Kael moved quickly.
Every step toward the center of the Vault made the ground feel less like earth and more like breath.
The glyph circle parted as he approached—stone shifting with a sound like wet bone.
Vess tried to follow.
"No," Kael said. "Stay up top. If I'm not out in fifteen, burn the wardstones. Collapse the passage."
"You think that'll stop it?"
"No," he muttered. "But maybe it'll slow me down if I don't come back right."
He stepped into the Vault.
The air was thick. Almost fluid. Veil-glow clung to Kael's skin like oil.
In the center of the chamber, the echo was rising.
Still half-formed. Skin like ash. Its eyes opened—and matched Kael's exactly.
It whispered:
"Let me finish."
Kael unsheathed Veyrath.
"Not in this world."
The echo moved like Kael.
Faster, in some ways. No breath. No hesitation.
Blades clashed—crimson lightning lashing the walls. Veil fire sparked with every strike.
Kael wasn't fighting just a copy.
He was fighting every doubt in him, weaponized.
It didn't speak again.
It didn't need to.
Kael's own face, in pain, in fury, in hunger, said enough.
Kael feinted low—then drove Veyrath through the echo's chest.
Black ichor burst, but the figure only smiled.
And whispered, one final time:
"You're not the first."
Then it collapsed into dust.
And the glyphs began to scream.
Kael turned to run—knowing now that this Vault hadn't been trying to trap him.
It had been testing him.
And somewhere deeper, something else had just woken up.
The trees thinned.
Then changed.
What had once been pine and ash now grew in impossible patterns—branches twisting upward, then inward, as if trying to turn inside themselves.
Darric grimaced. "We're close."
Lyra scanned the landscape. "Feels wrong."
"Feels like walking through a dream someone buried."
As they moved deeper, the wind changed.
It carried whispers again.
But not echoes this time.
Names.
Darric froze. "You hear that?"
Lyra stopped. Her blood ran cold.
She heard her father's voice—long dead—calling her childhood name.
"That's a Veil snare," she said tightly. "Memory bleed. Don't engage it."
Darric looked pale. "It knew."
"It always knows. Keep walking."
They reached a rise. Below—Kael's trail. Still fresh.
But around it, the land shimmered with faint crimson lines—like veins.
Then a pulse rippled through the ground.
The Vault had activated.
Lyra gripped her blade.
"We're late."
Darric: "You think he's already inside?"
"Or something got out."
They moved faster. Eyes forward. Weapons drawn.
The Veil wasn't just leaking anymore.
It was reaching.
The Vault rim shimmered in the late light—veins of crimson glyph-fire flickering just below the soil.
Darric knelt, tracing Kael's bootprints.
"He went in alone."
"He knew he had to," Lyra said. "The glyphs were close to opening. If he waited…"
She trailed off.
"You feel that?"
The ground pulsed. Once. Twice.
And with each throb, the trees shifted. Not physically—but in placement.
A moment ago they had walked past three. Now five.
"Veil's distorting space," Darric muttered. "We're being looped."
Lyra nodded. "It's defense. Not for the Vault. For what left it."
She stepped forward and slid her dagger into the soil, anchoring a glyph-bead near Kael's last known position.
"If he doesn't respond in two minutes, we follow him in."
As she stood, a sound like breathing echoed behind them.
Darric turned fast—arrow nocked.
Nothing.
But in the soil where Kael's bootprint ended…
A new one had appeared.
Same size. Same weight.
But pointed the wrong way.
As if someone wearing Kael's boots had emerged.
The glyphs around the vault flared once—then went dead.
The entrance, sealed minutes ago, now stood open.
Dark. Quiet.
And cold enough to freeze breath.
Lyra stared into it.
"He didn't seal it behind him," she said.
Darric: "Then he's still inside."
Lyra's hand tightened around her blade.
"Let's pray what came out… isn't."
Together, they stepped into the dark.
The vault walls were smooth stone, but not carved.
Grown.
Glyph-light pulsed faintly beneath the surface—reddish veins running like blood under pale skin.
Darric pressed a cloth over his mouth. "Air's thick. Feels… too full."
Lyra nodded, eyes sharp.
"Veil compression. The Vault's trying to mold us."
