The bleeding had slowed, yet the air around the group felt heavier than before. It wasn’t the humidity or the mist—it was the looks of hatred and fear the exiles exchanged over the wounded man’s body.

  The man did not move. His breath came shallow and ragged, each rise of his chest a silent struggle against the wound that had torn his side. The blood had congealed, stiffened over the cracked leather of his armor, dark and harsh, as if time itself was claiming its due.

  They stood around him in an irregular half-circle. Neither saviors, nor yet executioners.

  Jadig was the first to step forward.

  “Finish it now, Ikida,” he said, his voice sharp as a blade, hand gripping the hilt of his sword. No hesitation. No cruelty. Only certainty.

  His eyes fixed on the wounded man’s face. “If we let him breathe, he will become a beacon. He will lead the killers to us before the light fades.”

  Vaelor, leaning against the leg of a stone giant, let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Why bother, Jadig? Look at that gap in his side. With an injury like that in the air of this island, he’s already dead. Let the island finish what it started—death here works for free.”

  “I’m with Jadig,” Cillian cut in, her eyes scanning the dark corridors between the columns. “Mercy here is a luxury we do not possess. We’ve seen what these people do to strangers. We cannot risk it.”

  A heavy silence fell. Only the ragged hiss of the wounded man’s breath remained. Ikida slowly turned to Amazal, his eyes holding one final test.

  “He is one of them, Amazal,” Ikida said, low and warning. “One of the people who hunted you from the moment your feet touched this shore. They nearly hunted you like prey, and perhaps this man was part of that. Now the roles have reversed, and he is at your mercy. What will we do? Give him the mercy they denied you, or secure our survival?”

  Amazal looked at the man. The wounded figure trembled, his eyes lost among theirs, seeking a spark of life amid a sentence of death. Amazal took a deep breath and stepped firmly between Jadig and the man.

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  “We will not kill him,” Amazal said, his voice carrying a tone they had never heard before—calm, yet unyielding.

  “You’re joking!” Jadig shouted in anger. “You’re risking all our lives for a killer?”

  “If we kill him when we don’t have to, what separates us from those who exiled us here?” Amazal replied, looking directly into Jadig’s eyes. “We came to this city seeking answers, and this man is the only answer we’ve found alive. If he dies, the secrets of Tizra die with him, along with the secrets of who struck him.”

  Ikida turned to Cillian. “Cillian, I need your herbs and your skill. Bandage his wound with what we have. We’ll take him with us to the hollow beneath the column. If there’s an ‘emergency plan’ buried as Amazal sensed, we’ll need someone who knows this place to decode it.”

  Cillian hesitated for a moment, glancing at Vaelor who remained silent, observing, then shook her head and opened her small satchel. Jadig spat on the ground bitterly and walked away, muttering curses about “the folly of new leaders.”

  While Cillian worked, Amazal leaned toward the stranger, who weakly grasped the edge of his tunic and whispered words barely audible:

  “The pulse… are you… trying to… restore it… again?”

  Jadig sat near a column, leaning back without realizing it was the very pillar they sought, panting with frustration and anger, oblivious to anything around him. Nothing happened—everything seemed still, as if the world itself had paused.

  Amazal remained by the wounded man, watching Cillian tend to him, but a strange sensation washed over him. His heart constricted as though the earth itself urged him to move. It wasn’t conscious thought, but a subtle feeling, a thin thread linking him to the column, pulsing faintly, heard by no one else.

  He paused, then began to move slowly toward Jadig. With each step, the space around him grew quieter, heavier, as if the city itself watched. None of the others dared approach—shadows and thick air around the column warned them away.

  As Amazal drew near, the ground beneath Jadig trembled. Not a fleeting shake, but a deep vibration that ran through the stone, like a colossal groan echoing inside the city’s rock.

  Jadig shivered, eyes wide, looking around in terror. “What is this?… An earthquake?” he croaked.

  Ikida, observing from a distance, nodded cautiously. “No… not an earthquake. This… is something else. Something responding to him.”

  Amazal stopped a step from the column. His heart beat steadily, yet every sense was alert. The ground quaked more intensely, as if the city itself breathed with him, as if the column—or whatever lay beneath—awaited his arrival specifically.

  The silence deepened, yet it was thick with anticipation. The massive shadow of the column seemed to stretch out a hand, inviting him inside, without any further action.

  Amazal felt an immediate resonance—something no one else had experienced. The stone was alive, breathing with him, as if the column itself recognized that only he was permitted to pass. Slowly, the rock cracked, revealing a yawning chasm, wide enough for a full giant to enter, leaving behind a silence heavier than any city noise.

  Amazal did not feel as though he had intruded on a forbidden place, but rather that he had been granted passage. As the gap widened, an ancient chill surged from below, carrying the scent of stone untouched by wind for ages. He realized that what lay beneath was no mere chamber or corridor… but an entire world, crafted for those who were never meant to live above ground.