The figure's gaze pierced Cyrus like a blade. Her golden-orange eyes burned with something greater than fire — an awareness older than stars, deeper than sorrow. When she spoke, her voice was not sound but resonance, vibrating through marrow and thought alike.
"You are hollow, yet not broken. You carry grief, yet you have not cast it aside. Tell me, wanderer — why do you still walk?"
Cyrus's lips trembled. For the first time in years, he struggled to form words. "Because…" His throat tightened. "…if I stop, then the ones I lost will fade completely."
The hall stirred, the vaults of light glowing faintly brighter. The figure tilted her head, as though tasting his reply. "Then you walk not for yourself, but for memory."
Chains of light shifted around her arms, clinking softly. From within them, she drew forth a fragment — a shard that pulsed with warmth so fierce it nearly blinded him.
"This is Sentiment. Not flesh, not stone, not blood — but the essence of meaning itself. Once, mortals knew its language. Once, they carved empires upon its truths. But now, it lies forgotten, buried in shadow."
She extended the shard toward him. Cyrus hesitated, his fingers trembling as he reached. The moment his skin brushed its surface, the floodgates of his soul tore open.
He saw her face. The woman he had loved, the one lost to time's cruelty. For an instant she was alive before him, smiling through tears. His chest ached as though his heart had been torn free, yet it also surged with a strength he had thought forever dead.
The figure's voice thundered once more. "You have been chosen. Bear the First Sentiment — Sorrow. Wield it not as a chain, but as a blade. For the age of silence wanes, and the war of meaning dawns."
Cyrus collapsed to his knees, clutching the shard now fused to his hand, its light searing yet steady.
For the first time in an eternity, his heart beat with purpose.
The wanderer was no longer empty.
He had been given a weapon.