The underground air thickened with dust and dread. Each step Kael took echoed like a whisper through time, brushing past the ancient bones of kings long forgotten. The deeper they moved beneath the shattered ruins of Eryndor, the louder the silence grew, until even the sound of Lira's breath seemed too loud for the dead.
Before them stood a stone arch covered in blackened roots-thorned, twitching, almost alive.
"This is it," Lira whispered. "The Seal of Thorns."
Carved into the stone was a phrase, half-faded but still legible under Kael's torchlight: To remember is to bleed. To forget is to die.
Without waiting, Kael reached for the roots. The moment his fingers brushed them, they struck like vipers lashing into his skin, coiling around his wrist. Fire spread through his veins.
He screamed.
The world blurred. Then vanished.
He was… a boy again.
The smell of burnt bread.
His mother's laugh.
The soft warmth of her hand tugging him toward a crowded festival square, stars above, fireflies around.
Kael's chest clenched. He knew this memory. But something was wrong.
Everyone was watching him. Not with kindness. With pity.
A man stepped forward a soldier with Kael's eyes but not his gentleness. The man knelt before him, placing a steel crown at Kael's feet.
"You were never supposed to exist," the man said softly. "But you will carry what I could not."
Suddenly, the memory burned away. Smoke. Screams. His mother torn from his grasp. A curse whispered in the dark.
"The Crown was never lost… it was hidden."
Kael jolted awake.
Lira was at his side, blade drawn. The roots had slithered away. The archway now glowed faintly with a red pulse like a heartbeat.
"You were gone," Lira said. Her voice was tight. "Your eyes… they turned gold."
Kael didn't speak.
Behind the now-open seal, a low groan echoed.
Then… footsteps.
From the shadows stepped a figure cloaked in tattered silk, bones visible beneath her translucent skin. Jewels glimmered in her skull.
She smiled if such a thing could be called a smile.
"Kael," she whispered, voice like broken glass and wind. "You've finally come home."