They found it behind a collapsed corridor, sealed by stone and blood.
Lucian noticed it first—the strange humming beneath the surface, like a choir of voices too tired to rise but too ancient to forget.
He placed his palm to the wall.
Kyrell stepped beside him, pulse sharp in his throat. "Don't," he warned. "This isn't just memory anymore."
Lucian's fingers curled against the stone. "I'm not afraid of what you were."
"I am," Kyrell breathed. "Because I still am."
And then the wall opened.
---
Inside
It was a room of mirrors—but not the kind that show reflection. Each pane shimmered with fragments of what once was, what could have been, and what might still become.
Kyrell stood in the center, surrounded by visions:
Himself, as a boy, eyes glowing with inherited rage.
Lucian kneeling beside a broken body—his body—wreathed in black flame.
A circle of men, chanting in the ancient tongue, with a name on their lips that did not belong to any mortal language.
One mirror began to hum louder than the others.
Lucian reached for it. "Kyrell—what is this?"
But Kyrell was frozen.
His chest heaved.
Because he heard it now—the name.
The one that once made the sky bleed.
The one that had been stripped from him.
"Azerian."
He dropped to his knees.
"I remember," he whispered. "I remember who I was."
Lucian rushed to him, caught him before he collapsed fully. But Kyrell was trembling, not from fear… but from awakening.
"I wasn't just hunted," he murmured. "I was created to be destroyed."
Lucian looked up, eyes narrowing at the mirror. "By who?"
Kyrell's voice broke.
"…by the very ones who swore to protect me."
---
Aboveground…
Mara slammed her hand against the mirror in her chamber.
She'd been watching through Ray's spell, unseen, voiceless, as the truth unraveled beneath her.
She saw Lucian hold him. Whisper to him. Weep for him.
She clenched her fists.
"I gave you centuries," she hissed. "I gave you blood, loyalty… madness."
The mirror flickered, showing Lucian's face pressed to Kyrell's shoulder.
Mara turned away, gasping.
Behind her, Silas stood in silence.
"You still love him," he said.
Mara didn't turn.
"I still own him."
---
Back Below
Kyrell sat on the cold stone floor, Lucian holding his hands.
"I know who I was," Kyrell said, quieter now. "But I don't know who I'm becoming."
Lucian's voice was hoarse. "Then become it with me."
Kyrell lifted his head. For a moment, that old innocence flickered in his eyes—the boy in the forest, the one who trembled at Lucian's voice and kissed him like it might be the last thing he ever did.
"I want that," Kyrell said. "I want you. Even if it kills me."
Lucian leaned closer, forehead against his.
"Then let's die together," he whispered. "But not tonight."
And he kissed him—
Not desperate this time.
Not out of fear.
But with the tenderness of someone who had already lost him once… and refused to do it again.
---