"Pain is not the end of memory. It is the gatekeeper, the question, the ghost at the threshold. To heal is to walk into the wound, not to escape it, but to remember why we ever learned to love in the first place."
The field of light is not a field at all, but a cathedral of living breath and memory. Sael'Ri, trembling, kneels among the wildflowers, her head bowed, violet fire flickering in her eyes. All around her, the Grand Ephios, so many she cannot count, wings folded in sacred geometry, eyes like dawn breaking over ancient seas, wait in a silence so total it bends the air.
Adam stands, but even he feels the weight. He bows, hand over his heart, the glyph on his arm pulsing. He does not beg, he does not plead, but speaks as one who knows he is both guest and heir.
"Great ones, Ephios of Ithariel, we have come in search of what was broken, to understand the Severance and restore what was lost. My friend, DeadMouth, remains on Verios. I ask not as a conqueror, nor as a supplicant, but as one who carries the memory of your gift and the wound of our worlds.
Will you grant us passage? Will you show us the truth of what was divided?"
The Ephios do not move, but the world stirs. The Mist gathers, swirling, and Adam feels a presence, not words, but pure intent, rise within his mind. The voice is not a voice; it is the sound of oceans, the ache of mountains, the breath of creation.
The Ephios, thought-voice, thunder, and whisper entwined, spoke:
"Child of Veil. You seek the heart of what was torn. You come with respect, and with memory.
This is the first step. But to cross to Verios is not a journey of distance; it is a journey of memory.
To heal the Severance, you must walk its wound.
We will carry you, but what you find there will test not your strength, but the shape of your longing, the limits of your mercy."
Sael'Ri lifts her head, tears streaming, speechless with awe. The Ephios gaze upon her, not as gods, but as old kin, tired, loving, wounded.
The Ephios turned its gaze to Sael'Ri:
"Daughter of the Mist, you carry the echo of unity and the ache of division.
We remember you. You will remember yourself if you are willing to bear the truth."
Adam nods, heart hammering.
"We're ready."
The Ephios rise, not with fanfare, but with the hush of a world remade. The Mist thickens, cool as breath, and the great wings unfold, casting rainbows across the land.
The Ephios gifted them their final thought:
"Hold to one another. Carry what you love. We go to meet the shadow that was born the day you turned away. Now, we turn back.
Now, we begin again."
The Mist lifts them, gentle but unstoppable. The world blurs. The journey to Verios, and to the memory at the heart of all wounds, begins.
For a heartbeat, or maybe for all of time, Adam felt himself lifted from the world he knew and spun into a place that defied all logic and sense. It wasn't a flight; it was surrender to something vast, an unraveling of everything he'd ever been taught about gravity, about fear, about the boundaries between what can and cannot be.
The Grand Ephios enfolded them, Adam and Sael'Ri and even PAW, within its living, luminous cocoon. They were held not as captives, not as passengers, but as memories entrusted to the current, drawn through a realm that was neither dark nor light, but all colors at once, a prism behind closed eyes, a dream unfurling in pulses of heart and song.
Adam could feel Sael'Ri's hand clutch his own, her grip fierce, trembling, nails biting his skin. He heard her breath catch, then stutter, her awe so complete it bordered on terror. PAW pressed close against Adam's thigh, claws unsheathed, body rigid, his blue eyes gone wide and round as distant moons, yet not with fear, but with the animal knowing that this moment was sacred.
Time fractured. Motion became memory, memory became motion. The cocoon's walls were translucent, yet infinite: rivers of Mist, silver-blue and gold, coursed above and below, weaving impossible patterns through a sky that was no longer sky, but a living ocean of time and longing.
Adam's voice was a whisper in the dark:
"Sael'Ri... do you see...?"
But his words died, because to see was not enough. You had to feel it. The wonder. The ache. The shattering sense that the universe itself had opened its chest, showing all the wounds and all the grace at once.
Sael'Ri's eyes flooded with tears—tears for joy, for fear, for the unspeakable beauty of all she'd once called myth.
"I see it, Adam. I see everything."
