The mountain did not sleep.
Its stone heart beat louder now, awakened by broken seals and rekindled memory. Veins of fire and shadow twisted beneath its surface, each pulse carrying echoes.....voices that did not die but waited to be heard.
Aryan pressed a hand against the wall of the narrowing corridor. The stone was warm. Too warm.
"Elanora…" he whispered, his breath catching.
He wasn't sure if he'd spoken her name aloud or if it had simply broken free from his thoughts. Since the seal shattered, something inside him had shifted. He could feel her now...like a flicker in his chest, like a thread stretched across distance and fire.
Somewhere, she was alive.
Somewhere, she burned.
And so did he.
Elanora leaned against a pillar of cooled obsidian, her legs trembling beneath her. The child of fire had vanished into light. Her vow to stay...to remember...had not extinguished the flame. It had made her part of it.
Her pendant now blazed steadily, brighter than before, pulsing in rhythm with her heart.
And something else pulsed within it.
A second rhythm.
She closed her eyes.
"Aryan…?"
No answer came. Not in words. But she felt it........a sharp inhale not her own, a weight in the chest that didn't belong to her.
They were still apart. Yet, for the first time since entering the mountain, she no longer felt alone.
Aryan stood before a mirrored wall.
It reflected nothing.
Only darkness.
"Show me," he muttered. "If this place is meant to break me, then show me what I must face."
The mirror rippled.
A spark appeared.
Small. Blue. Burning.
It hovered before him like a falling star, then split into two. One flame danced ahead. The other....raced through the air and plunged straight into his chest.
He gasped.
And saw her.
Elanora. Kneeling. Tears glowing gold as she touched the brow of a child wrapped in fire.
The vision lasted only a second...but it cracked something open.
He stumbled back, clutching his chest. "She saw me. She saw....."
But the moment was gone.
And the corridor behind him was no longer there.
Elanora turned sharply.
The tunnel had shifted again....this time to a narrow bridge suspended over a chasm of glowing coals. The heat was unbearable, but she moved forward anyway, her skin blistering with every step.
Halfway across, the air changed.
Cool.
Still.
Then...
A voice.
Faint, frayed, like a memory on the verge of disappearing.
"Elanora…"
She stopped.
"Aryan?" she cried, spinning. "Where are you? Can you hear me?"
No answer. Just a pulse of warmth in her pendant.
But that was enough.
She clutched it and pressed on.
Aryan's surroundings had become a field of statues. Each bore his face.
Some wept. Others screamed. Some stared blankly with hollow eyes. All were cracked. All were broken.
He walked among them slowly, as if in mourning.
Then he paused before one that looked nothing like the others.
It was Elanora.
But not as she was now.
Her hair was longer, braided in the old style. Her armor bore the crest of a forgotten realm. Her eyes were closed......tears etched silver trails down her cheeks.
He reached out.
The statue exhaled.
"I waited… and waited…"
Aryan dropped his hand.
"No," he said, voice raw. "I won't leave you again."
The statue began to crumble.
And from the dust, a voice.....hers again, stronger now, inside him.
"Don't forget who you are, Aryan."
He turned.
And the world behind him collapsed into black.
Elanora collapsed to her knees as the bridge gave out. She clung to the ledge, dangling above molten fire. Her strength was waning. But the pendant pulsed once......violently.
"Hold on," she gasped. "Aryan I'm still here. Please… be there too."
From the fire below, something rose.
Not flame.
Not shadow.
But memory.
The child again laughing, reaching then becoming a girl, older, still aflame, still watching.
"Why do you fight?" the girl asked.
"Because he's still out there."
"Even if he forgets?"
"I'll remember enough for both of us."
The girl smiled faintly. "Then rise."
And a surge of wind lifted her from the fire's grip, setting her gently on the far ledge.
Aryan awoke on a staircase of shadow, stretching endlessly downward. Above, stars pulsed within stone. Below, nothingness.
He stood.
His blade was gone.
His pendant dim.
But her voice lingered still.
"Don't forget who you are."
And so he descended.
Each step brought flickers of light fragments of dreams not his, of a life once lived and lost. He saw Elanora dancing with flame, saw himself standing at her side, saw the Collector always watching.
Then, the staircase ended at a pool of silver.
Its surface stilled.
Aryan knelt and peered into it.
Not his reflection.
Elanora's.
She stared back.
Eyes open.
Tears falling.
But smiling.
And though no sound passed between them, he knew exactly what she was saying.
"I still remember you."
Elanora rested against a wall of obsidian, the tunnel behind her sealed. The girl of flame had vanished again, but the weight of sorrow had lifted slightly.
She touched the third pendant the one that formed in the fire and placed it beside the others on her necklace.
And they sang.
Faintly, a trio of tones. Three anchors. Three oaths.
And now only one seal remained.
She closed her eyes and whispered, "We're not alone anymore."
And far beneath the mountain, in the shadow's coldest heart, Aryan whispered the same words.....