The monolith grew as they approached, rising like a shard of forgotten heaven stabbed into the desert's heart. Its surface was etched in spiraling glyphs, some half-buried in sand, others pulsing faintly with an inner glow. No door. No entrance. Yet Jack could feel it watching.
"It's older than the Sundering," Nyssa said, brushing her fingers across the stone. "It's not just a prison. It's a wound."
Marek circled the base, wary. "If there's no door, how do we get in?"
"There is no 'in,'" Lola said hoarsely. She still looked pale. "Not in the way we think. This place was built before doors. Before space. It opens through you, not for you."
Jack approached the monolith. The closer he got, the heavier the air became—like diving underwater. The Blade of Echoes trembled on his back, whispering syllables he couldn't fully hear.
And then—
The ground shuddered.
Lines of light carved themselves into the sand, circling the base of the monolith in ancient patterns. The glyphs ignited—white, then gold, then pitch black—swallowed by their own glow.
Jack reached out.
The stone pulled.
A flash—
He stood somewhere else.
A mirror world of ash and shadow. No sky. No sand. Just a black plain stretching forever, with the monolith towering at its center—larger than mountains, taller than stars. And around it… statues.
Not carved.
Frozen.
People—beings—caught mid-motion. Some knelt in reverence. Others clawed at the air. All silenced.
All turned to obsidian.
"Where am I?" Jack whispered.
A voice answered—not one he'd heard before.
"You are within the Breathless Vault."
He turned.
A figure stood beside the base of the monolith. Human-shaped. But its body shimmered like fractured glass, and its eyes were hollow voids filled with constellations.
"You are the Echo," the figure said. "And this place remembers you."
Jack stepped back, hand on the Blade. "Are you the Threshold?"
"I am its memory," the being replied. "What was left behind when the First Flame sealed the Watcher."
"You mean me."
The being tilted its head. "You are not him. Not yet. But you are becoming. And the becoming is... unstable."
Images flared—Jack's visions, his voice echoing from the future, the First Flame's warning. He saw himself standing at the end of time, sword raised against a sky that bled.
He gritted his teeth. "Tell me what's happening to me."
"You were once the last hope. Now, you are the final key."
The statues around them began to tremble—cracks forming across their obsidian skin.
"What are they?" Jack asked.
"Remnants," said the being. "Echoes of others who reached the Vault. All who touched the song beneath and broke."
A crack split the sky above.
The monolith shook.
"You must leave," the being said. "You have awakened the Hollow Chorus. If they sing again—he will find you."
Jack's pulse quickened. "The Devourer?"
"No," the being said quietly. "The other. The first hunger. The one the Watcher feared."
A scream tore through the Vault—high and piercing, not from any mouth but from the stone itself.
Statues shattered.
Figures emerged from the dust—shapeless, faceless, bound in chains of breathless light. They advanced, reaching for Jack.
The being grabbed his shoulder.
"Remember this: You are not what you were. You are what you choose. And choice—true choice—is rarer than gods."
Then—
Jack was thrown backward, out of the Vault.
He landed hard in the sand. The others surrounded him instantly.
"What happened?" Nyssa asked.
"I saw…" Jack shook his head. "A vault of frozen time. A being made of stars. And a warning."
Kael steadied him. "What kind of warning?"
"There's something worse than the Devourer," Jack said. "Something even he feared. And it's coming."
The monolith behind them cracked down the center.
No explosion. No quake.
Just a single line.
A fracture.
And from within, a sound rose—impossibly deep, impossibly far away. Like something turning over in its sleep.
Jack stood slowly, eyes fixed on the line.
"The Threshold is weakening."
Lola nodded grimly. "Then we'd better move fast. If we don't seal it soon, there won't be a world left to protect."
But Jack wasn't listening.
Because in the wind, he heard a voice not spoken, but remembered.
"When it breaks, you will not find me. You will become me."
He looked down at his hand.
The skin shimmered briefly—like glass.
A glimpse.
A fracture.
And then it was gone.
But he knew what he'd seen.
He was breaking.
And whatever lay beyond the Threshold… it was already watching.