They left the chamber in silence.
No one spoke as they ascended the spiral corridor of the Iron Spire, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the walls, as though the structure itself refused to acknowledge what they had just witnessed. The First Flameborn—still chained to a power he had never consented to carry—didn't move again.
But his heartbeat echoed in Reven's.
He could feel it: a dull, rhythmic weight at the back of his mind, not intrusive but constant. A throb that wasn't pain, but memory. Each beat carried fragments: glints of firelight, a scream without voice, the hollow cold of isolation beneath layers of ancient code.
Kaela glanced back at him, her expression taut. "How much did it take from you?"
Reven didn't answer right away.
"It didn't take," he said quietly. "It gave."
Kaelex, walking a few steps ahead, stopped at the mouth of the corridor and turned.
"No," she said. "That was not a gift."
He met her gaze.
"I know."
They made camp beneath the shadow of the Spire, sheltered beneath a jagged outcrop of stone that still hummed faintly from whatever energy the tower had once housed. Lirien stood watch from a high ledge, eyes turned toward the clouds—watching for movement, or worse, stillness.
Kaelex remained apart, tending to her equipment in silence, though her eyes lingered often on Reven.
He sat with Kaela, the fire between them low, flickering.
"How many more Cores are there?" she asked.
"Four," Reven replied.
Kaela didn't flinch. "And how many more versions of you are waiting at the end of them?"
Reven exhaled. "I don't know. But they're not versions of me. I'm… what's left."
She stared into the fire. "And what if you reach the last one, and the system decides you're not the answer? What if this was all just a search algorithm for something it still hasn't found?"
He looked at her, eyes sharper now.
"Then I'll stop being the solution," he said. "And become the interruption."
Kaela's lips almost curved.
Almost.
"You've changed."
Reven nodded. "So have you."
She tossed a stick into the fire and stood.
"But only one of us still bleeds like a human."
Then she was gone, swallowed by the dark.
He dreamt of the First Flameborn.
Not of his face, or the Core embedded in his chest, but of what remained inside him: not rage, not vengeance, but grief—layered and old, fossilized into something else. Something heavier than sorrow. The grief of being remembered incorrectly.
Reven stood in the dreamspace, a corridor of white light folding in on itself, with doors that opened and closed to whispers in forgotten tongues.
The First stood at the far end. He did not speak but Reven understood.
They had all been built for containment and Reven was the one mistake that slipped the lock.
He woke before dawn, the shard on his chest humming like a second heartbeat. The Flamecore spun slowly in the air above his hand.
Lirien approached from the high ridge. "Signal," she said.
"Where?"
"South. Old ruins near the Rift-line. The Core is active. And it's not dormant."
Kaelex joined them. Her face was pale.
"That Core wasn't built like the others," she said.
Reven looked at her. "Then what was it?"
Kaelex stared toward the horizon.
"A failsafe."
They departed before the sun crested the edge of the scarlands. The Spire behind them was smaller now, less imposing, but no less heavy in their minds.
As they rode, Reven felt the signal growing stronger. Not a pulse like before, but a pull. As if the Core ahead wasn't simply waiting—it was calling. Not to him alone, but to all who carried memory. As if the world itself had begun whispering in its sleep, and soon… it would wake.
He looked to Kaela, to Lirien and finally to Kaelex. Each of them was watching the road ahead but only Reven knew what he was walking toward.
Not a battle. Not a system. Not even truth. But a reckoning. And it had his name already written in fire.