The footsteps echoed too precisely to be a mistake.
Kael turned.
A figure emerged from the drowned shadows—tall, draped in robes of bonewhite fabric stitched with black thread, its mask carved from cracked obsidian. The air bent slightly around it, as if gravity leaned in its favor.
It didn't raise a weapon.
It simply said, "Kael."
Not a greeting.
A memory spoken aloud.
Kael tightened his grip on the Echoheart. "You've been following me."
The figure tilted its head. "You walked the spiral. You spoke the seal. I merely listened."
Its voice was genderless—layered, like two people speaking at once. Or one person split by time.
"Are you the Keyborn?"
"I am what the seal remembers," it replied. "And you are what it calls."
They stood facing the great door.
The spiral mark gleamed softly beneath Kael's chest, answering the relic's pulse.
"What is this place?" Kael asked. "What's behind it?"
"A boundary," said the Keyborn. "Between what was silenced and what still remembers its name."
Kael stepped closer. "You're not here to stop me."
"No," it said. "I am here to ask."
It raised one hand.
And suddenly Kael wasn't standing in the flooded chamber anymore.
He was home.
His sister was alive. The world outside untouched. His hands were unscarred. The Echoheart—gone. A normal life.
No pain.
No purpose.
Just peace.
The warmth almost broke him.
For a heartbeat, he almost reached out—wanting it to be true.
"If you could turn away now," the Keyborn whispered, from inside the vision, "would you?"
Kael stood still.
The longer he watched, the more the vision trembled—too perfect, too quiet. It wasn't real. It couldn't be.
He clenched his fists, and pain returned. His voice followed.
"Maybe I'm not the first," Kael said. "Maybe I'll break like the rest. But I'm here. And I'm not turning away."
The vision cracked like glass.
The chamber returned.
The Keyborn stood beside the door.
Beneath its mask, nothing—just threads of whispering light, weaving through a hollow skull.
It stepped aside.
"You are chosen by the relic," it said. "But not yet by the seal."
"The seal is not just a lock—it is a mind holding back what remembers being god."
Kael stepped forward, the Echoheart blazing against his chest.
Before fading, the Keyborn offered one final warning:
"What's behind the seal does not remember mercy. Only purpose."