The stairs spiraled downward, rough-hewn stone glowing faintly underfoot.
Not torches.
Not magic runes.
The walls themselves bled with a slow, reddish light, pulsing like veins under skin.
Ashling didn't like the rhythm.
It wasn't random.
It was a heartbeat.
The vow-thread in her chest throbbed in time with it.
Nyrelle whispered as they descended, fingers trailing along the wall. "This isn't the Citadel anymore. We're walking through him. Through what they left buried."
Lys kept his sword drawn, though they all knew steel wouldn't help if the Second Seal reached them before they found the heart.
Above, the sound of the Hall splitting grew louder.
Stone grinding. Quartz shrieking. The air thickening with a pressure that meant time itself was coming apart at the seams.
The fragment of Keiran floated behind them, more solid now—features sharpening, eyes less hollow.
But he still moved like something unfinished.
"Faster," he said, his voice rasping like wind over broken glass. "She… comes."
They reached the bottom.
The stairs opened into a cavern shaped like an inverted cathedral.
Stalactites hung like the teeth of some vast jaw, and in the center lay a crystal mass bound in chains of silver-black metal.
A single, massive sigil burned across its surface—erasure glyphs woven so tightly the air around them bent.
And inside the crystal, a heart beat.
Not flesh. Not stone.
Something older. Something wrong.
Nyrelle swallowed hard. "That's it. The soul-anchor."
Lys circled the crystal warily. "Looks more like a trap than a cure."
Ashling stepped closer, the vow-thread dragging her forward.
Each pulse from the heart slammed through her ribs like a second life waking inside her.
The vow wanted it.
Wanted him whole.
The fragment of Keiran hovered near the crystal, its outline shaking violently.
"They cut me… here," he said, voice breaking. "Left the core… so I could never return."
Ashling pressed her palm to the chains. They burned cold, like touching the memory of fire instead of fire itself.
The glyphs flared as though sensing her.
Above, the sound changed.
The Hall's collapse slowed.
Not because the Second Seal had stopped—
But because time itself was stuttering.
A jagged tear of sky split through the ceiling, and for a heartbeat Ashling saw her own group walking backward up the stairs before reality lurched forward again.
The Chrono-Ascendant was close.
Nyrelle's voice was tight. "Ashling, whatever you're going to do, do it now."
Ashling raised her blade. The vow-thread burned so bright she thought her chest might burst open.
But the chains didn't weaken.
They laughed.
The glyphs shifted like they knew exactly who she was.
"Vow-bearer," the symbols whispered in a voice made of wind and dust. "Do you think one promise outweighs our command?"
Lys stepped beside her, sword ready. "Let me cut it."
The fragment shook its head violently.
"Not steel… memory."
Ashling froze.
Of course. These weren't physical bindings. The Concordium hadn't chained the heart with metal—they'd chained it with erasure itself.
Only memory could break memory.
Ashling turned to Nyrelle.
"You can write," she said quickly. "Unbind it. Rewrite the chains."
Nyrelle hesitated. "Ashling… if I touch those glyphs, they'll rewrite me too."
The ceiling groaned again. Time kept skipping like a broken reel.
Ashling didn't flinch. "Then write fast."
Nyrelle stepped forward, ink blooming across her fingertips like veins of shadow.
She pressed her hand to the glyphs.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the chains screamed.
Not metal on stone—memories ripping free from the walls, whole centuries unraveling as Nyrelle's ink flooded the runes, overwriting command after command until the sigil shattered into white fire.
The heart lurched once. Twice.
Then it broke free.
Light slammed outward, hurling them all back as the crystal exploded into fragments of thought, memory, and soul-thread.
The fragment of Keiran collapsed to his knees—because now the last piece of him was slamming back into place.
Above, the sky tore completely open.
And through the rift descended the Chrono-Ascendant, wrapped in spirals of clocks without faces, her eyes two hourglasses draining in reverse.
The Second Seal had arrived.