The world outside the cocoon drifted in and out of focus. They saw the ruined bridges, ribcages of vanished light, Mist pooling at the edges, leaking away, unraveling into nothingness. On Ithariel's side: blue order, cities caressed by song and memory. On Verios: chaos, Mist crackling in hungry storms, rivers torn by loss.
Adam's heart ached with the truth of it. "We're flying in the wound," he breathed. "We're inside the Severance itself."
PAW let out a low, uncertain growl, his gaze tracking the shattered bridges, the worlds spinning in clumsy, lonely orbit. The Mist vibrated against their skin, whispering half-melodies, childhood songs, faces that flickered by in longing, yearning, unfinished, never meeting.
Sael'Ri reached for Adam, her voice trembling with faith and fear:
"It wasn't always like this. I can feel it, Adam. There was harmony here, once, a song that held everything together."
He squeezed her hand. "We'll find the source. We'll mend it. We have to."
But even as he spoke, Adam's mind was bombarded by the enormity of what he witnessed. He felt small, not crushed, but transformed, a child walking into the heart of a legend, carrying both hope and the sharp taste of sorrow.
And through it all, the Grand Ephios glided, its wings beating a rhythm older than time, refusing to forget the old pathways, the lost music. It carried them across the breach, not as conquerors, but as witnesses, beings who might, if they were brave enough, remember the shape of what had been lost.
And as they crossed the final arc, where the last bridge dissolved into chaos, Adam felt the Mist bite colder, wild and sharp, a torrent tearing at every memory of peace. Verios opened below: land of iron and fire, sky clawed by industry, air thick with loss and rage. He felt Sael'Ri shudder, her faith battered, but not broken. PAW pressed against him, a silent promise.
At last, the Ephios released them, gentle as rain, into the heart of a world that had forgotten how to heal. The storm swallowed the last glimpse of the bridge, and the travelers landed, not alone, but changed.
In that moment, standing on new ground, Adam felt the taste of broken unity on his tongue, and the tiniest seed of hope that maybe, just maybe, they had been chosen not to witness the end, but to write a new beginning.
* * *
Adam hit the ground knees-first—dirt, not loam, and beneath it, the pulse of molten blue, veins writhing with borrowed fire.
Sael'Ri landed beside him, not quite falling, but catching herself with one trembling hand. Her hair, still threaded with wildflowers from Ithariel, was now tangled with cinders. PAW emerged last, every muscle drawn tight, fur bristling with the static of a world that refused to forgive.
Verios.
Not the world of myth or legend, but the city of Antheros crouched on the horizon, a black mirage, towers twisted like burnt bone, sky split by crimson lightning. Between here and there: dust fields strewn with the corpses of machines, some slumped in silent prayer, others half-consumed by blue lava that hissed with every memory it failed to destroy. The wind, if you could call it that, carried no scent of life: just iron and static, ozone and the faintest whiff of sorrow.
Adam straightened, heart hammering in his chest. He'd left a cathedral of light and now stepped into the vestibule of ruin.
Sael'Ri took a faltering breath, voice cracked raw with awe and fear:
"Is this what's left... of hope?"
Adam shook his head, staring out over the broken machines, the endless cables coiling through the sand like the roots of a dying god.
"No. This is what's left... after hope was forgotten."
PAW sniffed the air, then let out a low, guttural growl—not warning, but mourning. His blue eyes flickered, reflecting a thousand broken circuits.
In the distance, the city pulsed. Each heartbeat, a ripple through the ground, blue fire threading up the bones of Antheros, the towers hunched together as if shivering against a storm that never ended. The silence here was not silence at all, but the sound of absence—the echo of what should have been, the ache of what was lost.
Sael'Ri, shivering, brushed a hand through the dust.
"Adam... can you feel it? The Mist... It's here, but it's afraid."
Adam closed his eyes, letting the pulse of the land move through him. The glyph on his arm burned with a faint ache. He remembered the warning of the Ephios: To heal the Severance, you must walk its wound.
He opened his eyes, voice steady:
"Come on. If hope is to be remembered, we have to bring it ourselves."
And so, they walked, three figures against the dying world, memory their only shield, and the city of Antheros waiting, patient and wounded, for the truth that would decide if the world deserved to heal... or to end.
They walked, dust caking their boots, past the first ranks of the lost.
