The chamber pulsed with silence.
Kael stood near the collapsing memory-veil, Serida at his side. The Core had recoiled, its form retreating like a wounded god, pulled inward by its own unraveling. Spirals dimmed. Glyphs fractured. Time—if it had ever truly passed here—began to still.
Serida's hand hadn't left Kael's since they fled the vision's edge.
Neither of them spoke.
Not yet.
Some truths were too heavy to break with words.
Then, through the swirling fog of thought-threads and the fading remnants of the Core's will, a shape emerged.
Lira.
She moved like someone carrying fire in her chest—slow, deliberate, her face pale but unshaken. Her armor bore faint runes now, newly burned into the metal, and her eyes looked older than they had an hour before.
Kael turned.
Their eyes met.
He didn't say her name. He didn't have to.
Because she ran the last few steps and threw her arms around him—and for once, Kael didn't pull away. He let it happen. Let himself be held.
Serida stood nearby, watching them.
Her fingers brushed her own wrist, where the spiraled mark still glowed faintly. She remembered that Kael had once buried her name. And now… he had remembered.
Lira stepped back, breath shaky. "You made it."
"You too," Kael said, voice rough. "You okay?"
She hesitated.
Then nodded. "I saw what followed me. Faced it."
Serida arched an eyebrow. "What was it?"
"Me," Lira said simply. "The part I left behind."
Serida didn't press further. The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was full of the weight they'd all carried.
The Core was no longer attacking. No longer pulling at their minds. But the chamber remained tense, coiled, as if waiting for one last breath before the end.
Kael looked toward the center of the spiraled room, where a final ripple of gold still shimmered like heat off stone.
"It's not finished," he said.
Lira followed his gaze. "What do you mean?"
He stepped forward, slowly.
And then the light in the chamber shifted.
Not brighter. Not darker.
Just... different.
All three of them turned as the ground beneath them began to flicker. Images floated up like memories rising to the surface of a deep pool—each framed in gold and shadow.
A vision.
The Core's parting gift.
Or warning.
---
The first image:
A city of glass towers, bathed in ash.
Above it, a new sun burned—not red, not yellow, but spiraled gold. People walked beneath it with branded skin, their eyes dull and mouths stitched shut.
A figure stood atop the highest tower.
Kael.
But not Kael.
His form shimmered like fractured glass. His body was half-machine, half-memory. His voice carried through the world not as sound, but command.
> "There will be peace. No more conflict. No more pain. All thought shall flow through me."
Serida recoiled.
Lira gripped Kael's arm.
"That's not you," she whispered.
Kael didn't answer. Because part of him had considered that path.
---
The second image:
The world was on fire.
Not by war—but by magic gone mad.
Rivers of molten spell-thread tore through cities. Floating beasts roared from the skies, memories given monstrous flesh. A group of warriors stood defiant on a ruined hill.
Among them: Kael, Lira, and Serida.
Older.
Weary.
But fighting.
At their side stood faces they hadn't met yet. New allies. Old enemies.
A war had begun.
Not against Cradle.
Not even against the Core.
But against something else.
Something born from the remains of the Core's unraveling.
---
The third image:
A child.
Alone in a cradle of light, surrounded by spirals carved in stone.
She had Kael's eyes.
Lira's hair.
And Serida's mark glowing over her heart.
She looked up.
And smiled.
The image faded.
---
The vision ended.
Silence returned.
Kael exhaled. "So it left us with possibilities."
Serida nodded. "Futures. Fears. Hopes."
Lira added, "Warnings."
The Core hadn't been destroyed. Only contained again. Denied.
But its dreams had touched them. And now, those dreams might shape the waking world.
Kael turned to the others.
"We stop the Cradle. We find the other Echoes. We make sure this future doesn't happen."
Serida looked him in the eye. "And if it does?"
Kael didn't flinch.
"Then we write a better ending."
Lira smiled faintly. "Together this time."
They moved toward the exit—toward the thread of light where the memory-realm connected to real time, real space.
They didn't know what would be waiting.
But they knew one thing:
They were no longer running from who they were.
And somewhere deep within the broken Core, something whispered:
> "You chose wrong. But not forever.
I am still watching. And I am still becoming."