The temple had no name.
Carved into the cliffside of Aradin's Spine, it was older than the scriptures, older than the Orders, older even than the flames the Lanternbearers carried. Most believed it was abandoned—a relic of the first Watchers who'd tried to bind the stars to earth.
But Elias had followed the whisper-trail here.
And now… he stood alone before its broken gate.
The once-grand archway was cracked down the center, and the marble statues flanking it had been decapitated—blind guardians left to rot. As Elias stepped inside, the air grew colder, not with frost, but absence. It was like light itself had been scraped from the stone.
Inside, silence pulsed like a second heartbeat.
He passed murals half-erased by time—paintings of flames held by weeping children, of stars drawn down by bleeding hands. The images whispered, but not in voices.
They whispered in feelings.
Regret. Grief. Dread. Yearning.
Elias found the inner sanctum by instinct. The path wasn't marked by signs but by voids—places where memory recoiled. He followed those absences until he reached a circular chamber lit by a single shaft of blue daylight.
There, in the center, floated a crystal. Faintly glowing. Perfectly still.
The Hollow Light.
He felt it pull on him, not physically—but soul-deep.
He approached.
The moment his hand touched the light, time broke.
He stood now in the same chamber, but younger. Cleaner. Full of life. The temple was whole. Around him, robed figures knelt in a circle, chanting in a tongue he somehow knew. They were not summoning the flame.
They were splitting it.
The vision swirled—more images rushed past:
The Hollow Light being hidden away, deemed "too dangerous to burn."
The Watchers arguing about whether to keep it sealed or destroy it.
One among them—masked—breaking the pact and fleeing with a fragment.
A name echoed.
Elaren.
The first betrayer.
The first to twist the flame for selfish purpose.
The vision faded, and Elias collapsed.
The Hollow Light hovered above him, now vibrating with urgency.
He understood.
This was no relic. This was the origin of imbalance. The unburned truth of the flame. Not light to guide, but light to tempt. To unmake.
And it had been calling out ever since the first site fell.
It was the beacon through which the Broken Flame reached the world.
He had a choice:
Destroy it, and risk unraveling the flame's original balance.
Absorb it, and carry the weight of all unfulfilled flames—knowing it might break him.
He remembered Amira's voice.
Taru's solemn promise.
The faces of those he'd failed.
He reached out—
And drew the Hollow Light into his core.
The scream was silent but infinite.
Visions flooded him—of every forgotten guardian, every silent revenant, every shadowed vow.
But Elias held.
And when he stood again, his flame burned not red, nor gold, but blue-white.
The color of memory unshaped.
Of sacrifice remembered.
Behind him, the walls cracked. The temple began to collapse. But he walked calmly from its ruin, smoke rising from his shoulders.
A blossom of hollow light followed him.
And from the shadows above, the masked figure watched.
Not Elaren.
Someone worse.
Someone alive.