The figure stood still in the gloom, armor draped in tattered banners. Dust didn't cling to him—memory did. He wasn't old. He was echoed—copied through time, worn down by repetition.
Kael didn't move.
The Echoheart pulsed faintly against his chest, slower now, as though recognizing its own origin.
"You're the first," Kael said.
The figure tilted his head. His voice was low, granular—like a stone remembering fire.
"I was the first to awaken it. But not the first to carry burden."
He stepped forward slowly, each motion stirring flickers of light from the Vault walls. As he moved, other versions of him appeared in his wake—some kneeling, some screaming, one simply walking into the fog.
"The Vault remembers every bearer. It echoes what they left behind."
Kael stood his ground. "Why me?"
The First Bearer looked at him for a long moment.
"It doesn't choose. It listens."
He tapped a gauntlet to Kael's chest.
"You called. It answered."
Kael's mouth was dry. "Then what is it? A weapon? A test?"
"A mirror," the bearer said. "One that only reflects what survives you."
The room shifted—light folded in on itself, and suddenly Kael was there—not watching, but inside a moment long sealed.
The ground cracked beneath a ruined sky. Runes tore open the air. Seven figures stood in a circle, each holding relics, all bleeding light. One collapsed. One fled.
In the center stood the First Bearer, raising the unfinished Echoheart.
"Not to win," he shouted. "To contain. To remember what we should not become."
The seal formed in flame and pressure. The world around it buckled.
Then it ended.
Kael stumbled, breathless.
The First Bearer stepped forward again.
"It wasn't forged in triumph. It was born from failure. Shaped by desperation."
Kael stared at the floor, at the faint spiral etched beneath his feet.
"That seal… it's different. Twisted."
"Every bearer rewrites it," the First said. "They can't help themselves. They want to leave something behind. So the spiral bends."
The Echoheart pulsed.
Kael felt it—not as power, but as intention. It wasn't telling him what to do.
It was waiting.
"Then what now?" Kael asked.
"You are near the core," the bearer replied. "The place where the Vault ends—and something older begins."
"And I'm supposed to choose?"
"Or fade. Like the rest. Echoes that thought they were endings."
"No one who steps beyond returns whole. The Vault shows you not what you want, but what you've already lost."
Kael looked down at the relic.
"I keep thinking I've earned it," he said quietly. "But maybe it's not something to earn. Just carry."
The First Bearer reached into his armor and pulled free a small, cracked relic fragment—jagged, pulsing with faint light.
"Take this," he said. "It will not guide you. But it will remind you."
Kael accepted it.
The moment his fingers closed around it, he heard his own voice—
—not once, but layered—different versions of himself overlapping:
"We chose this. Again. And again. And again."
Kael looked up.
The First Bearer was gone.
Only silence remained—and a stair of light descending deeper, where the Vault grew still.