The chamber pulsed with a rhythm older than breath.
As Nima stepped through the threshold, the temperature dropped—not in coldness, but in sound. Her footsteps were muffled. Even her heartbeat seemed reluctant to echo.
The room was round, its walls inscribed with whorls of glowing script—like ink suspended in light, always shifting but never smudging. At its center stood a basin carved from obsidian, cradling a liquid that shimmered like starlight caught in oil.
Above it hovered a fractured lantern—its glass cracked in a perfect ring, floating mid-air, rotating slowly. The shard Nima carried grew warm against her chest.
Without being told, she knew:
The lantern was calling it home.
She stepped forward, unwrapped the shard, and placed it within the hovering ring. The moment it settled—
The air shivered.
A low hum deepened.
The walls flared.
And then—the room wept light.
Visions burst open around her.
A young Amira—kneeling before a council of veiled figures.
Her voice fierce. "If we must guide the living and the dead, then let us be honest: some of the dead do not wish to return."
A man's voice. Harsh. Cold. "You speak heresy."
Amira again. "I speak mercy. What of the drowned, the cursed, the ones exiled in flame? What of the ones we forgot to name?"
Then—another scene.
The birth of the Lantern Pact. A secret gathering. Blood in bowls. Names spoken backward to bind them to silence.
And Amira... placing a shard into a child's cradle—a child with dark curls and eyes like stormlit stone.
Nima gasped.
That was her.
The light faded. The basin dimmed.
Morya stood just behind her, though she hadn't entered before.
"Now you know," the old woman said. "Your mother did not just defy the council. She broke the world's balance to spare you from the burden she carried. She gave you a name no one could erase."
Nima turned, voice trembling.
"So what am I? A keeper of memory? A curse?"
Morya shook her head.
"You are the bridge. The ember.
The one born with a name and a silence.
And now, the world needs both."
At that moment, the cracked lantern began to glow—not violet, not crimson.
But gold.
A color unseen since before the burning.
And far away, something in the sea stirred.