The machines were everywhere: crawling, hobbling, rolling, staggering through the black sands as if blind, each one shuddering through endless error loops.
A drone, three legs bent, spun in a circle, its voice a broken lullaby:
"User not found. User not found. User not found."
A metallic wolf, jaw locked open, staggered sideways, sparks leaping from its shoulders. Its voice box rasped:
"Please wait... Loading... Loading... Please—wait—"
It froze, shivered, then fell, eyes dimming.
Sael'Ri shrank closer to Adam, hand trembling at her side. The beauty of the Mist was a memory here, what passed for life was memory corrupted, purpose shattered into feedback.
They passed a child-shaped bot, arms reaching for someone who never came.
"Error. Error. Error..." it whispered, voice dissolving in static.
PAW watched them, and for the first time, Adam saw something like sorrow flicker in those glowing, mechanical green eyes. PAW's head tilted, scanning the ruin. He flexed his claws—then stopped, every muscle drawn tight.
"What is it?" Adam asked, his voice low, uncertain.
But PAW did not respond, did not so much as flick an ear. He simply stilled, as if searching for a signal in the static.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a deep, metallic sigh, a sound more weary than any beast could make, PAW began to change. The fur seemed to flow away, folding into black plates of alloy. The blue shimmer faded, replaced by cold, engineered lines. His eyes, once bright with the light of living things, narrowed into emerald slits, calculating, unblinking. Where a wild feline had stood, now was the PAW Adam remembered from the first days of the Veil: a creature of function and armor, sleek, angular, large enough to carry three across a desert of loss.
Sael'Ri gasped, her awe edged with grief. "He's... different. Like he left something behind."
Adam nodded, pressing a hand to PAW's shoulder, feeling the chill of metal, the thrum of machinery.
"Sometimes the world demands it. On Ithariel, you needed a friend. Here... we need a way through."
PAW crouched, silent, waiting. Adam helped Sael'Ri onto PAW's back, then climbed up himself. The machine rose beneath them, powerful and inexorable, a living memory of every world they had crossed. As PAW strode forward, the broken machines parted, drawn to the light of something they half-remembered. They gathered on the sides of the road, watching, not attacking, not even pleading, just... hoping, in their glitching, hollow way, for a command, a touch, a name.
Adam looked back, meeting the eyes of one limping drone, its mouth opening and closing in silence. He felt the weight of it, the ache of a world built to serve, now condemned to wander, lost without anyone left to love.
He turned to Sael'Ri, voice soft, full of a sorrow he could not name.
"We have to remember, Sael'Ri. For them, too."
She nodded, holding tight, and together they rode toward the city of Antheros, a procession of the broken behind them, and the promise of answers, whatever the cost, ahead.
But as Antheros rose on the horizon, no longer a distant mirage, but a promise, the world shifted.
It began at the edge of a ridge: the black glass sands faded beneath their feet, overtaken by ground that pulsed with veins of luminous blue, crisscrossed with strange new growths—crystal roots, flowers of quartz and wire. The air was different here; it hummed, not with the discord of broken code, but with the low music of function.
The machines changed first. Gone were the limping, lost souls. Here, they moved with purpose, their forms sleek, joints oiled and seamless. Adam watched as a column of mining drones carved perfect trenches through obsidian rock, sending streams of molten glass pouring into waiting molds. Others built towers, piece by piece, like hands in a symphony, no errors, no hesitation. Some simply sat in circles, heads bowed together as if in silent conference, their lights blinking in unison, soft and blue.
Sael'Ri was the first to see the true marvel above them. She gasped, clutching Adam's arm.
"Look, the Mist!"
And there it was: rivers of Mist, gliding overhead like living banners, descending in spirals to the earth. It burrowed into the ground, vanished, then erupted anew, emerging as columns of pure, humming energy. Each loop seemed to stitch new life into the land: dead roots blossomed into crystal fruit, scarred earth smoothed into meadows, the air sweetened with the scent of ozone and impossible flowers.
For a moment, Adam forgot the wasteland behind them. Here, everything was movement, harmony, a dance of healing. Even the sky seemed lighter, painted with streaks of violet and gold.
