On the far side, the air was cool and dry and smelled of stone never exposed to sunlight. It descended in a gentle spiral, the walls adorned with carvings so worn that they were nearly smooth. Every line was illuminated by the faintest light from the sigil still flickering on Cael's arm.
Elara's hand stayed against the wall. The top was warm and vibrating faintly beneath her touch. "It's alive," he whispered.
It's not just that everything built before the Divide was," Cael said. "Heaven learned to make stillness. "The world below never did."
The rampart-like walls on either side bulged out as they strolled until the tunnel opened into a chamber shaped like a ribcage. Columns rose through the black water, and at the center was an altar of glass. Within which a single feather hung in place, neither dropping nor buoyant.
Elara's breath caught. "That's—"
"Mine," he said quietly. "The first one I lost when they cast me out. I sealed it here, so that it couldn't be turned on me."
"Why?"
"Because a fallen's first feather is the name with which they are born. Any holder can they command them."
She looked at him. "So if Heaven finds this place—"
"They end me accordingly."
He came forward, palm on the glass. The feather twirled, a soft light outlining its shape. The chamber responded with a low hum, ancient wards awakening after a slumber of a thousand years.
"This vault is connected to others," he said. "When the Watchers were still able to walk the earth, we made them to hold that which should not be destroyed. Knowledge. Memories. Sometimes… things that never should have been brought into the light."
Elara crept up, eyes tracing the groove in the floor — circles within circles, runes in a tongue that morphed as she peered at it. "You remember all of it?"
"Enough to know I'm not supposed to."
He spun to her. "If we're lucky, the wards will keep Heaven blind to us for a while. But they'll feel the echo. Someone will come."
"Seraphine," she said.
"Maybe," he replied. "Or something worse."
Elara knelt by the water, watching ripples chase their reflections. "You said you could cut the tether. You'll do it here?"
"Yes. But I need the vault awake to do it."
He drew a second sigil, with care, as he did the first. One after another, the lines flashed, making a lattice of light between them in the hall. Electricity buzzed in the air, disturbing dust into somnolent spirals.
Cael looked back at her. "When this starts, the vault will show you inventory of what you've forgotten. Don't trust what you see; it will try to fill in the blanks."
"And you?"
"I'll try and hold the door shut while you remember."
Elara swallowed hard. "What if it opens?"
He looked her in the eye, peaceful, resigned. "Then we handle whatever comes out."
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The hum bent like vibration under Cael's skin, a buzzing low note beating like a second heartbeat that wasn't his. He'd lost sight of how breathing the vault could be, how it reacted not to speech but to force of will.
Light traced itself up the walls in lines of old prayers, old curses. The circles in the floor flared, and Elara gasped, stumbling back as water ripples away from where she stood.
Cael grabbed her wrist. "Stay in the first ring," he instructed, voice strained. "It's got a memory of the last person who opened it. That's me. Everything out there will try to 'learn' you instead.
"What's going to happen if I am?" "You're gonna start forgetting who you are before it finishes."
Her eyes grew wide but she nodded, breath shallow. He released, pain forcing himself to focus. The lattice of light that criss-crossed the room was morphing, evolving at a rate that dumbfounded him. The vault was dirty, and dirty always brought a cost.
He placed his hand palm-down on the sigil in the middle of the altar. The feather inside the shell pulsed, and the air became so cold it could burn.
"Cael . . ." Elara's voice was far away, and it bounced off the rock. He turned—and then, for a moment, she was not there—only fragments, flickering like candlelight: a girl dressed in white, her eyes full of stars; a battlefield beneath a blood-red sky; his own hands, stretching out and not catching her as she dropped.
The vault was already feeding from their connection.
"Focus on my voice he said. "Don't let it pull you under."
"I get it—" Her breath hitched. "You. You were—"
He didn't want her to finish. Memory was a chain, and if she remembered too much too fast, it would snap. He shut his eyes, drawing on whatever strength he had left,−trying to divert the vault's attention from her.
The walls crunched. Dust fell from the ceiling. The water turned black, rippling with faint glimpses of faces beneath the surface—other Watchers, long dead, or worse.
"You never shoulda come back," one of them whispered, his breath smoky.
"I never left," Cael whispered. The words were half prayer, half curse.
Light broke apart. The sigils spun faster. .. URL=http://ELARA.EXE/ (Ctrl + Click to download or read online) Elara screamed.
Cael turned towards her and saw the vault attempting to rewrite her—veins of gold coursing across her skin, threads of light gathering in her throat, her eyes ignited by something divine and strange.
He covered the ground in a heartbeat, taking her by the shoulders. "Elara! Look at me !"
"I remember," she breathed, voice trembling. "I remember falling. You tried to stop it."
"Then remember why," he said. Her eyes locked with his, and for a moment, everything paused—till the vault, the hum, even the shadows.
Then the feather within the altar burst into light.
A shockwave went through the chamber, when they were both thrown to the ground. When the dust cleared, the feather was gone, and the vault was quiet again.
A blast reverberated in the chamber, hurling them both to the ground. When the dust cleared the feather was gone, and the vault was once again silent.
Cael forced himself up, chest heaving. Elara lay next to him, a breathless pale figure, her eyes still faintly glowing with that impossible gold.
"You weren't supposed to see that," he hissed.
She blinked slowly, voice barely there. "I think I was there when you fell."
He turned to her. Cael wasn't sure whether he was the one shielding her – or the one being judged – for the first time in centuries.