She tapped the side of her helm. "Don't speak unless necessary. No names. Not even his."
Darric grunted. "You think saying it will summon him?"
"I think down here, everything listens."
They turned into a wide corridor lined with black-glass panels.
Reflections shimmered strangely—delayed, blurred.
Lyra paused. Her reflection showed her face unscarred. Armor pristine. Eyes gold, not violet.
She stared. It smiled back.
Darric stepped beside her—then froze.
"Lyra. The walls… they're bleeding."
Thin rivulets of black ichor were leaking from the glass seams.
Inside each mirror… figures twitched.
Trapped.
Watching.
Lyra drew her blade. "Keep walking."
At the corridor's end, they found it:
A long gash scorched into the floor—lightning-burned.
Veyrath's mark.
Kael had passed here.
Fought here.
But there was no body.
Just a scorch trail and a faint, lingering whisper:
"You're not the first…"
Darric: "Who said that?"
Lyra turned. "That wasn't spoken. That was remembered."
She faced the final chamber door.
Still cracked open.
"Get ready."
Kael stirred.
Stone. Cold. The scent of dust and blood.
He was on his knees, somewhere below where the echo fell.
This was deeper.
Older.
The walls weren't built—they were grown from thought.
Every surface pulsed with Veil-blood and memory.
And they whispered.
"Kaelen Rivenhart…"
The voice came from the walls.
Or from inside him.
"Son of ruin. Heir of flame. Why do you still wear that name?"
Kael stood slowly, blade drawn.
His coat was scorched, but his grip on Veyrath remained unshaken.
"I've given up a dozen names," he said aloud.
"That one's the only one I earned."
At the chamber's center stood a column of fused bone and steel, bodies wrapped in coils of glyph-twine, mouths open in silent scream.
They weren't corpses.
They were memories.
Each one a warrior who had once entered the Vault.
Each one trapped, digested, and rewritten.
At the very top of the column—
—an empty socket shaped perfectly for Kael's face.
He snarled. "Not today."
Lightning surged up his spine.
Red light poured from his eyes. His aura flared like a rising storm.
The Vault responded—walls convulsing, glyphs shattering.
Kael drove Veyrath into the chamber's heart.
The false roots screamed.
The memory column cracked, split, then exploded into ash and dust.
And then—
The floor opened.
And Kael fell through it—
Upward.
He landed hard, breath sharp—right in the first chamber, near the sealed mirror hall.
As dust cleared, two figures appeared ahead.
Weapons drawn.
Lyra.
Darric.
Their eyes widened—uncertain if they were seeing him…
or another echo.
Kael rose slowly.
"Glad you're late," he said, voice hoarse.
"You missed the worst part."
Lyra stared a moment longer—then finally lowered her blade.
"Are you still you?"
Kael smirked. "Close enough."
The stone beneath Kael's boots began to shift.
Not crumble—reform. The walls twisted like veins under skin, reshaping into unfamiliar passages.
"Move," Kael barked. "It's folding in."
Lyra nodded. "I anchored a glyph trail up top. If it's still intact—"
"We follow it," Darric finished.
The Vault groaned. A sound like a massive, dying breath.
Then the floor behind them disappeared.
As they ran, shadows licked at their heels—shapes that weren't real, but felt true.
Darric saw his brother's death.
Lyra saw herself standing over Kael's corpse.
Kael saw a crown in his hand, soaked in blood not his.
He grit his teeth, surged forward.
"Ignore it. It's bluffing."
But a whisper trailed them:
"The echo was only the beginning…"
Lyra spotted the glyph bead glowing faintly in the stone. Her fingers traced it, and the Veil shimmered back, briefly revealing a true passage.
"Here!"
They dove through—and behind them, the Vault's mouth began to close.
A scream echoed through the stone—not pain.
Rage.
They burst through the surface, light-blind for a moment.
Fresh air hit like fire. The glyph ring around the Vault snapped shut—glyphs sparking, then dead.
Silence fell.
The Vault was sealed again.
But not quiet.
Kael dropped to a knee, catching his breath.
Lyra crouched beside him, studying his face.
"Is it over?"
Kael didn't answer right away.
He turned his hand over. A faint black glyph pulsed beneath his skin—barely visible. A remnant of the echo. A mark.
"Not even close."