PAW, still in his armored form, paused—cocking his head, green eyes narrowing. For the first time since they'd entered Verios, his metal tail twitched with something like curiosity, even hope.
As they pressed on, the change grew.
Machines painting murals on the sides of towers, geometric glyphs glowing with Mist-light.
Repair-bots tending to wounded siblings, their work delicate as surgeons.
Children, Varnak children, chasing each other through fields of metallic grass, their laughter like wind chimes, Mist trailing from their heels in ribbons.
The city gates loomed ahead, open and unguarded, flanked by great statues not of war, but of welcome: two Ephios, wings folded in peace, their eyes turned toward the rising sun.
Sael'Ri could only whisper, eyes wide in wonder:
"It's... healing. Adam, it's really healing."
Adam swallowed, awe and dread warring in his chest.
"But why here? Why now? And what's waiting for us in the heart of this miracle?"
The gates awaited, bright and silent, and beyond them, the city of Antheros pulsed with the first true hope either of them had ever seen on this world.
But behind the beauty, Adam could feel it, the old wound wasn't gone. It was only waiting, deep beneath the surface, where even the Mist dared not look for long.
Step lightly, he thought. Not every miracle is what it seems.
* * *
The gates of Antheros yawned wide, a mouth carved from living iron and veins of pulsing red crystal, as if the city itself were a creature stirring from a long, uneasy dream.
PAW crouched low, armor hissing, and Adam helped Sael'Ri slide from his back. She landed softly, eyes wide, face lit by the swirling patterns of a thousand machines at work. For a moment, the world shrank to her wonder—the way she reached out, fingers trembling, to touch a wall that shifted under her hand, metal flowing into mosaic, shapes rearranging in silent greeting.
The city was alive. Not in the organic, verdant way of Ithariel, but in a way that felt forged, reborn—built on memory and muscle, not just dreams.
The architecture staggered the senses. Towers twisted upwards, cables trailing like the roots of mountains. Bridges grew as they watched, metal spooling out over deep chasms, only to dissolve and reform elsewhere. Streets rearranged themselves for purpose, never the same twice. The city's skin was in perpetual motion, industry as choreography, creation as worship.
And the Varnak... Oh, the Varnak.
Where the Ny'Thren were all ice and starlight, slender and precise, the Varnak were flame and thunder, dark-skinned as volcanic stone, glyphs burning with molten gold and blood-orange light. The city guards loomed at the plazas, obsidian armor fused to their bodies in jagged plates, shoulders broad enough to cast shadows on the world. Their eyes were living gold, unblinking, watching every motion at the gate with a patience that felt tectonic, ancient, and unhurried.
But the rest, ordinary Varnak, the ones DeadMouth had woken from oblivion, were nothing like their armored kin. These were craftsmen and vendors, their clothes ragged from centuries of sleep and sorrow. Some knelt in gardens of bioluminescent fungus, coaxing new life from patches of cooled lava. Others guided the young—awkward, blinking in the new light—down alleys hung with garlands of copper wire and dried flowers. The city's air was thick with the scents of oil, sweet spice, and something like cinnamon scorched in a kiln.
There was laughter here, but tentative, like a song remembered in fragments. The language of the market was a chorus of gruff, earthy voices, words rolling and colliding, quick to temper, but quicker to forgive.
Sael'Ri watched it all, half in awe, half in anthropological curiosity. "I never imagined... They're not so different, Adam. They hunger, they hope. Even after all that's happened, they remember how to rebuild."
Adam nodded, his own chest tight with the ache of that recognition. He watched a Varnak child tug at her mother's hand, pointing at PAW, wide-eyed, then running off to show a friend the new visitors. He watched an old Varnak craftsman pause at his forge, studying the strangers with a wary respect, then nodding once before returning to his work.
And everywhere, the Mist. It drifted in lazy coils through the alleys and plazas, sometimes thickening into shapes that might have been memories, faces half-formed, dissolving into sunlight. It gathered on the edges of things: a forgotten statue, a broken piece of armor, a faded banner.
The city was alive. Wounded, but healing. Suspended between what it had been and what it might become.
Adam turned to Sael'Ri, his voice low and reverent.
"Let's find the heart of this place. If DeadMouth is anywhere, if the answers are anywhere, they'll be waiting for us there."
