The library beneath Eltherra was alive.
It breathed with parchment lungs and pulsed with threads of golden script winding across the walls like veins. The deeper they descended, the older the architecture became—stone giving way to carved dragonbone, then fused marrow shaped like cathedral ribs.
"This place shouldn't exist," Dhera whispered.
Valen glanced back. "Yet here it is."
They reached a final staircase, where a massive circular door waited. No keyhole. No handle.
Just a mirrored surface.
Lyra stepped forward. "Is that… glass?"
"Memory-glass," Dhera replied. "It opens to truth, not force."
Valen looked at his reflection. "What kind of truth?"
"Whatever you fear the most."
He stared.
His reflection moved differently.
It bled.
And then smiled.
He stepped through.
The chamber beyond the mirror was round, its walls covered in sigils that shimmered like stars beneath a black ocean. At the center stood a dais—on it, seven circles carved into obsidian.
Dhera unrolled the scroll.
"The Rite of Binding Glass was designed to trap memory. To lock it. Not just as information… but as weight. If we do this right, the Kings won't be able to erase what we remember. Not easily."
Valen studied the glyphs. "What's the cost?"
Dhera hesitated. "Someone has to be the anchor."
Lyra stepped forward immediately. "I'll do it."
"No," Valen said, too quickly. "You already carry the Mark. If anything goes wrong—"
"She's the only one who can hold this much memory," Dhera interrupted. "Even you would break under it. Her blood… whatever that Mark is… it's not just a symbol. It's a well."
Lyra took the center circle.
The Rite began in silence.
Dhera chanted words in a dead dialect of High Netherian. The chamber answered, the air growing thicker, denser, filled with sparks of unspent memory.
Valen poured ash from the urn Dhera handed him—taken from the Dreamkeeper's vigil pyre—into the outer rings.
The symbols around the dais blazed gold.
Lyra trembled but did not move.
Her eyes glowed.
And then she spoke.
"I remember."
The chamber shuddered.
Images erupted from the sigils: scenes from forgotten wars, cities erased from maps, people whose names had not been spoken in centuries.
The weight of memory slammed into Lyra like a storm—but she held fast.
"I remember the Bastion of Thorns."
"I remember the Crying Crown."
"I remember the Children of Light who burned."
The air quaked.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the floor.
Dhera cried out, "She's remembering too much—she'll break!"
Valen knelt beside Lyra. "You have to choose! Anchor something smaller!"
But Lyra didn't stop.
Her voice rang like a bell made of tears.
"I REMEMBER THE WORLD."
The glass shattered.
Not violently.
Just—cleanly.
And when it did, a new sigil formed in Lyra's palm—beside the Crimson Mark.
A second brand.
This one shaped like a spiral made of tiny letters.
Valen whispered, "She's become a vessel."
Dhera fell to her knees, gasping. "We did it. The Rite worked."
But then—
Footsteps.
From behind the dais, where no door had existed before.
A figure in robes of black and gold.
A face hidden behind a mask of cracked porcelain.
"Impressive," it said. "But foolish."
Valen drew his blade.
"Who are you?"
The figure removed its mask.
Revealing nothing.
Just… absence.
A hollow space shaped like a human head.
"I am the Archivist," the voice echoed. "The last librarian of the Pre-Fall Kings. And you have touched something forbidden."
Dhera stepped forward. "You served the Dreamkeeper."
The Archivist tilted its nothing-face.
"I served memory. She served hope. And now… you serve disruption."
Valen readied his stance. "If you're here to stop us—"
"No," the Archivist said. "I'm here to offer you the second Rite."
Lyra stood, her breath still shaking. "There's another?"
"Yes. The Rite of Echoing Stone. The first gives you memory. The second makes it weapons."
Valen narrowed his eyes. "What's the price this time?"
The Archivist answered, "A name. One must give up the name of someone they love. Forever."
Silence.
Lyra looked at Valen.
Then to Dhera.
No one spoke.
The Archivist bowed. "Think well. I will return in three nights. If you wish to fight the Kings… you will need more than memory."
They returned to the surface as dawn bloomed over Eltherra.
The skies were still rust-colored.
But the wind felt… sharper.
Lyra said nothing for a long time. Then finally:
"I won't do it."
Valen raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"
"Forget someone I love. Even if it gives us weapons."
He nodded. "Then we find another way."
But even as he said it, his thoughts turned to the crater outside Dustmere.
And the voice that whispered in the night.
"Echoes always come home."
That night, Lyra dreamed.
But the dream was not hers.
It belonged to a woman standing at the edge of a ruined temple.
A temple shaped like a mouth.
Beneath the stars, she held a candle.
And whispered a name.
A name Lyra couldn't remember when she awoke.
But it left a mark in her mind like a scar.