Lightning cracked across the sky.
Aurea flinched beneath the weight of the storm—not from fear, but recognition.
The air vibrated with the kind of power that didn't belong to gods or mortals, but something older, something watching.
"They're tracking you," Eryan said quietly, eyes narrowed as arcane sigils floated above his palm. "No. They're tracking this." He tapped a point near Aurea's collarbone—just above her heart—where the residual pulse of the Archive still shimmered faintly beneath her skin.
"Tracking who?" Kael snapped. His sword was out, glinting in the purple lightning, his stance tight. "Who the hell even has the kind of reach to breach a soul-bound lattice?"
Eryan didn't answer.
But Riven did, voice like crushed glass and shadows.
"The ones who made her in the first place."
They had stopped at an abandoned watchtower in the ghost-lands of Eleren's Reach. What was once a border fortress now lay cracked and crumbling, ivy clawing its way across stone like veins of regret.
Inside, Aurea paced. Her skin itched. Her breath came shallow. Her dreams the night before had been laced with fire and voices and something else—something that curled inside her like a second heartbeat.
Kael stood in the doorway, glaring at the sky.
"She's not ready for another fight."
"She might not have a choice," Eryan muttered. "The Old Threads are unraveling."
Riven leaned against a wall, watching her with too-sharp eyes. "Maybe that's what she was made for."
Aurea, crying in a garden of silver lilies. A hand—shadowed, clawed, not human—pressing something into her chest. A voice: "You will be loved by three. But broken by none."
She turned.
"I want answers."
Kael moved first. "You deserve—"
"Not comfort," she interrupted. "Truth."
Eryan stepped forward, lips thin.
"The Archive you touched isn't a simple relic. It's a beacon. A... flare in the fabric of fate. There are things—Beings—that mark those signals."
Kael's voice was low. "And they'll come for her?"
"They already are."
A shiver ran down Aurea's spine.
"And what happens if they reach me?"
Riven tilted his head. "Depends which version of you they want."
The tower exploded.
Stone shattered. Sigils ruptured. The world screamed.
Kael threw himself over Aurea, his shield manifesting mid-air with a burst of gold. Eryan's wards snapped like glass around them, and Riven disappeared into the smoke with knives flashing.
Figures descended through the breach—hooded, skeletal, not entirely real.
The Mireborn.
They moved like torn cloth and whispered in languages too old for tongues.
Aurea stood before she realized it, fire already flickering from her palms, her eyes glowing with Archive light.
Kael grabbed her wrist. "You can't—"
"I can't not."
She thrust her hands forward.
Light met shadow with a sound like thunder cracking bone.
Kael dives into melee, sword sweeping in arcs of light, protecting her back. — Eryan stands in the tower's ruins, weaving spell-runes with his blood. — Riven moves between bodies like a ghost, leaving only silence behind. — Aurea's power surges too fast, too much, threatening to burn her out.
One of the Mireborn caught her gaze.
And smiled.
"You were never meant to be mortal," it said, before it dissolved into cinders.
The others fled.
The storm vanished.
And Aurea… collapsed.
They carried her to a half-collapsed altar behind the tower. Riven laid out a bedroll with uncharacteristic care. Eryan pressed cooling runes to her temples. Kael sat beside her, his hand clenched in hers, unwilling to let go.
"She shouldn't have survived that," Eryan murmured. "That wasn't just raw power. That was—"
"Patterned," Riven finished. "Like someone else was guiding her."
Kael's expression was dark. "Then they can get the hell out of her head."
Aurea stirred.
"I heard them," she whispered.
They leaned in.
"He called me a key."
"To what?" Kael asked.
Her eyes opened, gold and endless.
"To the End Thread."
Far above them, in a different realm entirely, something awakened.
A pair of eyes opened over a black sea.
A voice echoed in the dark: "She's awakening. So the bindings begin to snap."
A pause.
"Send the others."
"All three of them?"
"No."
A smile formed in the void.
"Send the one she doesn't remember."