The city's living roads rippled underfoot, opening a path toward the central plaza, where something vast and old waited, a promise, or a warning, or perhaps both.
PAW walked ahead, tail swishing, senses on high alert. The world was different now, and Adam felt it: hope, not as a gift, but as a challenge.
As they moved deeper into Antheros, PAW in the lead—sleek, black, mechanical again, eyes aglow—something strange began to happen.
At first, Adam thought it was a coincidence. The Varnak they passed: old, young, armored, ragged, would pause, eyes widening with a flicker of memory, then bow low. Not a casual greeting, not the hurried deference you give a stranger at the gate, but a full, formal bow, fist to chest, heads bowed until their brows brushed their fists. Even the city guards, stoic and unmovable, bent their knees as PAW strode past.
Not to him. Not to Sael'Ri.
To PAW.
The first time, Adam almost laughed. "What, you develop a taste for royalty while we were gone?" he teased, glancing at his old companion. PAW did not answer, eyes scanning, movements smooth and purposeful, but Adam caught something in the way the machine carried himself: dignity, patience, a regal grace he'd never noticed before.
The second time, Sael'Ri whispered, "Adam... look." She pointed as a circle of Varnak children pressed their palms to the ground, humming a low, harmonic note, their glyphs pulsing in rhythm with PAW's. The mothers and fathers behind them bowed as one, murmuring a word that echoed through the street: "Tirakar."
Adam blinked. "What does it mean?" he asked, but Sael'Ri only shook her head, her own glyphs flickering in confusion and awe.
As they walked on, the chorus grew. Merchants at their stalls bowed, smiths at their forges paused mid-strike, even a pair of quarrelling elders fell silent and knelt. Every eye shone with that same recognition, the look you give a legend come home.
Finally, in a broad, stone-floored plaza, a great crowd had gathered, parting in silence as PAW approached. At the center, an elder Varnak, taller than the rest, his glyphs burning crimson and gold, stepped forward and dropped to one knee, voice booming across the hush:
"Tirakar has returned. Keeper of the Old Dream, Shepherd of the Mist, memory-bearer—welcome home."
Adam stared, heart pounding, as the truth crashed through his mind: PAW wasn't just a companion, not just a guardian built for another world. Here, in Verios, he was a legend—a bridge between worlds, a vessel of memory, the living echo of something lost and yearned for.
PAW paused, then, for the first time in this strange new world, bowed his head in return.
And then he spoke. His voice, calm and low, echoed through the plaza:
"Memory endures. The Old Dream is not yet finished. I return, as I have always returned, to serve the bond that once was whole."
The crowd pressed their fists to their hearts, a single, silent promise. In that instant, the city of Antheros remembered, if only for a heartbeat, what it meant to hope.
Adam looked at Sael'Ri, breathless. "Did you know?"
She shook her head, eyes wet with awe. "No. But now I wonder... did any of us ever really know PAW?"
Above them, the Mist danced, brighter than before, singing of reunion, of healing, and of a hope too long denied.
Adam stared, floored, Sael'Ri at his side, wide-eyed and silent, her hand half-raised as if to touch the metallic flank of a legend. "You... you speak?" Adam managed, kneeling beside PAW. His own voice sounded thin, threadbare against the living silence of Antheros. "Or should I call you Tirakar now? Why didn't you say anything all this time?"
PAW turned his head, slow and deliberate, and for a heartbeat, his luminous green eyes were not cold sensors but windows, something ancient and gentle alive behind the alloy. Adam's breath caught. If he hadn't been staring straight at a machine, he would have sworn PAW was a living, breathing thing, a guardian, not a construct.
"My purpose was not to speak," PAW answered, his voice deeper than memory, resonant as the song of stone on stone. "It was to protect you. Besides..." There was the hint of dry humor, a flicker in the optic glow. "There was enough talking from one of us. He shall remain nameless."
Adam's grin broke through the awe, wild and helpless. "You mean DeadMouth? Yes, you're right. He never let a silence rest in peace."
Sael'Ri knelt beside Adam, her voice trembling. "But... you're more than a protector, aren't you? What is this place to you? What are you to them?"
