The Eye blinked.
It wasn't light. It wasn't sound. It was something deeper.
Ashar stood before it, his jaw tight, his chest rising in slow, measured breaths. For once, he wasn't the cold monolith Eli had followed since this began. His shoulders shifted as though resisting a weight no one else could see.
Eli clung to the rib-like struts along the wall. His heart was in his throat. He wanted to scream, to beg Ashar to leave this place, but his voice wouldn't form. The Eye was in his head, vibrating in his bones. Every breath tasted like copper and static.
And then it spoke again. Not in words, not in sound just pressure. Meaning.
ASHAR.
Ashar's body stiffened.
WITNESS.
The world fell away.
The chamber vanished. The stone and steel dissolved, and Eli was gone Ashar was standing barefoot on grass.
The air was warm. The sun was gold. The smell of bread drifted from a window nearby, and for a moment just a moment Ashar forgot to breathe.
Because he knew this place.
The year was 2030
He wasn't Ashar Vale here. Not the Chancellor, not the revolutionary, not the exile. He was simply a man. His hair was shorter, his face younger, unscarred. His hands weren't calloused from weapons. His eyes held something he hadn't seen in years gentleness.
"Papa!"
The voice broke him before he even turned.
She ran toward him across the grass, her hair tied up in ribbons that caught the sunlight. Seven years old. The small hands that clutched his own were soft, warm, so real he thought he'd collapse from the weight of touching her again.
And behind her his wife.
Her smile was the kind that carried the world. She leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, laughing softly as the girl tugged at his hand.
"Come inside," she said. "Before it gets cold."
Ashar's lips parted, but no sound came. His throat was locked.
For a moment one stolen, impossible moment he believed. The ache in his chest, the hollow he'd buried so deep, filled with light again. He was back. He was whole.
But the Eye blinked again.
The light shifted. Shadows bled in at the edges. The sun turned pale.
Ashar's daughter tugged at him again, but when he looked down, her face was blurred, smudged like an image decaying. His wife's laughter warped, stretched thin, then cracked like glass.
The house trembled. The ground split.And the black uniforms came.
Ashar screamed screamed the way he hadn't in years but the sound was trapped inside the vision. He ran to them, reached for them, tried to hold them as soldiers stormed the house. His wife clutched their daughter, shielding her as fire tore through the doorway.
"Please!" Ashar's voice broke. "Please, no take me take me instead..... "
But the rifles lifted. The fire spread.The screams came.
His daughter's small hand slipped from his, reaching back as the blast swallowed them both.
Ashar fell to his knees. His body convulsed, the grass gone, the sun gone, only fire, fire, fire....
The vision ended.But then it began again, And again
Each time sharper. Each time slower. His wife's face clearer, her eyes locking on his in the instant before the flames took her. His daughter's cry stretching out, higher, longer, until Ashar thought his skull would split.
He begged. He pleaded. He clawed at the ground until his fingers bled. But there was no escape. The Eye forced him to relive it in perfect, merciless detail.
In the chamber, Eli saw none of this.
All he saw was Ashar.
The man who had stood unshaken through war, who had stared down the High Council, who had walked into fire without blinking now trembling like a leaf in a storm. His hands shook violently at his sides. His breath came ragged, broken, like something was tearing its way out of him.
"Ashar!" Eli shouted. His own voice echoed, small against the vastness of the chamber. He stumbled forward, reaching out, but when he touched Ashar's arm, it was like touching stone on the edge of breaking.
The Eye pulsed again. The ground shivered.
Eli dropped to his knees. His vision blurred. And still Ashar stood, rigid, trembling, his jaw clenched so hard Eli thought his teeth might crack.
For the first time, Eli felt it not as machine, not as system, but as divinity. A god carved out of light and nerves. A god that judged not with words, but with memory.
"Ashar!" he shouted again, desperate. "Stop!!! whatever it is stop!"
But Ashar couldn't hear him.
He was still kneeling in that loop, still clutching the hands of ghosts that dissolved again and again, still breaking, again and again. His mask was gone. His face was wet with tears he hadn't shed in years.
And then, finally, the vision ended.
Darkness swallowed him. His body fell forward, his knees hitting the stone. His eyes rolled back. His breath rattled.
Eli caught him before he collapsed fully, cradling him like he weighed nothing at all. The mask clattered to the floor beside them, empty, faceless.
The Eye pulsed one last time.
REMEMBER.
And then the chamber dimmed.
The veins went dark. The hum quieted. Only the faint glow of the Eye remained, watching, patient, as though it had only just begun.
Eli pressed his hand to Ashar's chest, feeling his heart still beating, too fast, too fragile. He looked at the Eye, his own lips trembling.
"What are you?" he whispered.
The Eye did not answer.
And there, on the cold stone floor, Ashar Vale the man who had sworn never to bend, never to break lay unconscious, broken by memory.