The world's heartbeat had changed.
Each tremor underfoot carried the echo of something colossal, like the earth itself remembered a rhythm older than its own bones. Every creature — man, beast, and spirit alike — felt it. The pulse of a god's heart, buried beneath the soil, starting to beat again.
Lyn stood at the edge of the ruined plain, the air thick with static mana. The light of the fallen Pantheon still flickered in the sky above like embers refusing to die. Umbra's form shimmered beside him — half solid, half shadow — as if even the beast struggled to remain whole in this altered world.
Rhea crouched beside a fractured rune on the ground. "The pulse is spreading faster than before. Whatever lies under us isn't waiting for permission."
"It's not just waking," Lyn replied, his voice low. "It's remembering."
Umbra's eyes narrowed, two molten crescents. —The Fourth Seal binds the Heart of Origin. When the gods forged the world, they buried the memory of creation itself there. To touch it is to rewrite history.
"Then we reach it first," Lyn said, the determination in his tone cutting through the heavy air. "Before the gods twist it again."
They began to move across the scorched field, their path illuminated by floating shards of crystalized mana. Each step closer made Lyn's mark burn brighter — until the light no longer came from the world, but from him.
The ground trembled.
A voice — faint and mournful — drifted through the air. "Who walks upon my pulse?"
Rhea froze. "L-Lyn… that voice— it's—"
"Older than time itself." Lyn's eyes glowed faintly gold. "The Fourth remembers us."
The landscape shifted. What had been barren plain now rippled into illusion — ancient forests rising from ashes, mountains reforming only to crumble again. The world was trying to remember itself, caught between creation and decay.
Umbra's wings spread wide, shielding Lyn and Rhea as waves of spectral beasts surged past them — memories of extinct creatures, echoes of the first tamers who ever bonded with the wild.
—Do not falter, Lyn. The Heart tests all who approach it. It will show you what the gods erased.
"Let it," Lyn muttered, stepping forward. "I want to see."
The air thickened, humming with divine resonance. The ruins around them rearranged into an impossible structure — a temple of bone and light, built atop the pulse itself. At its center stood a crystalline orb, large as a mountain's heart, glowing with shifting colors — red, white, shadow.
The Heart of Origin.
Rhea's breath caught. "It's… alive."
"It always was," Lyn whispered. "We just forgot how to listen."
Umbra growled softly. —Something approaches.
The light within the Heart flared. From it stepped a figure — tall, cloaked in a radiance too bright to be mortal, yet too scarred to be divine. Its voice carried the echo of a thousand forgotten prayers.
"Child of the Rebellion… bearer of Umbra's mark… why do you seek the Fourth Seal?"
Lyn raised his gaze. "Because your gods turned creation into a chain. I'm here to break it."
The figure tilted its head. "And what will you create in its place?"
"Freedom."
For a moment, silence stretched between them. Then, the being laughed — softly, sorrowfully. "Freedom is the one thing creation cannot sustain. But very well, Tamer of Shadows… claim your truth."
The Heart began to crack.
A shockwave tore across the plain, throwing Rhea back. Umbra roared, wings bursting into a storm of shadow and light, trying to contain the eruption. The figure stepped into the fracture — and shattered completely, its essence streaming into Lyn's chest.
The Fourth Seal broke.
The world screamed.
Every bond — human, beast, and spirit — pulsed in pain and revelation. Across continents, tamers fell to their knees as their crests glowed with symbols never seen before. The language of creation itself had returned.
Lyn's body convulsed, his eyes glowing brighter than the Heart. "I… see it… all of it…"
Rhea ran toward him through the collapsing light. "Lyn!"
He turned — his voice layered, almost divine. "The gods didn't create the bonds. We did."
Umbra's roar split the heavens, echoing his truth. —Then let the world remember who it belongs to!
The explosion that followed wasn't destruction — it was rebirth. The sky tore open, revealing an endless ocean of constellations shifting like living beasts. The pulse of the Fourth Seal became a song — wild, unending, free.
And Lyn, standing amidst the storm, whispered to no one and everyone:
"We are the origin."