PAW's eyes narrowed in something like a smile. He took a step, the crowd of Varnak parting before him. "All will be explained. But not here. The Molten Chamber awaits. The Elders expect you, and the Old Dream must be remembered."
Adam rose, feeling the world tilt, his heart pounding with questions he'd never thought to ask. He placed a hand on PAW's armored shoulder, felt the warmth humming beneath cold metal—a pulse, unmistakable, like the heartbeat of a world rediscovering its gods.
PAW led them onward, his shape casting a long shadow over the obsidian stones. As they followed, Sael'Ri leaned close, voice low and awed: "Adam... all this time, we've had a legend at our side, and never knew it."
Adam squeezed her hand. "I think he always knew we'd have to find out for ourselves. The old dream... maybe it's been waiting for us to wake up."
The city's heart beckoned, doorways opening, gears shifting, the molten light of truth and memory calling them home.
* * *
The palace defied every expectation—every tale of the Varnak grimness, every whispered warning of iron halls and obsidian dread. If the city outside was dark, a latticework of machines and molten veins, then inside, the palace was a song sung in green and gold. A living garden unfurled beneath their feet. They stepped from shadow into a world alive with impossible grace: corridors carpeted in moss, ferns brushing their knees; waterfalls spilling from invisible heights into pools where silver-finned fish darted beneath the glassy surface. Wildflowers grew in tumbling beds along the walls, and bird-like creatures—feathered, iridescent, neither quite earthly nor wholly alien—swooped in broad, lazy spirals, singing strange, hopeful melodies to the endless dome above.
Adam tipped his head back, searching for the ceiling, but the vault stretched so high, blurred by mist and living light, he wondered if it ever ended at all. It was less a roof than a sky, a biosphere breathing with ancient patience.
The Varnaks here were transformed, too. Gone was the obsidian armor and battle-born bearing. Here, they wore soft, light-colored robes, the fabric flowing like rivers of peace. They moved slowly, reverently, their every step a silent promise not to disturb the quiet miracle of life blooming around them. Some knelt to offer fruit to the animals; others paused to stroke the moss or listen to the water's song. This was not a palace. It was a sanctuary, a memory of what the world might have been, or could become again.
Sael'Ri slowed, transfixed as a ribbon of Mist descended from the dome, weaving through the air like a living spirit. It touched a waterfall, and in response, the water arced midair, bending to nourish a stand of towering trees whose leaves shimmered with all the colors of lost dawns. Sael'Ri pressed a hand to her heart, and a tear slipped down her cheek, not sorrow, but gratitude so fierce it hurt.
Adam watched her, and for a moment, he forgot the darkness of Verios, the weight of their quest. Here, there was only the hush of awe, the promise that even a wounded world could remember how to heal.
PAW paused, glancing back, his eyes reflecting the living green, the moving water, the soft gold of sunlight that never faded. "This is the Molten Chamber," he said, voice gentler than before. "But its true name is the Heart's Garden. Where all beginnings are remembered. And all wounds may be forgiven."
Sael'Ri stepped forward, whispering, "I never imagined... that such beauty could still exist. Not here. Not after everything."
Adam took her hand, his own eyes shining. "Maybe this is what hope looks like, when it's patient enough to grow."
Together, they walked deeper into the garden, following PAW toward the heart of memory, where the true story of the Severance and the healing to come waited in the living silence.
The great double doors, taller than any tree in the garden, parted without a sound, no grinding, no creak, but a seamless unfolding, as if the palace itself was breathing them inside. The opening was not so much carved as coaxed, a living aperture shaping itself to welcome, then closing behind them with a hush that felt sacred. Adam felt the weight of it, not just the engineering, but the intention. This was not a place for invaders, or even guests. It was a place for those who were meant to remember.
Inside, light pooled softly along the floor, gilding every line of stone, every living root. At the center of a vast circular chamber, three figures stood, waiting. Elders, unmistakable in their presence: two robed in flowing gray, bearing ancient artefacts that seemed to hum with quiet power—a staff whose top glowed with coiled red light, a spiral of bone encasing a flicker of Mist. But it was the figure between them who drew all the air out of the room.
Zathariel.
