The foyer air remained frigid, the lingering residue of the Lurking Sorrow clinging to the frayed wall hangings and the flagstones. Iker stood rooted, the phantom ache of the blood rune in his palm a mirror to the agony in his chest. Zuriñe’s words, sharp as shards of obsidian, had locked him in place, rendering him a prisoner in his own ancestral house, under the watchful, unblinking eyes of Galder and Elixabete, who now stood like twin statues by the grand arched entrance. They hadn't even had to draw their blades; Zuriñe’s authority was weapon enough.
“She means to turn Nerea into a case study, a specimen,” Maialen said, her tone dry beside his ear, keeping him anchored. Her form, though stable, shimmered faintly from the psychic toll of the recent attack. “A Veil Warden report is never just a report. It’s a verdict.”
Iker stared at the dark, decaying mark the fiend had branded into the foyer floor, a stain spreading like an oil slick. “I know,” he ground out, the word barely audible. “But what can I do? They’ll be watching my every move. And Nerea…”
He pushed past his former guards, their gazes like lead weights on his back, and ascended the sweeping staircase, Maialen trailing beside him, her spectral presence a cold comfort. Nerea lay in her bed, her small body curled beneath a thick quilt, the black artifact still fused to her pale hand. The dark stone pulsed with a faint, internal light, a malevolent heart beating within her innocent grasp. Her breathing was shallow, her face devoid of its usual youthful vitality.
“Nerea,” he murmured, kneeling beside her, the fear for her a bitter taste in his mouth. “Can you hear me?”
Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, revealing eyes that, for a moment, held a deeper, ancient sorrow. She saw him, but her gaze seemed distant, as if still lingering on the threshold of the Silent Gloom. “Iker?” Her voice was thin, reedy. “The sad song… it called me. To a place… deep inside the house.”
“A sad song?” Maialen repeated, her voice laced with an unfamiliar tremor. “Where, Nerea? Where did it call you?”
Nerea weakly lifted her hand, pointing a trembling finger towards the floor. “Down… always down. Where the shadows sing.” She drifted off again, her energy completely spent.
Iker looked at Maialen, his mind racing. “A sad song… the Lurking Sorrow feeds on despair. And the Keystone amplifies it. It’s trying to draw her to its nexus, its source of power.”
“The place I couldn’t enter,” Maialen stated, her voice tight, a rare vulnerability in her tone. “The place where the rite was performed.” She gestured, her translucent hand passing through the wall. “Before the Keystone’s touch, the deepest wards of this house always repelled me. A dead-man’s wall. But now… I feel a resonance. A path has been opened.”
He knew the Aranoa ancestral crypts ran deep, a labyrinth of forgotten dead and sealed-off passages. He had rarely ventured into those depths since his exile, a descent humming with suppressed dread. But if the relic had weakened the barriers for Maialen, it was also opening breaches for the fiend. He had to act. He had to find that source, find a way to sever the connection before Zuriñe’s ‘assessment’ inevitably led her to Nerea’s room and the Keystone itself.
“Show me,” Iker said, his jaw firm, his resolve a cold, hard knot in his gut. “Lead the way.”
They moved through the sprawling, silent halls, past the closed doors behind which Galder and Elixabete undoubtedly waited, listening for any sign of his insubordination. He descended into the clammy darkness of the lower levels, the air growing heavier with the scent of damp earth and decay. Maialen drifted ahead, her ethereal form a faint luminescence in the gloom, guiding him through forgotten passages behind false walls, down crumbling stone steps that hadn't seen a living foot in centuries.
Finally, they reached a massive, iron-banded door, covered in a thick layer of dust and ancient, faded runes he didn’t recognize. “This is it,” Maialen murmured, her voice thin. “The heart of the curse. I can feel… *myself* here. More vividly than anywhere else.”
He pushed the heavy door open, revealing a circular chamber carved from rough, unworked stone. The air inside was stagnant, tasting of stale copper and chalk. In the center, a crude stone altar, stained with a dark, reddish-brown patina that could only be one thing, commanded the space. Around it, flickering, spectral embers hung in the air, like tiny, dying stars. A soundless shriek seemed carved into the very stones.
