Kael followed Sylas down the dim corridor, his mind still reeling from the kiss. Lira's words echoed in his head like a mantra: "Then we'll just have to keep making new memories." It was a vow, quiet and steady. And now, more than ever, he feared what his voice might one day take from him.
Sylas glanced sideways at him as they walked. "You look like someone lit a fire in your chest."
Kael rolled his eyes. "Can we just not?"
Sylas grinned. "Fine. No more teasing. For now."
They entered the briefing room where Thorne stood with his usual stern posture, arms crossed over a cracked map of the surrounding regions. Rowan stood to the side, silent as stone.
"I've got something for the three of you," Thorne began. "There's an old observatory west of the Raventree Forest. We've reason to believe it may have been repurposed by the Nine. Lights seen at night. Too regular to be anything natural."
"So we're scouting?" Rowan asked.
Thorne nodded. "If it's occupied, do not engage. I want observation only. If it's abandoned, go in and bring back anything useful—records, tools, anything that might give us an edge."
Rowan gave a short nod. "Understood."
Thorne looked to Kael and Sylas. "You're with him. And don't get sloppy."
Kael nodded, then turned to leave with the others. As he stepped toward the stairwell, he caught Lira standing outside her room. Their eyes met—no words, no wave. Just a shared silence and the smallest curve of a smile.
He smiled back.
That would be the memory he held tight to, if nothing else.
They traveled quickly under the pale gray sky, heading north toward the edge of Raventree Forest. The air smelled like old rain and wet stone. Sylas, ever the talker, tried to fill the silence between Kael and Rowan with stories and jokes, but his words felt thinner the closer they drew to the observatory.
It was nearly dusk by the time they reached the ridge. From the high cliffs, they could see the observatory nestled in the wilderness like a forgotten relic. Its once-proud dome had caved slightly inward, and long vines strangled its rusted frame. What glass hadn't shattered was clouded with time.
"Doesn't look like anyone's home," Sylas muttered, peering through a small spyglass.
"But I don't like how quiet it is."
"Places like this don't go quiet without reason," Rowan said.
Kael stared at it. There was a hum in his chest, a strange pull deep beneath his skin. Like the building wasn't just waiting—but calling.
"I'll go in alone," Kael said.
Rowan turned to him. "Why?"
"I need to," Kael replied. "If there's anything dangerous, I'll feel it."
Rowan didn't argue. He just nodded. "Be careful."
Kael moved down the slope, boots crunching over dead leaves and broken stone. He reached the rusted doors, took a breath, and pushed them open. They let out a low groan that echoed inside the structure like a warning bell.
The air inside was thick with dust and a metallic tang that clung to the roof of his mouth. Faded murals flaked off the walls, and shattered glass from ancient telescopes glittered beneath his boots. Strange machines—half rotted, half preserved—lay in quiet ruin, their functions lost to time.
But what dominated the center of the chamber was a spiraling structure of stone and metal—twisted and elegant, as though grown rather than built. Blue symbols pulsed along its curves, faint but alive.
It looked like a monument to something older than the rebellion, older than the Council… older than history itself.
Kael stepped toward it. He didn't know why. His body moved before his mind could reason it out.
He reached out—and touched it.
The world didn't vanish. It fractured.
Kael was no longer standing in the observatory.
He was nowhere.
The ground was gone, the sky too. A black void stretched infinitely around him. There was no light here—yet he could see. Not with his eyes. With his being. Shapes stirred in the dark. Not creatures. Not people.
Concepts. Forces. Truth given shape.
Whispers filled the air, layered and ancient. Not words. Impressions. Ideas that bypassed language entirely. And one of them—one louder than the rest—pressed into his soul.
Pactborn.
Kael's chest tightened.
Visions surged through him. Not memories—at least, not his.
He saw a child screaming in a burning house, arms outstretched to the sky. A mother clutching a grave and begging to forget her child's face. A dying soldier on a bloodied battlefield, praying for time to stop, just for a moment.
They didn't ask for power.
They asked for help.
And something… answered.
It had no face. No voice. No name.
But it had always been there.
The Primordials. Not gods.
Not demons.
Not even beings in the way humans understood.
The Primordials were forces. They existed before stars, before language, before even thought. When the world was still formless chaos, the Primordials were the only constants.
Truth, cold and piercing. The force behind Whisperers. It gave power to command others with mere words—but demanded memory in return. Every command cost a piece of the self.
Change, fluid and merciless. It was the pact of Reforgers, like Lira. They could reshape memories, others' and their own—but the more they did, the more they forgot who they really were.
Stillness, vast and crushing. The Silencers, like Brother Varn, were its chosen. They could freeze the world—but each time they did, a piece of them was frozen with it, unreachable.
Hunger, vast and gnawing. Kael could feel it, somewhere on the edge of this place. Dormant. Watching. Not yet part of the world—but close.
The pacts were never offered.
They were taken—in moments of desperation. Humans reached out not with rituals or blood—but with need. Pain. Trauma.
And the Primordials answered.
Kael stumbled back, yanking his hand off the device as if it had burned him. The symbols dimmed.
His chest rose and fell in uneven gasps. The visions lingered like frost on his skin.
He stared down at his hands—his voice, his gift, all of it—it hadn't been a gift at all. It had been a transaction.
He had cried out to Truth in a moment of helplessness. And it had answered.
And he hadn't even known.
From outside, Rowan's voice broke the silence. "Kael?"
Kael didn't respond. Not yet.
He looked at the machine again. It was quiet now. But something inside him had been lit like a fuse.
What if the Council knew?
What if they were forcing people into these pacts? What if they knew how to break someone just right—to make them call out to the unknown for help. The Primordials without even realizing it?
Kael pressed a hand to his chest. He could still feel Lira's warmth there, faint as a candle's last glow.
How many memories will I lose before this ends?
And when the war was over—if it ever ended—would he even know who she was?
Would he even know himself?
He stepped out of the observatory, head low, heart hammering.
Everything was different now.
Not because of what he'd seen—
—but because of what he now understood.