The crystal doors did not swing outward.
They dissolved.
Glyph-light bled down their edges like melting ice, dripping symbols that tried—and failed—to reform themselves in the air. The vow-thread through Ashling's chest hummed so violently she thought it might snap.
She stepped forward.
The Hall of Severance lay waiting.
It wasn't a hall.
Not really.
It was a hollow cut into the roots of the mountain, a cathedral of cracked mirrors and broken hourglasses. Memory-quartz rose in spires, but they weren't dead like the rest of the Citadel. They breathed, glowing faintly as if the fragments of every erased life still throbbed inside.
At its center floated a figure.
Or rather… the impression of one.
The last piece of Keiran.
The moment his soul had been ripped apart, frozen here like an insect in amber.
Lys halted at the threshold.
"Gods," he whispered. "That's him?"
Ashling couldn't answer. Her throat was ash.
The vow-thread in her chest wrapped itself toward the figure like a tether trying to reunite. The closer she stepped, the stronger the pulse became, until it was a second heartbeat inside her ribs.
The fragment stirred.
It turned its head toward her—slow, as though learning motion again—and when its eyes met hers, the Hall shook.
"Ash…ling."
The voice was Keiran's. And not.
Nyrelle pressed her palm to a nearby quartz pillar. Images bled from it:
A boy under twin moons.
A blade driven through his shadow.
The Concordium seal burning his name from every ledger.
"This is where they did it," Nyrelle whispered. "Where they erased him from the weave."
The walls groaned in response.
Because memory, once stirred, never stayed quiet for long.
Ashling stepped closer.
"Keiran," she said, voice shaking. "We've come to put you back together."
The fragment flickered. Pain. Recognition. Something like relief.
"Not… much time," it rasped. "Second… Seal… coming."
Ashling's head snapped toward Nyrelle.
"Second Seal?"
Nyrelle's ink-dark eyes widened. "They'll reset the entire Citadel. Roll it back before it ever existed. Before he existed."
Lys tightened his grip on his sword. "Then we take him and run."
But the Hall didn't like that plan.
The quartz spires screamed—high, keening notes like glass being devoured by fire. The ground beneath them shifted, sigils flaring, as though the Citadel itself knew erasure was coming and refused to die quietly.
The fragment of Keiran spoke again, each word making the air tremble:
"I am… not whole. If I leave now… I shatter."
Ashling's chest went cold.
The vow-thread hissed against her ribs. It wanted him whole. Demanded it.
A crack split the far wall.
Through it, they saw the sky twisting—the first sign of the Second Seal descending.
It wasn't fire or lightning.
It was reversal.
Clouds ran backward. Dust fell upward. Even the birds overhead flapped their wings in the wrong direction, scattering toward the horizon in terrified spirals.
The Chrono-Ascendant had begun her work.
Nyrelle cursed under her breath. "We have minutes. Maybe less."
Ashling turned back to the fragment.
"Then tell me how to finish it. How to make you whole."
The figure's voice dropped to a whisper.
"The heart. Beneath. Where they bound me."
Its gaze drifted downward, to the deepest pit of the Hall.
The vow-thread snapped taut again.
Something slept below the Hall—a last anchor, buried when the Concordium severed Keiran's soul.
And if they didn't reach it before the Seal descended, Shaleven would be unwritten, Keiran with it.
Ashling looked to Lys, to Nyrelle, to the trembling walls of quartz.
"Then we go down," she said.
Lys's knuckles whitened on his sword. "I hate this plan."
Nyrelle gave a dry laugh. "Welcome to our lives."
As they descended toward the heart of the Hall, the fragment hovered behind them, its form growing clearer with every step.
The vow-thread throbbed like it was dragging fate itself along.
And above, the sky continued to rewind.