Maialen floated towards the altar, her hand passing through the cold stone, her head bowed. “My blood,” she breathed, her voice raw, full of an anguish that tore at Iker’s own heart. “My spirit, torn from my body here. My last moments… the scent of… *Yareba*. Crushed Yareba blossoms. A Veil Warden consecration herb. But why? To seal me here? To empower… *this*?” She gestured to the air around them, thick with the entity’s presence.
Iker’s gaze swept the vault, cold iron settling behind his ribs. His ancestor, the architect of this monstrous act, had left a legacy of torment. He ran his hand along the rough-hewn wall near the altar, feeling for any imperfection. His fingers brushed against a barely discernible seam, a slight indentation. He pressed, and a small section of the stone wall slid inwards with a grating sound, revealing a hidden niche. Inside, nestled among dry, crumbling herbs, lay a leather-bound logbook, its pages brittle with age.
“What is it?” Maialen asked, watching the book.
Iker pulled it out, its cover adorned with a faded, stylized rendition of the Azabache Keystone. “A chronicle,” he said, his voice low. “From my ancestor, Oier de Aranoa. The one who performed the rite.” He opened it carefully, the parchment crackling under his touch. His eyes scanned the archaic script, his expression darkening with each word. “He wrote of Nerea’s ancestor, a child with an affinity for the Gloom. The jet talisman was not a weapon, but a focus, intended to channel the child’s nascent power to *contain* a growing terror, a ‘Lurking Sorrow’ that preyed on the Aranoa line. Maialen… your sacrifice wasn’t meant to bind you, but to serve as a catalyst. A living lock on a spiritual cage, fueled by a Warden-blessed incantation to keep the Sorrow at bay. He thought he was saving his family. He thought he was saving us all.”
**JOLT 1:** Iker’s voice fell low and strained. “He wrote… he wrote that the initial rite failed. The child’s power was too weak, the Sorrow too strong. He then performed a second ceremony, a forbidden one, using *your* life force, Maialen, to create a permanent tether. But it twisted something. It didn’t contain the Sorrow; it *fed* it, empowering it with the very life it consumed. And the jet stone… it became the focal point for both the curse and your eternal prison.”
Before Maialen could react, a sudden, sharp thud echoed from the entrance to the crypt. Iker spun around, the diary clutched in his hand, breath catching behind his teeth. Commander Zuriñe stood there, framed by the doorway, her face a mask of cold fury, her hand resting on the hilt of her ceremonial blade. Behind her, Galder and Elixabete stood ready, their glowing runic blades already half-drawn.
“I knew you wouldn’t stay put, Aranoa,” Zuriñe’s voice cut through the stagnant air, devoid of all warmth. “Always the reckless, always defying order. What foulness have you unearthed this time?” Her eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, landed on the journal in his hand, then swept across the blood-stained altar. “A forbidden rite site. Just as I suspected. You truly are a blight on the Veil Wardens’ name.”
Iker’s hand tightened around the binding. “You don’t understand, Zuriñe. This is about Nerea. About what happened to Maialen. The curse isn’t what you think it is.”
Zuriñe’s gaze didn’t waver. She took a slow, deliberate step into the chamber, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. “Perhaps I understand more than you give me credit for, Iker. Do you truly believe I came here simply because of Nerea’s ‘uncontrolled manifestation’? My patrols around the Silent Gloom have been reporting increased activity. Rumors of a growing presence that defies all known categorizations. And then, your sister, clutching an artifact of immense, dark power.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “My official report on your failed mission to the Skarn Peaks was falsified. It stated you froze, that you caused the collapse of the Veil Anchor, leading to the loss of the entire patrol unit. But it omitted a crucial detail, a detail I’ve been investigating in secret for months.”
**JOLT 2:** Zuriñe met his stunned gaze, her expression unreadable. “When the clean-up crews recovered the fragments of the Anchor, they found traces of crushed Yareba blossoms, mixed with the rubble. The same consecration herbs Maialen remembered from her death. Someone within the Veil Wardens, Iker, deliberately sabotaged that mission. And they’ve been trying to silence me ever since I started asking questions. My arrival here wasn’t an official assessment; it was a pretense. A way for me to get inside these walls, to protect Nerea, and to find out what truly binds the Lurking Sorrow to your cursed bloodline.”