The Hollow Sanctum was a place long erased from the star-charts.
Not because it was hidden—no, it had hidden itself.
Folded within dimensions like a lotus closing to the night.
Few returned from its depths. Fewer still kept their minds.
But Lyra had no choice.
The Pale Serpent had entered it. And the Sixth Fragment pulsed faintly within.
As the Stellar Vow descended into the veil of shadows that cloaked the Sanctum, the crew grew quiet. Even the engines—arcane-fed, eternally humming—dimmed to a hush. Reality warped outside the windows. Stars twisted. Reflections stared back from impossible angles.
"Feels like we're being watched by versions of ourselves we never became," Elian muttered.
"Don't listen if they speak," Nysera warned. "Here, even thoughts echo with fangs."
Lyra stood at the prow, cloaked in twilight threads, her hands around the starmetal hilt of her blade.
Inside her chest, the Fragments pulsed—five now, harmonizing in flickers.
But something felt wrong. The Sixth resisted.
It trembled like a frightened child hiding behind the eyes of a monster.
They found the Sanctum at the heart of a dead valley.
Ruins floated in defiance of gravity—temples turned sideways, monoliths stacked like spirals, and mirrors… so many mirrors.
Each surface reflected not what stood before it, but what might have been.
Lyra saw herself laughing beside her parents, long dead.
She saw herself and Kaelen, crowned and radiant.
She saw herself burning, devoured by power.
"It's trying to unmake your sense of truth," Vaelion's earlier warning rang in her mind.
"The Sanctum is Serian's oldest experiment—an echo chamber of identity. It will pit your self against your soul."
Lyra stepped forward.
And the air shattered.
They were inside the Sanctum now.
It was… alive.
Pillars breathed. Floors shifted. Stairs led up, down, or both depending on where you stood.
And at its center, waiting like a spider at the heart of its web—
The Pale Serpent.
He was not a beast.
He was elegance distilled into horror. A long, sinuous body wrapped in shifting cloaks of mist and bone. His face was a mask of serenity, but his eyes—
His eyes were stars long dead.
"Welcome, Flameborn," he whispered. "We've watched you for so long."
"Give me the Fragment," Lyra said, stepping forward.
"It has already chosen."
From the air, it descended—a sphere of crystal wrapped in runes, orbiting the Serpent like a moon around a dark sun.
"Then I'll take it."
The Serpent did not laugh. He wept.
"We were you once," he said "Before the Realms broke. Before Serian."
"You chose him."
"We chose survival."
The battle began in silence.
Not a single sound echoed as Lyra lunged.
Her blade met his tail—metal on memory. Sparks flared, but instead of light, they birthed visions.
She staggered—
—She saw herself bleeding Riven's name in betrayal.
—She saw Kaelen dead, her fault.
—She saw the world crumble because she had waited one second too long.
"Do you see?" the Serpent asked "Every scar you carry coils like a snake. We are merely the skin you shed."
Lyra roared, channeling the Fifth Fragment. Flame surged—but was consumed.
The Serpent ate light. He drank doubt.
Nysera and Elian tried to intervene, but the walls swallowed them whole. They were gone. Alone again.
Lyra fell to one knee.
The Serpent wrapped around her slowly, like regret.
"Why do you fight?" he asked "Why carry the burden? The Fragments will only break you in the end."
"Because I remember," Lyra gasped "I saw what I could become. What I could save."
"And you saw how often you failed."
"Yes."
Her eyes burned.
"But I also saw that even in failure—I fought. Even when I broke—I healed. Even when I was alone—I remembered them."
Her hands flashed.
And from her chest, the Fifth Fragment sang.
Light seared.
Flames turned into threads. Memories, woven and bound—not as chains, but bonds.
Each one shimmered with faces—
Kaelen, Vaelion, Riven, Nysera, Elian, Even Serian, before the fall.
"You are not alone," said a voice inside her.
The Sixth Fragment stopped orbiting.
It hovered, uncertain.
And then—
It chose her.
The Serpent screamed.
Its form unraveled. The cloaks turned to ash. Its mask cracked.
"You broke the cycle," it gasped.
"I unwrote it," Lyra said, rising, both blades glowing.
"Then remember me… when you burn."
The Sanctum shattered.
Not violently—but gently.
Like a lie dissolved by truth.
Nysera and Elian reappeared beside her, dazed but unharmed.
"You did it?" Elian asked.
"She became it," Nysera whispered.
The Sixth Fragment pulsed beside the others. Six now.
Only one remained.
But its signal was gone.
Lost beyond the Realms.
"The Seventh lies where the Realms end," Elian said.
"Where even Serian fears to look," Nysera added.
Lyra stared at the sky above the Sanctum.
And for the first time, saw nothing.