The crack spread like lightning across the stone.
Kael stepped back as the glowing seal beneath their feet splintered into jagged lines of light. The Vault shuddered—dust cascading from the high arches as ancient mechanisms long asleep woke to motion.
Then, with a deep groan, the floor split open.
Warm air rushed up from the depths—thick, metallic, and laced with something older than decay. A rhythmic thump echoed upward. Not sound. Not motion.
A heartbeat.
"Back," Elira warned, blade drawn, eyes scanning the shifting glyphs. "Something's rising."
Tovan raised his rifle, stepping in beside her. "Whatever was locked down here—it's breathing again."
Kael didn't move. The Echoheart burned under his skin, each pulse aligning with the rhythm beneath them. Not just hearing it now.
Feeling it.
The floor below collapsed inward—reforming into a spiral stair, wide and steep, descending into the dark.
Without waiting, Kael stepped forward.
The stairs curved downward into silence.
No glyphlight guided them here. No murals. Just rough stone—veined with relic residue and scorched in places as if from long-dead wards. Elira lit a pale-glow stone and cast it ahead. The walls swallowed the light.
About halfway down, Kael staggered.
He pressed a hand to the stone. It felt warm—wet, even.
Whispers slid through his mind. Not memories. Not visions.
Words. Unknown. Chanting.
They weren't meant to be understood.
They were meant to resonate.
The spiral ended in a vast chamber, circular and low. Pillars tilted at broken angles, and half the floor was sunken, covered in what looked like molten glass. Statues lined the walls—weathered, many toppled—and every single one faced away from the center, as if turning their backs to something.
"I hate this," Tovan muttered.
Kael moved toward a raised platform where a pedestal stood—shattered.
Whatever relic it once held had burst free.
But something remained.
A trail of glassy residue led into the darkness beyond.
The Echoheart throbbed, then jerked forward in Kael's chest, dragging a breath from him.
A shape rose from the shadow beyond the pedestal.
It stepped into the glow of Elira's stone.
Humanoid. Tall. Twisted.
Its body was an amalgam of broken relic shards, exposed bone, and molten lines of runic metal. Its face was a smooth plate of obsidian, cracking slowly with light beneath.
It did not breathe.
But it moved.
And when it spoke, its voice was not sound.
It was memory.
"Echo."
Kael froze.
The Sealbreaker raised an arm, and light shimmered between its fingers—a fractured blade of crystallized time, trailing sparks of slow-falling dust.
Elira leapt between them. "Move!"
It struck—Kael dodged too late, the blade missing his head by inches but raking the air with force that tore glyphs from the stone.
Tovan fired.
The bullets bent around the Sealbreaker.
It advanced.
Not to kill.
To reclaim.
Its strikes targeted Kael's chest—aiming for the Echoheart.
Kael backed away, the relic screaming in his mind now. Not in fear. Not in pain.
In recognition.
You were mine once. Or you were me.
The words weren't said—but they were known.
The Sealbreaker lunged again. This time Kael threw up his hand, and the Echoheart flared. A blast of relic light pulsed outward—disrupting the chamber, shaking loose a section of the ceiling. Stone crashed between them.
"Go!" Elira shouted.
They ran.
Behind them, the chamber roared—stone collapsing, the Sealbreaker obscured in dust and rising flame.
But Kael knew it wasn't dead.
They didn't stop running until the upper Vault closed above them, sealing the breach behind fractured stone and failing glyphs.
Breathless, Kael dropped to one knee again.
The Echoheart glowed softly—quiet now.
But in its silence, Kael heard a voice not from the relic—
—but from himself.
"It remembers you."
Elira stood beside him, quiet. Then, almost too softly, she said,
"You're changing. And I don't know if it's into someone I can still protect."
Kael didn't answer.
He stared at the place the seal had once been.
And still, the pull toward the broken seal remained—like a tether to a truth he hadn't asked for, but couldn't escape.