That night, Skyler couldn't sleep.
Not because he was afraid—but because he couldn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw fire. Not just flames—memory fire. History burned into light. Ghosts of moments long past—or yet to come—slithered into his thoughts like living threads. He was remembering lives he never lived… or had forgotten how to claim.
Outside the bunker, the sky was now streaked with veins of flickering light.
The world was fracturing.
In the basement, the Book of Recalled Flame remained sealed. Silent. Yet somehow, watching.
At dawn, Skyler found his mother in the upper chamber, sorting old relics—trinkets etched with ancient runes, fragments of broken memory stones, and a silver necklace glowing faintly with violet fire.
He held up one of the stones. "What are these?"
"Remnants," she said. "From before the Curses. Back when memory flowed freely between worlds. Before the Novaah line was hunted to extinction."
Skyler sat across from her. "You always said the myths were dangerous. But you never said they were ours."
His mother hesitated, then unwrapped a small package bound in flame-thread cloth.
Inside was a torn page—thousands of years old, yet freshly warm. It held an illustration that made Skyler's blood freeze.
It was him.
Standing amidst collapsed stars. His eye glowing red. A golden flame rising from his palm.
Beneath it, written in a sacred dialect:
"The Last Witness Shall Awaken When Memory Burns Through Blood."
Skyler couldn't breathe.
"It's you," she said. "That's why we hid. Why your father built the limiter-house. Why I erased your early memories."
"You did what?"
"To protect you," she said, voice trembling. "From what you were… and what they would do to you if they ever found out."
Skyler clenched his fists. "So I've been cursed since birth?"
"No," a voice echoed from the hallway.
Orias.
The old man stood tall now, not frail—his shadow flickering with embers.
"You are not cursed," he said, stepping into the light. "You are the cursebreaker."
Skyler stared.
"But… the myths say the Witness Bloodline was cursed to remember everything—to feel every end, every death, every moment."
Orias nodded.
"Yes. But that curse was never meant to be a curse. It was a gift. A sacred burden. The gods twisted it to keep you blind. To seal the Seers from the Archive."
Skyler stepped back. "So the stories I read growing up… the novels about memory fire, echo warriors, fallen timelines…"
"Weren't fiction," Orias said. "They were censored histories. Fragments from Witness minds who dreamed too loudly."
"And the flame?"
Orias raised his hand—and from his palm, a white-gold flame ignited silently.
"Is what binds us."
Skyler looked at his own palm. A flicker of warmth. A pulse. As if something beneath the skin wanted to rise.
"You were not meant to forget," Orias whispered. "But the multiverse made you forget. Now... it's failing. And you're beginning to wake."
The flame in Skyler's hand sparked—briefly—then vanished.
But in that flicker, he saw another vision: seven seals burning in the void.
And somewhere… one of them was cracking.