Purple light. Fading.

You are in the town square, but it is not the square you remember. The buildings are different – older and newer at once, layers of centuries pressed together like pages in a book. The cobblestones beneath your feet shift and blur. The sky above is the color of a bruise, shot through with veins of dying violet.

The gem.

It sits on its pedestal at the center of everything, just as it always has. But its light is guttering. Flickering. A candle in a hurricane, fighting to stay lit against a darkness that presses in from every direction.

You try to move toward it, but your body won’t respond. You are frozen. Watching. You are no longer Varek – you realize that now. You are no longer anyone.

You are just… here. A witness. A vessel.

The gem pulses. Once. Twice. Each pulse weaker than the last.

And then you see them.

Shadows at the edges of the square. Not the shadows of buildings or trees – shadows that move with purpose, that hunger. They curl around the empty market stalls, pool beneath the dark windows, reach toward the pedestal with fingers made of nothing.

The gem’s light pushes them back. Barely. For now.

“Child…”

The voice comes from everywhere. Seraphine’s voice, but stretched thin, exhausted, fading like the light itself.

“You’ve seen the truth now. You know what he did. What he became. The hollow thing that wears a founder’s face.”

The shadows surge forward. The gem flares, holds them at bay, dims further.

“I’ve held this light for three hundred years. Waiting for you. But I can’t… I can’t hold it much longer. He’s still out there. Waiting. And now that you’ve seen…”

Her voice falters.

“…now he knows you exist.”