They flew above the Himalayas in silence.
The sky was a sharp, aching blue, the kind that made your eyes tear from sheer altitude. Below them, ancient mountains cut the clouds like knives. At 30,000 feet, the air was razor-thin, and even in the stealth-modified skycruiser Felix piloted, the cold crept in like doubt.
The Dreaming Spire didn't exist on any map.
Not officially.
The few who had seen it either vanished or forgot. Not because they were silenced—but because the Spire demanded memory as a toll. It didn't erase the past. It traded it.
Felix volunteered to go.
Not because he was the strongest.
But because his memory was already a mosaic.
They landed on a ledge the size of a postage stamp, barely wide enough for the cruiser. Felix stepped out alone, his shard embedded in the clasp of his coat, beating like a second heart.
The Spire rose above him—black stone that shimmered with internal light, twisting into the sky, impossible in structure and intent. Each level looked different—Gothic at the base, Mesopotamian a floor up, then Incan, Egyptian, modern, post-modern, something from a dream. Or a nightmare.
It was built from human memory.
As Felix approached, the wind spoke.
"Do you remember who you are?"
He didn't answer.
He climbed.
The first level tested nostalgia.
He walked through a Parisian café at dusk, music playing from a violinist on the corner. He smelled espresso, cigarette smoke, and perfume. Across from him sat his first love—Mira. She looked exactly as she had the day she left.
"You could stay here," she said. "Let go. Forget everything else."
He kissed her cheek, stepped past her, and kept walking.
The second level tested shame.
He stood in front of a gallery, a crowd of critics surrounding a painting he once called his masterpiece.
Except it was unfinished. A mess. A fraud.
"You never finished anything," one of them sneered. "You always ran."
Felix stared at the painting. Then smiled.
"Maybe. But I kept starting."
The walls melted.
The third level tested silence.
There were no sounds here. No voices. Just rooms filled with people he loved—his parents, his siblings, long-lost friends—all frozen in time. They moved their mouths, but he heard nothing.
He tried to scream. Nothing.
He tried to run. The walls bent.
He sat.
And he listened.
The silence broke. It shattered like glass.
"You hear," the Spire whispered. "You're worthy."
He reached the top.
The final room wasn't a room at all.
It was a canvas. Empty. Floating in starlight.
"Your truth," the voice said. "Paint it."
He lifted his hands. They glowed.
He painted not what he saw, but what he believed: the face of Isaiah, fierce and afraid. The hands of Aiden, bloodied but open. Sofia's eyes, resolute. Harrow's mind, relentless.
He painted the Whisperers. Their ships. The Earth. The moment they'd return.
And over all of it, he painted a single light—small, defiant.
Hope.
The shard in his coat flared.
The Spire sang.
When he returned, he was covered in paint that wasn't paint, humming a song he hadn't heard since childhood.
"Four," he said simply. "There's only one left."
Isaiah looked toward the horizon.
"Then it's me."