The keep loomed ahead like a skeleton of stone, its towers jagged against the blood-red haze of the night. Once a fortress of kings, it now stood broken, its gates torn away and its walls blackened with soot. Yet amidst the ruin, it offered what the wasteland could not: shelter from the endless ash.

Kael and Elara stumbled across the cracked drawbridge, their bodies screaming with every step. Each stone they crossed felt unstable, as though the keep itself might collapse with the same inevitability as the cradle. But inside, the shadows were still, and for the first time since the collapse, silence embraced them.

Kael dropped heavily against a shattered column, his breath ragged, blood caking his armor. His hands shook as if the phantom weight of his lost sword still burned in them. Across from him, Elara sank to her knees, her blistered hands cupped around the faintest glow of fire. It sputtered like a dying candle.

For a long while, neither spoke. The keep seemed to breathe with them, its hollow halls sighing with the memory of battles long dead. Finally, Kael broke the silence, his voice low, raw.

"I left it in him. My blade. Everything I had left. And now…" His words faltered, caught between fury and despair.

Elara's gaze lifted, her eyes reflecting both the ember in her palms and the weight of truth. "The blade isn't lost. It's inside him now. A thorn. A wound. And wounds fester."

Her voice steadied him more than he expected. He wanted to believe her, to cling to the thought that his strike had done more than feed the Unborn's metamorphosis. Still, the ground beneath them betrayed a deeper reality—the faint tremors that pulsed like a heartbeat, reminding them both that their enemy was not gone.

A sudden sound shattered the stillness: a scraping, echoing through the ruined halls. Kael lurched upright, hand instinctively reaching for the sword that was no longer there. Elara's flame flared brighter, her blistered fingers trembling.

From the shadows crawled a shape—small, broken, but alive. One of the spawn, half-crushed, its body twisted from the collapse. It dragged itself forward on shattered limbs, its eyes glowing faintly with the Unborn's fire. Yet unlike the others, it did not scream. It whimpered.

Elara hesitated, flame hovering inches from its head. "It's… different."

Kael's jaw tightened. "It's still his."

The creature looked up at them, its mouth opening not in a snarl, but in a sound almost human. A whisper carried on ash: "Mother."

Elara froze, her flame flickering uncertainly.

Before Kael could respond, the ground beneath the keep shuddered violently, dust and rubble cascading from the ceiling. The tremor rolled like thunder, deeper and closer than before.

The Unborn stirred.

Elara's flame hardened, her eyes meeting Kael's with grim resolve. "Shelter won't save us. This place is only another cradle."

And outside, beneath the ruins of ash and bone, the heart of beginnings beat faster, echoing through stone and shadow alike.