The entrance was disguised as a bakery.
You ordered bread with no yeast, asked for it "left to rise in sorrow," and the counter flickered open to reveal stairs carved into basalt. Sera descended slowly—hands tracing old sigils etched by forgotten hands.
This was not Caelum's archive.
This was the Echo Vault.
No curators. No hierarchy. Just one rule:
"If the myth shaped you, speak."
The walls pulsed softly. Magic woven into memory. As Sera stepped into the main chamber, fragments floated—pages, torn robes, broken glyphs, whispered recordings encoded in strands of light.
A voice played softly overhead:
"I loved Caelum before he chose fire. I loved him when he still wrote about stars. I never stopped. I simply stepped aside."
Sera blinked. Each voice was anonymous, but heartbreak hummed in their cadence. She began collecting pieces:
A burnt letter: "Your doctrine taught me to walk without permission. It also taught my sister not to come home."
A mural fragment: A faceless figure holding both a lantern and a blade. Below it: "Truth must carry tools for both repair and defense."
A diary entry (age 9): "My parents say Caelum made schools better. But my classroom asks us not to cry out loud anymore. I miss music."
And then—
A poem written by someone who had once stood beside him in the early days:
"We dreamt of silence that healed. You made silence that obeyed."
Sera sat among the fragments.
She didn't judge them.
She didn't try to summarize.
She whispered her own truth into the wall:
"I am Sera Vex. My mother bled for belief. I refuse to let memory bow to myth."
The vault absorbed her words. Ink shimmered against basalt.
And in the corner, a new page began writing itself—her account, her voice.
Not rebellion.
Witness.