The sky over Nemora was the color of ash, and the only light came from streaks of violet lightning twisting through the clouds like veins of divine wrath. Adam walked slowly among the charred ruins of the city of *Korolta*, leveled to the ground after the last battle with the *Winged Shadow*. Yet despite all this destruction, one spirit still stood in the midst of the wreckage.
"Zira."
She was standing on a cracked stone, her long hair whipping in the wind that carried nothing but ash, her face smeared with blood, but her gaze stronger than ever before.
Adam stepped toward her, but before he could speak, she raised her hand and said:
"Don't say anything… You've started to see it too, haven't you?"
He blinked, and slowly, behind Zira, a circle of light appeared, suspended in the air… No, not light. It was an eye. A third eye unfurling on her forehead, glowing with gold tinged in blue.
Her voice came deep, not her own:
"It's time, Adam. The truth is no longer hidden from me… from us."
Adam was struck with shock, but inside he felt no fear… only a strange sense of calm. This third eye was no threat — it was a promise of revelation.
"What is this eye?" Adam asked, his voice low and edged with unease.
Zira closed her two human eyes, while the third continued to glow.
"It's not just an eye. It's the Greater Memory. Your grandmother left me something I never knew I carried… until my body bled out in the last battle. Everyone who truly faces death in Nemora is opened to the *inner eye*… And I have already died — at least once."
Adam trembled.
"Are you… truly dead?"
Zira smiled, but her smile carried only mystery.
"My body died, but the knot that binds me to you — and to the pact — would not let me go. I returned… but I am not who I was. Now I can see the truth your grandmother tried to protect you from."
He stepped closer.
"What truth?"
Her third eye fixed on him, and he felt something press against his mind. Flickering visions: his grandmother standing within a circle of shadowed beings, bargaining with a colossal entity whose form was nothing but darkness… a newborn child wrapped in ash, handed to a stranger… statues with broken eyes buried beneath the earth…
Then the vision snapped.
"What was that?!" Adam shouted, clutching his head.
Zira lowered her hand and said:
"This is only the beginning. Whoever bears this sight must carry the burden of Nemora's shared memory. You are no longer alone, Adam. And you were never just a grandson."
He gasped loudly.
"I… I'm not her grandson?"
"It isn't that simple," Zira said, stepping closer. She touched his chest above his heart and added:
"The truth was placed inside you… but someone hid it away. The Third Eye will guide you to it — if you are strong enough."
Then she turned her gaze eastward.
"We must go to the *Mirror of Time*. There, the story will be rewritten."
Adam, as if the very ground was being pulled from beneath him, whispered:
"I need to know… who I truly am."
Zira looked at him with her third eye and said:
"You are the one who will either break the cycles — or forge them anew. You will be the *Maker of the End*… or just a shadow in a shattered record."
The chapter ended with Zira's glowing gaze, as if everything Adam had ever known about the world was unraveling.
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**Closing Quote:**
*"Sometimes, to know who we are… we must open the eye we never wished to see."*
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