To strike the Cradle, they first needed a key—an Architect's relic known as the Prism Gear, locked away in the Prison of Echoes.
The prison was a nightmare of sound: a hollow cylinder descending deep into the earth, every cell a chamber designed to amplify the screams of its inmates until they echoed forever. Most who entered went mad within days.
The warden, a gaunt man with ears sealed by molten wax, guided them down. "You seek the Gear?" His smile was thin, mocking. "It rests where no voice dares linger—Cell Zero, the heart of silence."
Through corridors lined with mad-eyed prisoners, they descended. Whispers followed them—fragments of old confessions, regrets, bargains made with shadows.
At last they reached Cell Zero. Inside lay a pedestal of black iron, upon which the Prism Gear gleamed like frozen starlight.
As Evangeline reached for it, a voice filled the chamber. Not the warden's. Not any prisoner's.
"Clever little mice. You run deeper into my walls, thinking you are free. But I am already here. I am every echo you hear. Every doubt you taste."
The Gear trembled, pulsing with the Phantom's rhythm. Evangeline's hand hovered, torn between seizing it or recoiling.
Elric's voice cut through the whispers. "Take it. Even gods fear when men steal their tools."
With a cry, she grabbed it. The chamber screamed, walls vibrating, echoes breaking into a thousand shards of sound. They ran as the prison collapsed behind them, screams of the damned mixing with the Phantom's laughter.