The wind in the low darkness did not blow - it was pampering. It cracked between the broken bones of the old cities, caressed the ruins like an injured animal, then slipped into the faults to scream through the hoses of the world.

  Ka?l walked alone.

  His step raised a heavy dust, mixed with ash and obsidian fragments. Everything here bore the brand of the world from below: beheaded statues, collapsed arches, twisted roots hung from the rocky ceiling like stone tentacles.

  But Ka?l was not lost.

  He had returned.

  Under his black coat, marked with an iron -burned seal on the chest, his skin itching him, as if his bones wanted to flee his body. He hadn't slept for three nights. He no longer dared. Whenever he closed his eyes, the shadow spoke.

  "You saw the eye too."

  Ka?l stopped. The murmur was not in his head. He came from behind.

  Or in front? Or… above?

  "You felt the flaw. The reverse beat."

  He turned slowly, his fingers approaching the blade guard hung on his back. A twisted sword, made of a metal that he had never seen rusting. She was thirsty.

  Nothing. Black. Murmurs. The nothingness was close.

  He gave his teeth and continued. He knew where he was going: the glass well, an old abandoned ritual place. There, according to rumors, the shadow children still heard the songs prohibited. Echoes of a time when the world was not cut in half. A place where, it was said, we could see through realities.

  And Ka?l had to see. He had to understand why the black shine pulled in his flesh. Why, that night, he dreamed of a winged woman, screaming in the light. A woman who bore her name in a cry that crossed the worlds:

  Ka?l ...

  He finally arrived at the edge of the chasm. The glass well.

  A huge crater, filled with a mirror mist. No water. No visible background. Just a surface that reflected what was not there.

  He knelt, put his hand on the mist. And he lives.

  He saw Lyssar, kneeling on a burst marble. Its burned wings. THEOpen sky. The eye.

  Her own face - in her visions - floated just behind her, like a ghost.

  No ... like part of her.

  He went back, sufficient. His heart was beating upside down.

  "You are the link." Burm the shadow in him.

  "You are the threshold that nothing should cross."

  And Ka?l understood that he had not come here to look.

  He had come to open.

  Ka?l straightened up, the breath cut. The surface of the well had closed like an eye that had just cleaned.

  But the vision persisted in his head, as engraved with hot iron on his memory.

  Lyssar.

  His name vibrated in his temples.

  His unknown but familiar face already haunted his thoughts.

  A cracking.

  He turned his head.

  Something had just moved to the edge of the abyss, just bordering on the mist. A silhouette ... long, thin ... too thin.

  Ka?l drew his blade. She vibrated in the air, as if she recognized the presence of an intru.

  Then the silhouette spoke. Or at least, what animated him.

  - You watched ... you saw.

  The voice was distorted, echoing, as passed through a broken glass tunnel. Ka?l took a step back, his eyes riveted on the shadow that gradually taken shape: a body made of compact ashes, shiny eyes like two black pearls, without eyelids.

  - The pact was broken. You wear the fault.

  You are the fault.

  Ka?l brandishes his sword.

  -Who are you?!

  The thing did not answer. Instead, she slowly raised an arm, stretched an open hand - and reality around the well began to shudder.

  The ruins became blurred. The stones broke out in silence. The sky, however buried so far above, seemed to bleed a red light.

  The world was changing.

  - Join the nothingness. Open your mouth, and let it pass. He recognizes you, Ka?l. He chose you.

  Suddenly, the silhouette melted on him. Inhuman speed. Blade against darkness. A deaf shock. A white lightning.

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  Ka?l Para. Steel struck the shadow with unexpected violence.

  A howl.

  The creature exploded in a shower of ashes ...

  ... But not before touching it.A simple contact.

  Ka?l fell on his knees. An ice shiver grabbed his spine. He felt he fell inside himself, like sucked into an even deeper well than the one he had just visited.

  He then saw a field of war.

  Ripped towers.

  Creatures with black wings fighting against beings made of light.

  And, in the center of all this ... himself, standing between the two camps.

  But his shadow stretched further than all the others.

