us all.” Her flame flickered around the child, wrapping it in warmth that steadied its trembling. “Sometimes survival is carrying poison until you find the cure.”

The child stirred weakly, its cracked lips shaping sound. “Mother... chain... break.”

Kael’s stomach twisted. It wasn’t a voice of malice, not like the spawn’s screeches or the Unborn’s thunder. It was frail. Almost... human. But that only made it worse. The Unborn was cunning—what better weapon than pity?

Before he could argue further, the ground beneath them split wide. From the fissures, clawed hands reached up—spawn dragging themselves free, their bodies blackened by the collapse but still burning with the titan’s will. Dozens of them, crawling toward the keep.

Kael grabbed Elara’s arm, pulling her toward the broken stairwell. “We move. Now.”

They staggered upward, broken stones crumbling underfoot. The child whimpered, clutching Elara’s scorched robes with its twisted fingers. Each sound it made seemed to ripple through the swarm below—some of the spawn faltered, shuddering as if the child’s cry unsettled their birth-song.

Elara noticed first. “Kael—look. It weakens them.”

He turned, watching as three spawn collapsed mid-climb, their bodies unraveling into black smoke. His heart hammered. A weapon. Or a curse. Or both.

“Then keep it quiet,” Kael growled, swinging a broken spear he’d wrenched from the wall to knock back another claw reaching for them. “Or it brings the whole horde down on us.”

The stairwell led to a shattered balcony, open to the night. From there, the wasteland stretched—smoldering plains, the echo of the cradle’s ruin still glowing faintly in the distance. And beneath it all, the pulse of the Unborn beat like war drums.

Elara clutched the child close, its glow lighting her face with a ghostly fire. “We can’t keep running forever. If this is a key, Kael, then somewhere out there is the lock.”

Kael stood at the edge of the balcony, chest heaving, eyes locked on the horizon. “Then we find it. Before he finds us.”

Behind them, the keep groaned one final time, collapsing inward as the swarm of spawn poured through its bones.

And the Ashborn Child, trembling in Elara’s arms, whispered once more—

“Father... rising.”