Aryan pressed forward, the newly lit corridors humming with the weight of something ancient and watching. The walls had changed. Once gnarled with darkness, now they flickered with pulses of grey-blue light, like a heartbeat waiting to be echoed.
Every step deeper into the labyrinth revealed traces of what had been hidden: markings half-carved, sigils buried beneath obsidian scales, fragments of language older than the mountain itself. He could hear it now.....the murmurs of those long gone, their regrets, their revelations, and their rage. The seal had not broken yet, but it had awakened.
Aryan passed through a narrow arch where silence dropped like a blade. The air thickened. Ahead, the floor dropped into a spiral descent lined with mirrored stone. On each reflective surface, he saw not just himself but a thousand versions.....some whole, some broken, all haunted.
He clenched his fists. "Not again. Not this time."
A whisper curled from behind him.
"You said that last time, too."
He turned.
A girl stood there.
She looked no older than sixteen, barefoot and cloaked in mourning black. Her eyes were the color of twilight.....not quite night, not quite memory. Her hands were outstretched, and in her palms hovered a single shard of glass, glowing faintly with violet light.
"You were the one who shattered it," she said softly. "The Fourth Seal. You split it to save her, and in doing so, cursed the world to forget."
Aryan's mouth went dry. "Who are you?"
She tilted her head. "I'm the witness. I saw what the others could not. I was the silence that followed the scream."
The shard in her hand pulsed.
"Then tell me what I must do."
She frowned. "You already know. You have always known. The seal was never meant to break. It was meant to be understood. But you were too afraid to listen."
The mirrors flickered. In one, he saw himself standing over a body....Elanora's. In another, he stood alone, on a throne of bone and gold. In a third, he reached for her, but she walked away.
"No," he whispered. "That's not how it ends."
She approached him, gently placing the shard into his hand. It burned. It sang.
"You carry her name like a weapon," she said. "But what you need to carry… is your own."
He looked down at the shard. For a moment, it reflected only flame.
Then his own eyes.
And finally....Elanora's hand reaching back.
The chamber trembled.
A sound like shattering stars filled the space, and the seal cracked....not broken yet, but opened. The way forward would be brutal. There would be no forgetting again. No rewinding the past. Only walking through it.
Aryan turned to the girl. "Will you come with me?"
She shook her head. "I am the echo. Not the song. But you're close. She's close."
He stepped into the spiral.
Every step forward, a memory returned. A name. A face. A promise.
And at the spiral's end, a door waited.
Carved in its face was the sigil of the Fourth Seal.
A phoenix, burned to ash.....but rising not from flame.
From shadow.
Aryan reached for it.
"I'm not afraid anymore.".....