  She touched both sides.

  He yelled. And woke up.

  Still on the edge of the well.

  Always alone.

  But the seal on his chest shone in dull red, as if something had just woke up.

  He was no longer just looking for answers.

  He had become a living fracture, a link between two forgotten forces.

  And now he knew one thing:

  There would be no return.

  Silence returned, heavy, deafening.

  Not a breath of wind. Not a bird cry.

  Just the frantic beat of Ka?l's heart, and this old cold that had infiltrated under his skin.

  He wandered his sword to blame the joints.

  He had to move away from the well. NOW.

  He flickering, his heavy legs, each step resonating as if the earth was holding its sole. The landscape seemed to have changed. The ruins had stretched, the elongated shadows, the symbols engraved in the stone ... rewritten?

  - You were seen.

  The voice was that of a woman. Human. Real.

  Ka?l turned suddenly, ready to strike, but stopped.

  A silhouette was held a few steps from him, a hood raised on dark hair, eyes too clear to belong to this region.

  She was wearing a black travel dress woven with silver threads, and a gantelet covered with extinct glyphs.

  -Who are you? he asked, the blade still in hand.

  - A survivor. A researcher. A witness, like you.

  You can call me ... bladder.

  Ka?l folded his eyes. This name ... something sounded false.

  - Are you?

  - I am the tremors. And fractures.And tonight, all the earth shivered when you touched it.

  She pointed the well behind him, but without looking directly.

  -You saw Lyssar, right?

  The brilliance in the dark. The lost light.

  Ka?l took a step back.

  - How do you know his name?

  - Because I too saw her.

  And because you weren't supposed to see her. Not yet.

  A thrill ran through him. The whole world seemed to be wandered to hide a truth that had no form yet.

  -What is this well? he asked. What did I wake up?

  Vess looked down, sighed, then replied:

  - Not a well.

  A suture.

  A sewing point between two realities.

  And you just decided the wire.

  Ka?l then felt the air vibrate. A cry echoed in the distance.

  Not a human cry. Something else came.

  - You have to leave, said Vess.

  They arrive.

  - Who are they?

  - The guards of nothingness.

  Bouches-Fermés. Excellent. For an opening chapter, the best choice is to finish with a controlled tension and action scene, which creates a cliffhanger, but without revealing everything.

  The trees themselves seemed to hold their breath.

  The wind, nonexistent a few moments earlier, began to blow upside down, sucking the leaves from the ground to the dark sky.

  Ka?l felt adrenaline take over from terror.

  He hugged his weapon.

  -What do they want?

  - Not you. Not yet.

  They want what you wear now.

  Behind them, the well opened in a noise of fractured glass.

  An icy heat escaped, impossible, unnatural.

  And shapes crawl out of the mist: fine, wrapped on themselves, their skin covered with moving runes. Their faces ... did not have one.

  Only mouths.

  And they were sewn.

  - COURSE ! howl.

  They set off through the ruins, hitting a steep slope. The shadows pursued them without noise, but their presence twisted the contours of the world around them.

  Each step was a miracle.

  In their passage, the stones areCracked up, the light went out.

  Even time seemed to hesitate to move forward.

  Ka?l Troubha, got up. He had never been so afraid.

  Not for him.

  But because he felt something move in him, an ancient pulsation, punctuated in the footsteps of their pursuers.

  - If one of them touches you, it's over! cried up.

  - For what ?!

  - Because touching them erases!

  They crossed a collapsed arch and slipped into a natural fault in the hollow of a wood. Vess took out a stone out of her belt, threw her on the ground - and a blue light tore the darkness.

  A seal jump.

  An old prohibited art.

  The world tilted.

  And Ka?l fell.

  When he reopened his eyes, he was lying in a clearing.

  The night was still there, but the silence was normal this time.

  Vess was kneeling next to him, breathless.

  - You're no longer alone, Ka?l.

  And them ... will not forget you.

  She looked up at the stars.

  - The veil is tearing apart.

  None wakes up.

  And you…

  You are the fracture.