They wandered into the lower archive, just as the mist clung between Yumi and Ren. It was cold there and somehow deeper in sensations, stronger in meanings. The walls were closer, tighter, and shining with glowing mosses that flickered in synchrony with breaths. Every time they breathed in, it was memory flickering in the air like candlelight, illuminating raw emotion-molds. It shimmers in peaceful vials above, woven into the waiting memories. These would not open, bleeding into the air; they're flames and battles and farewells and confessions that belong. Some can hurt from perfection and leave others raw and aching inside.
This aisle opened into a huge antechamber bounded by six pedestals and adorned with unlit braziers: a dais from which bloomed an unbroken flower, petals burned black and cracked at the center.
[OBJECTIVE: Rekindle the Flame of Emotion] Requirement: Memories of Purpose Loss Love, Fear, Courage, and Sacrifice.
Yumi turned her sight to the pedestals. "They're waiting for offerings. Aspects of emotion itself."
Ren stepped closer to the first pedestal: Purpose. "Let's start with the reason we are here."
He laid the Hollowlight Crystal upon the pedestal. The flame sparked to life with silver fire.
Next was Loss. Yumi took off the little locket hanging from her neck-A memento from a villager they had saved long ago who had not been able to survive traveling to this place. She laid it down. The flame ignited, burning a deep violet one. They moved around the circle, one after another.
Love: A faded sketch drawn by Ren of Yumi after their very first fight together. Flame: warm, golden.
Fear: a bloodstained rag from that night they barely managed to escape alive. Colder than hell.
Courage: Yumi's first blade forged by her own hands during her training years. It was glowing crimson.
Sacrifice. They hesitated.
"I do not know what to offer for this," Ren finally gave voice to his thoughts. With her gaze locked onto his, Yumi withdrew her left glove, revealing her hand from which the sigil of the Heartstone glowed dimly: the mark she had borne since the fall of the Null King.
"This cost me everything. My past. My family. My...certainty."
She laid her hand on the pedestal, and with it, the flame blazed into fiery, bright-white existence.
The central dais trembled. Like a waking flower, it stretched out its petals. A molten crystalline heart rose from within the heart of the flower—a single shard lit with every flame they had carried in their hearts.
[QUEST COMPLETE: Reignite the Flame of Emotion] Reward: Embercore Shard
[NEW QUEST: Seek the Ember Choir] Clue: "Where voices burn but never fade."
But as the shard lifted off the dais, a voice echoed through the chamber—a voice familiar yet so disturbingly unsettling. "You have certainly come this far. But you still do not know what lies ahead."
A figure stepped out of the mist; it was a mirror image of Yumi. Same face. Same circling, stalking stance. But hollow moons for eyes.
[ENEMY ENCOUNTER: Hollow Yumi]
"And who are you?" Ren yelled.
A smile curled on the figure's lips. "I am all that she left behind. Every tremor. Every fear. Every decision that keeps her awake at night. You have lit the Flame of Emotion - but not every emotion serves the light."
Yumi pulled her weapon and braced her jaws. "Then let's finish the work that I started."
The chamber roared to life.
Light against shadow. Memory against oblivion.
And at the center-an individual, torn and whole, fighting to be understood.