---
It began with a scent.
Smoke.
But not the choking kind that curled from Elaren's rooftops.
No—this was memory smoke.
Ash and cedar.
Valenhold's pyres.
---
Riven jolted upright before dawn, breath caught in his throat.
The Seals throbbed, each in painful synchrony.
Something had changed.
The Fifth was waking.
---
Kael stirred on the floor below. "You alright?"
"No," Riven said. "She's calling."
Lyra stepped out of the shadows. "Your sister?"
"She's alive. She's hurting. And I think… she's starting to remember too."
---
They didn't wait.
By sun-up, the group was moving—Liora at point, navigating old maps and ley-line echoes. Kael smuggled supplies. Lyra stole a horse from the city stables without asking.
Riven said nothing for most of the journey.
He was listening.
And eventually, the Seals led him not to a battlefield or ruin—but a forgotten forest northeast of Elaren, where the roots swallowed whole cities and the air shimmered with ancient grief.
---
The locals called it Nyren's Hollow.
The place where memory goes to rot.
Where time gets stuck like a splinter in the skin of the world.
Where the Veil thins.
---
They left the horses by the treeline.
Walked in silence.
Kael, blade out.
Liora, whispering tracking spells.
Lyra… watching Riven.
He hadn't spoken since the third hill.
When they crossed the first memory loop.
---
At the edge of the Hollow, they found the house.
Or what was left of it.
Just scorched beams and a single intact archway.
A wind stirred.
The smell of cedar returned.
And in the center of the ruins…
A girl stood.
No older than nineteen.
Cloak torn.
Hands scarred.
Eyes—his eyes.
---
She didn't speak.
Neither did he.
Not at first.
Then—
"Lyssa?"
Her chin trembled. "You were supposed to stay dead."
Riven took a step forward. "So were you."
---
She didn't run to him.
She didn't cry.
She turned and walked into the ruined house.
He followed.
And the world changed.
---
Suddenly, they stood in the past.
The fire had just started.
The screams echoed.
And young Riven—eight years old—was holding Lyssa's hand, running through the halls of Valenhold.
The scene played around them like a dream.
But they weren't children now.
They were watchers.
---
Lyssa stared at the vision. "I tried to pull you with me."
"I know."
"You let go."
"I had to," Riven said. "Or we'd both have died."
---
She didn't reply.
The scene flickered—shifted—to Seris carrying Riven away, bleeding, unconscious.
To Lyssa crawling through ash with her mother's pendant clutched in her fist.
She had survived.
Not because of luck.
Because she'd been forgotten.
---
"I waited for years," Lyssa said. "In the old crypts. In the ghost towns."
"You weren't alone," Riven said. "You were hidden."
"Same thing."
---
He stepped toward her, offering the pendant she'd sent through Sera.
She stared at it, then back at him.
Then said something that made his chest cave inward:
> "The Fifth Seal isn't me."
> "It's us."
---
Memory flared.
The Seals lit in unison.
Then merged.
For the first time, the power didn't embed itself in Riven alone.
It spread—into Lyssa.
Two halves of one Seal.
Two heirs.
Balanced.
---
The pain nearly dropped them both.
Kael reached them too late.
Lyra caught Riven's arm as he collapsed.
Liora helped Lyssa stay upright as light bled from her eyes.
The Fifth Seal formed between them—shaped like a mirrored crown.
Not of dominance.
Of unity.
---
When it was over, the Hollow faded.
The past let go.
And Lyssa knelt beside her brother for the first time in a decade.
"You're still an idiot," she said.
"You still punch like a drunk squirrel," he rasped.
They smiled.
---
But in the distance, thunder cracked.
Not from sky.
From war drums.
The Eclipse had followed.
And this time, they weren't sending vessels or spies.
They were sending the High Sanctum.
---
Far away, on a black ship crossing the Mirror Sea, Seris stood at the helm, hair bound in silver cords.
She watched the lightning form along the horizon and whispered:
> "The Fifth is bound."
> "Now the world begins to end."
---