The forge wasn't made of stone.
It was made of bone.
Not literal skeletons, no—but something older, something sacred. The kind of structure that felt alive, not just built. Pillars shaped like twisted spines rose from the ground, veins of emberlight running through them like blood. It didn't look like it had been constructed. It looked like it had grown.
And it was humming.
Deep. Rhythmic. Like a lullaby no one had sung in centuries but that their bones still recognized.
Kai took one step forward and the ground shivered beneath his foot.
"She's been here," he whispered.
"Anelle?" Elio asked.
Kai shook his head slowly. "Not just her."
Serai stepped closer, her eyes wide, drinking in every glowing crack, every flicker of runes hidden beneath the ash. "I think… this is where they made us."
Kai turned to her. "What do you mean?"
She knelt, tracing a glowing circle carved into the floor. "This isn't a place for forging weapons."
"It's for forging souls."
A gust of wind blew through the broken trees, carrying a sound that wasn't quite music but wasn't silence either. It whispered their names, one after the other, like a countdown.
Elio backed up. "We shouldn't be here. Not yet. It's awake, and we don't even know what it wants."
Kai was staring at a mural etched on the far wall—faded, burnt, half-erased.
It showed three figures.
One holding fire. One holding time. One holding a mirror.
All facing a fourth figure cloaked in shadows.
Beneath them, the same phrase repeated in three languages:"The ones who forget will be the first to burn."
Serai rose to her feet, hands clenched.
"So what now?" she asked.
Kai turned back toward the mural, jaw clenched.
"Now we remember."
The forge began to pulse—slow at first, like a sleeping heart re-learning its own beat. The runes along the walls brightened with each throb, casting shadows that twisted and bled into strange shapes. A memory started to rise—not theirs, but buried in the very bones of the place.
Serai clutched her chest. "I feel it," she murmured. "Like something is waking inside me."
Elio was pale now. "This place is dangerous. Old magic always demands something."
"And we've already given too much," Serai said, eyes flicking toward Kai.
But Kai didn't move. He was staring at the floor—no, not just staring. He was reading it. The cracks weren't random. They spelled something out, curling into a language older than speech, a dialect of intent.
"Forged in grief. Bound by fire. Freed by memory."
Suddenly the floor beneath them shifted. A disk in the center began to lower like an ancient elevator sinking into the earth. Without speaking, they stepped onto it—drawn by something deeper than will, pulled by memory and fate alike.
The descent was silent, save for the forge's heartbeat. Down and down and down until the air smelled like forgotten spells and ash-soaked secrets.
And then—it opened.
A chamber. Circular. Wide.
And in the center?
A sarcophagus. Black stone. Veined with silver.
Serai's breath caught. "That's…"
"Her," Kai said.
The runes on the stone coffin pulsed to life.
Not just a grave.
A prison.
The name inscribed glowed with unearthly fire.
Anelle, the Dreamer-Forged.
Elio stumbled back. "We didn't just forget her…"
Serai whispered it like a curse. "We sealed her."
And now, the seal was cracking.
The air turned viscous. It clung to their skin like oil and old grief, humming with pressure and a sorrow too ancient to name.
The sarcophagus began to tremble.
Crack.
A hairline fissure split across the lid like lightning over stone.
Crack.
Another.
Elio stepped back, hand instinctively reaching for a spell. "We should not be here."
"No," Kai said, staring dead-on. "We have to be. This was always the destination."
Serai's eyes shone like tempered gold. "She's waking up. Not because we called her—but because the world is demanding her return."
And maybe the world was right to.
Because it was broken in places no mortal could fix.
And Anelle—she wasn't mortal anymore.
The runes around the chamber sparked. A wind rose from nowhere, howling like a thousand voices trying to remember their own names.
Then—
Boom.
The sarcophagus burst open.
But there was no body inside.
Just smoke.
Thick. Golden. Laced with tears.
It poured upward, and from it, a shape took form—limbs made of regret and firelight, eyes stitched from every soul that had ever dreamed of peace but woke up screaming.
Her voice coiled through the chamber.
"You came back."
Kai flinched. "Not to free you. To face you."
Anelle hovered above the tomb, her hair floating like storm clouds in slow motion.
"Then kneel," she said. "And beg for the dreams you buried me in."
Elio didn't move.
Serai didn't kneel.
But Kai?
He dropped to one knee.
Not out of weakness.
But because he understood.
"You weren't the villain," he whispered. "You were the dream. We corrupted you."
Anelle smiled, cracked and tragic. "And still, you made me the cage."
She looked around—at the chamber, the tomb, the fading runes.
"You think breaking the forge will end this? No. It will begin everything again."
The light in her chest flickered. Her fingers twisted. The air warped.
And then she did something none of them expected.
She cried.
A single tear fell, slow and burning.
Where it landed, the floor bloomed open like molten petals.
Through the gap, they saw it—a city suspended in time, buried below Ilyor. A forgotten version of their town, untouched by ruin.
It was her original dream.
Still alive.
Still beating.
Still waiting.
Serai whispered, "She didn't want revenge…"
"She wanted remembrance," Kai finished.
And the truth hit them all at once:
To heal the future, they had to walk into the past.
Anelle's gaze locked onto them.
And the forge gave one last groan—
—as the chamber collapsed into light.