But he didn’t mention it.

In part because... he was afraid of the consequences and implications that’d follow if he was right, but also because of...

—

["It is unfortunate that we meet in such circumstances, but it will have to do. We mustn’t show our bond of affiliation, for ’they’ are always watching."]

["If they learn the truth, your people will suffer."]

—

...’them’. They were watching.

Uriel had thought that the Horror had been speaking nonsense, trying to scare and stall him, but it seemed not.

’...damn it.’

His gaze overflowed with somber light.

...

A while later, the group suddenly came to a stop in a random alleyway—dark and wet, near the city’s edges.

It was filled with old wooden barrels and boxes, broken glass shards, and mud mixed with all kinds of trash. It was a regular discarded alleyway, so to say.

"Kih!"

Emrys walked forward, then pointed at a specific point in the alleyway. He pointed at an old and inconspicuous brick laid on the floor.

Samael slid off his back, then looked at the brick with curiosity. Though he still didn’t understand what they were doing, he decided to keep quiet.

"It’s there?" Uriel got closer, then lowered himself, running a finger over the brick as his aether churned and his thoughts flowed.

In the depths of his rose pupils, complex runes and glyphs sparked and took shape, and in a blink, the world faded to black and the fabrics were laid bare in front of him.

But it was dark.

’What in the world...’

The fabrics and energy of the surroundings were gone, leaving a dark void around him, folded into a single point so complex Uriel couldn’t make sense of it.

It all folded onto the point where the brick had been.

’What kind of runic lock is this?’ he wondered. ’How is the world even stable if all laws and primordial currents are folded here?’

He looked around. ’Shouldn’t this be a void of nothing?’

Beyond this, if an area as large as this was this broken and disrupted, as Uriel understood it, then the entire city should’ve been a haven of chaos where none could live.

It may have even become an expanse entirely consumed by Void Flames.

’Maybe the Spire is stabilising it in a sort of way?’ He frowned at the thought. ’But how would it even do that?’

’The void is the void. No amount of stability can undo that, since there’s nothing to be undone. You can’t undo absence or else—’

A thought flickered across his mind, and he went back to the memory of Korynth and Parthyn talking. More specifically, he focused on the scene of her Will shaping her domain.

Shaping the Void.

’Don’t tell me that...’

Was the Spire alive?

...

Uriel shook his head, pushing the thought down once again.

He didn’t know what was happening, but it was as if his mind had suddenly become attuned to truth, every thought he had leading to a revelation that bombarded him.

First it was the Horror, then it was the oddity of Kael’s people, and now it was the oddities surrounding Kael’s fabrics—for none of them was he a hundred percent sure that his thoughts were correct, but he trusted his gut.

’Whatever. Focus.’ He exhaled a breath.

The runic lock here was formed of an incredibly concentrated amount of primordial energy and laws, making it as stable as it was potentially volatile.

The slightest disturbance might cause an explosion even he wouldn’t be able to survive, and even if he did, space would still shatter.

And if that happened, the flames would kill him.

It was such a potential risk that, for a moment, Uriel considered simply letting go of this lock. The last couple of revelations he’d gotten—if he dug some more—could perhaps lead to more answers than this lock would.

’I need to go.’

But he decided not to abandon it. If he did, he’d keep on wading through the dark, having to piece half-truths and half-lies together.

Any path that could lead to more information, he had to take. This lock might be a trap or even yield nothing, but he had to try.

[First Sand Star Echelon: Eroding Heart]

Sand aether gathered and coalesced around him, and his ring shook, a fabric of endless sand laws imposing onto the void around Samael.

It turned it into a zone where Sand reigned supreme.

Golden radiance surged around him as he pressed a palm onto the lock. The streams of golden radiance shook, then turned to slithering tentacles of grains that sunk into the lock.

SHI! SHI! SHI! SHI!

As Uriel had found out in the desert, Sand, as an element, was amazing at disrupting streams, but also at picking them apart and thinning them out across its grains.

So that’s exactly what he did.

His sand aether sunk into the lock and eroded the structure of the folded laws and streams of energy, breaking them down into lesser and lesser forms until they collapsed into nothing but simple runes and weak atmospheric aether.

Still, such a ridiculous amount of energy, coupled with so many runes, remained dangerous. If anything, what Uriel had done was guarantee his own life, but in turn, put the entire city at risk.

If it exploded, he’d be unscathed, but hundreds of thousands would die and chaos would erupt.

[First Dark Star Echelon: Dispersing Obscurity]

The artificial fabric of sand laws around him, summoned from his ring, shook and shifted, tuning to a somber amethyst hue, dark laws rising in its stead.

Uriel still didn’t properly comprehend his darkness element, but one of the earliest things he’d done with it, during his fight with the emperor, was summon an armour of darkness that massively dampened the damage he took.

Darkness absorbed and dampened.

WHOOOOOSH!

The lock, which had actually turned into a multicoloured, star-like mass of unstable energy and runes—ready to explode at any moment—began to be covered in snaking, sharp lines of purple.

The lines rapidly spread until they encompassed the entire aether mass. It became akin to a dark amethyst star.

SHI!

The mass shrunk by half in nothing but a blink, as if the net of darkness around it had suffocated it. And then it shrunk again, and again, and again, and again.

In a couple of moments, all that remained of the lock was a tiny marbled bead of darkness.

’...a job well done.’ Uriel smiled and stood to his feet, extending a palm to grab the marble bead.

All he’d done was use dark aether to not only contain the unstable mass, but also ’dampen’ its instability as he converted it all back into atmospheric aether.

He guessed that, in a couple of months—maybe years—the fabric in the surroundings would return to normal.

’Alright.’ Without waiting, he crushed the orb, breaking apart the last remaining parts of the lock.

TOH!

A loud creak echoed, and before he could react, they were all transported away.