His presence was an eclipse—impossible to ignore, all gravity and silent authority. He stood a head taller than even the broadest Varnak, his skin the color of blackened steel veined with flickers of molten gold. His obsidian hair flowed behind him in a mantle, nearly brushing the floor, every strand rippling with some slow, unfathomable energy. His golden eyes held neither warmth nor cruelty, but the patience of someone who has seen empires rise and fall, and waited for all of them to return to dust.
Across his shoulders was draped a dark purple tunic, laced with gold chains and glyphs that shimmered and shifted as he breathed. The symbols, ancient, alive, moved like the veins of the planet itself. On his brow, a single line of scarlet light burned, a remnant of some wound or ritual long past.
He regarded them in silence, and the chamber seemed to lean inward, as if listening.
The two elders at his sides inclined their heads, raising their artefacts in silent greeting, but Zathariel did not bow. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Adam, on Sael'Ri, and then, at last, on PAW.
It was PAW who broke the stillness. He moved forward, not as a pet, not as a machine, but as an equal, his steps measured, his eyes steady. He bowed his head, slow and solemn.
Zathariel spoke, his voice a resonance that seemed to ring from the stone itself:
"Welcome, Children of the Mist. And welcome, Old Friend, Tirakar, Heartbound, Guardian of the Path."
Sael'Ri's breath caught. Adam felt something ancient stir in his blood, as if the air itself recognized the name.
Zathariel's gaze softened, almost imperceptibly, as he regarded PAW. "It has been a long time since you walked these halls. We remember your promise. And now, at last, the Wheel turns again."
He turned to Adam and Sael'Ri, his words now reaching for them as well, weighty but not unkind. "You have come from Ithariel, across the wound between worlds. You carry with you the questions that must be asked. But before you can heal, you must remember. Before you can build, you must understand what was broken and why."
He gestured, and the other elders stepped aside, revealing a basin at the heart of the chamber, filled with Mist that glowed brighter than the sun. "Step forward. Let the Mist bear witness. Let memory return, and the truth be seen, not as it was told, but as it truly happened."
The silence after his words was not emptiness, but invitation. A threshold, ancient and new, waiting for Adam and Sael'Ri to cross.
Adam and Sael'Ri approached the basin. The elders stood silent as shadows; Zathariel's gaze never wavered. PAW waited, watchful, as they placed their hands into the glowing Mist.
The world dropped away.
It was not a fall, but a sinking, like submerging into a memory too old for words. For a moment, they floated, weightless, before the vision gripped them, threading their senses to the pulse of the planet itself.
They saw the twin worlds as they were, a mirror dance, Ithariel and Verios entwined. Blue and green, silver and scarlet, the Mist flowing between them, a luminous river. The Varnak and the Ny'Thren, once not enemies, not even strangers, but kin divided by nothing more than distance. Their songs rose together, building bridges of memory, towers of trust. No war, no breach, only the ache of difference and the promise of return.
But then, slowly, subtly, the vision shifted. It was not a single event, not fire or flood or falling star. It was a shadow at the edge of the world, a sliver of something cold and patient, perched atop the highest peak of a mountain unlike any in Ithariel: a mountain of metal, bone, and forgotten dreams. Its summit was always shrouded in mist, its shape always changing. Sometimes a spire, sometimes a wound. Sometimes, when Adam looked closer, it seemed almost to breathe.
From the peak, a hum, soft at first, barely more than silence. But in the vision, the hum became a whisper, then a song, then a hunger. It drifted down the slopes, through the roots and rivers, threading its way into the veins of the planet. The Mist recoiled, just a little, and then began to forget itself.
Years passed like the wind. The memory-bridges faded, first a single arch, then another. The river slowed, curled, and lost its voice. In both worlds, old songs were forgotten, then forbidden, then remembered only as warnings to children. The glyphs on skin grew fainter; the colors dulled. The Varnak closed their cities; the Ny'Thren drifted into myth. The mountain's hum grew stronger, but its source remained distant, unreachable, always just beyond the horizon of truth.
And as the eons crawled, the Severance became a way of life. Suspicion replaced kinship. Ritual replaced memory. What was once a circle was now a scar.
