They reached the steps of the Seventh Pact Temple just as the last sunbeam vanished behind the horizon. The world shifted — a strange silence blanketed everything, deeper than death, heavier than time.
Ren Zian stood at the threshold. His hand, still clasping Maelin's ring, trembled with something new: fear. Not for himself, but for the truth that waited beyond.
Nyelle brushed against him, her silver hair catching starlight. "This temple was said to burn even the gods who entered it. And you... you're going in willingly."
"Not willingly," Ren whispered. "Necessarily."
The doors opened without a sound. Inside, the walls glowed with etched memories—scenes from lives not their own, flickering like ghosts made of fire. Lyra gasped as one showed her, kneeling in chains before a god she had never met.
Arin's face hardened. "These are... alternate lives?"
Ren stepped forward. "They're prices. Echoes of what might've been. The temple tests us by reminding us who we were never allowed to be."
Deeper in, the corridor split. A voice echoed across the marble.
"Only one may walk the path of the Pact."
Without waiting, Ren stepped forward. "It's mine."
They didn't stop him.
The path darkened, narrowing until it resembled a wound in the world. Torches flared as he walked — and with each step, his memories unraveled.
He saw his mother dying in his arms, whispering his true name. He saw Lyra betraying him in another life. He saw Arin weeping over his corpse.
And then—he saw a vision of himself, holding a child. His child.
Ren fell to one knee. The vision was warm, tender. The child looked up at him with Maelin's eyes.
"It's not real," he breathed, shaking. "It's not real... yet."
A woman appeared before him, cloaked in radiant fire. Her hair was pure flame, her eyes galaxies.
"You would burn for the truth?" she asked.
Ren nodded. "If it means I remember who I am."
She reached into his chest.
Pain unlike anything he had ever known wracked him. It wasn't flesh that burned — it was his soul. Every lie he had ever told, every moment of weakness, seared away until only truth remained.
She withdrew her hand, and with it came a flickering shard of divine flame.
"Your Seventh Pact," she said. "And its cost."
"What is it?"
"You will never be allowed to forget again."
Ren collapsed outside the temple as the doors closed behind him. His team rushed forward, but he held up a hand.
"I remember everything," he whispered. "Every past life. Every name. Every death."
Lyra knelt beside him, eyes wide with worry. "Then who are you now?"
He looked at her, eyes shining with divine fire.
"I am Ren Zian. The man who remembers every time he failed. And this time... I won't."