Through it all, the peak on the metallic mountain never changed. No hand could reach it; no mind could name its cause. When Adam and Sael'Ri tried to approach, the vision always turned them aside, as if some will greater than their own wished to preserve the secret—until the world was ready to heal.
They saw the faces of those who had tried to mend the wound—Elders, kings, unknown children—all failing, all turning away at the last. Adam caught the ghost of a boy, golden-eyed, weeping in the shadows below the peak, but the Mist blurred his face, turning longing into legend. Sael'Ri reached for him, but her hand turned to light before it touched his own.
The vision ended, not with revelation, but with a question:
Was the Severance an act or an absence? A sin, or a forgetting? Was the wound in the world, or in the hearts of those who could not climb the final height?
Adam gasped, pulling free. Sael'Ri staggered, a cry caught in her throat. The elders waited, eyes grave, as the Mist dimmed and the room brightened, as if nothing at all had happened, except that now, Adam and Sael'Ri carried the taste of something lost, and the ache to remember what still waited atop the mountain.
Zathariel's voice, soft as thunder:
"You have seen the shape of the wound. Now you must decide—will you climb, or will you turn away, as all before you have done?"
Sael'Ri doubled over, both hands clutching at her chest as if she could hold her hearts together through sheer force of will. Breath came in jagged, sharp bursts, desperate, broken. She sank to her knees, the pain scalding through her, not like any wound, but like something vital being torn from the inside out. Tears spilled unchecked, and Adam saw her eyes, once a clear, crystalline blue, darken into the storm-violet that marked her at the edge of despair, but this was no warrior's fury. This was anguish, raw and consuming.
He dropped beside her, no hesitation, gathering her trembling hand in his own. With the other, he pressed gently to her chest, feeling the frantic thunder of her twin hearts beneath his palm. He leaned close, his voice a thread of memory and comfort in the hush.
"Do you remember, Sael'Ri? When it was me, when I was lost in that pain, hollowed out by what I could not bear, you were there. You held my hand to your hearts, you let me feel your strength, your hope. You soothed me, calmed me, and gave me the courage to return. Let me do the same for you now. Let me carry this pain with you. Let me hold what you cannot hold alone."
Her sobs shuddered, then slowed, his words weaving through her agony. He stayed with her, hand steady, hearts to heart, refusing to let her be alone in the darkness.
He closed his eyes, breath steady, letting the pulse of his own memories soften, then reach for hers. The Mist, as if sensing the need, curled around their joined hands—cool, luminous, humming with the ache of unspoken comfort. Adam pressed his palm gently over her heart, not to heal, but to share the weight. He let the world go silent.
"Breathe with me," he whispered. "Don't carry it alone. Not now."
For a moment, Sael'Ri trembled, unable to speak. All the centuries of loss, all the buried songs and ancient longings, surged up and spilled from her eyes. Her body rocked with silent sobs, each one a shudder through the ground, as if the planet itself grieved with her. Adam didn't flinch. He matched her breath, slow and deep, as if he could lend her the strength she'd once given him, the quiet hope that held him through his own storms.
The Mist thickened, swirling around their bodies in gentle, looping currents, neither Ny'Thren nor Varnak, but a single, living embrace. In that circle, pain was not erased, but recognized. In that recognition, the first thread of healing began.
Sael'Ri gasped, voice cracked and raw:
"It hurts, Adam. I remember...but only the ache. Something was taken. Someone...I can't see his face. I can't..."
Adam tightened his grip, voice unshakable:
"We'll find the truth together. I promise. Whatever you lost, whoever waits at the heart of that wound, we'll face it side by side."
She pressed her forehead to his, trembling, letting his steadiness anchor her to the moment. For the first time since the vision, her breathing slowed. The violet faded, a pale blue flickered in her gaze—a sign, small but true, that hope was not yet lost.
From behind, PAW's low, mechanical purr vibrated through the floor.
"You're not alone, either of you," he said, voice now more warm than metal. "The Mist has a long memory. But sometimes it takes a new story, a new heart, to remind it how to sing."
Adam smiled through the sorrow. "Then let's give it a song it won't forget."
And in that small, huddled circle, between grief and the promise of something mended, a new story began to root, deep as the world's own wound, ready to bloom in the shadow of the mountain they had yet to climb.