Nael awoke to the taste of smoke.
The ground beneath him was no longer stone, but ash — soft, hot, and shifting with every breath. The chamber was gone. The altar. Elaria. All of it had vanished like a dream pulled underwater.
He sat up, coughing.
Above him, the sky was bleeding.
A sun—no, a fractured star—hung motionless, torn into slivers that floated like dying embers. Dark clouds spiraled in slow motion, and streaks of red lightning danced along the horizon. The world around him was colorless except for the sky. Everything else was ash and bone.
"What… is this place?"
His voice echoed strangely, as if the world were hollow.
In the distance, jagged silhouettes loomed — broken towers, twisted statues, and pillars of black stone etched with glowing runes. The air smelled of metal, old fire, and something more ancient… sorrow.
And then he heard it.
A heartbeat.
Not his.
Slow. Heavy. Endless.
Boom.
…
Boom.
…
Boom.
Like the world itself remembered something it couldn't forget.
Nael stood, his hands instinctively tightening around the pouch on his belt.
The charm was still there.
So was the blade — the rusted dagger he didn't remember picking up.
The runes on his skin had dimmed, but they still glowed faintly beneath the grime.
This place wasn't real.
Or maybe it was more real than anything else.
He began to walk.
The ground shifted under his feet, soft and dry like burnt parchment. He passed the corpse of a tree with no roots, its branches reaching upward like hands begging a forgotten god. He passed a statue of a woman screaming, her mouth forever open in stone.
Then he saw it.
A figure standing at the edge of a cliff.
Tall. Wrapped in tattered robes that fluttered in wind that did not exist. Its face was hidden beneath a crown of rusted nails.
It turned.
And Nael saw himself.
But it wasn't him.
It was wrong — twisted. Older. The same face, but carved from grief and fury. One eye blackened like charcoal, the other glowing like molten gold. His arms were wrapped in gravecloth, and from his back grew a wing of feathers… and a wing of chains.
The doppelganger smiled.
"So. The child who buried the gods has finally awakened."
Nael froze.
"Who—what are you?"
"A future," the other Nael said. "Or a warning. Maybe both."
The sky above cracked, a single shard of light tearing across it like a wound.
"You shouldn't have touched her seal," the figure said. "You shouldn't have remembered."
Nael took a step back.
"This is a dream," he muttered.
The other Nael raised a finger.
A grave burst open behind him.
"No," he said.
"This is memory."
Nael stumbled backward as the grave behind the doppelganger split open — not into soil, but into light.
Not golden. Not divine.
A pale, cold radiance spilled out like fog, swirling with whispers. They weren't words. They were screams softened by time — the kind of sorrow that settled into stone and lingered long after the bodies had faded.
The other Nael stepped aside.
"Go on," he said. "Look inside."
Nael didn't want to. But something pulled him forward. A compulsion in his blood, in the runes along his arms, now trembling faintly as if remembering before he did.
He peered into the light—
—and saw her.
Not Elaria as she was now.
A different her.
A thousand versions of her.
Some wore crowns. Others wore chains. Some burned on pyres. Others led armies into death. One sat alone in a sea of stars, weeping. Another stood triumphant atop a mountain of gods, her body fractured by light.
Each version died.
Some quietly.
Some violently.
But always with eyes full of clarity.
Always knowing why.
And Nael felt it — not as a spectator, but as a witness.
As if a part of him had been there, every time.
He staggered back, gasping.
The doppelganger tilted his head.
"You feel it now," he said.
"The grief that echoes backward. The truth hidden in death."
Nael's voice cracked.
"Why does she keep dying?"
"Because she remembers too much."
The vision twisted.
Elaria stood before a throne of white bone, a blade in her hand, and ten gods kneeling before her in fear. Her mouth opened.
No words came out. Only a memory. Only a name.
"Nael."
He fell to his knees.
"She knows me…"
"No," the figure said. "She remembers you."
Nael looked up, throat dry.
"From when?"
The doppelganger smiled, gently… tragically.
"From before the world."
Suddenly, everything began to crumble.
The blood sky cracked open. The heartbeat stopped. The grave sealed shut.
And the doppelganger began to fade.
"You are not ready," he said. "But the time will come."
He pointed at Nael's chest.
"You were not chosen to bury the gods."
"You were born to replace them."
With that, the vision shattered.
And Nael woke up—
—on the cold stone floor.
Back in the chamber.
Back in the dark.
Back… with her.
Elaria knelt beside him, one hand against his chest.
"You touched the echoes," she whispered. "You heard the Ashes."
Nael opened his eyes. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
"I saw you," he breathed. "I saw you die. Again and again."
She didn't respond.
But her eyes — those distant, starlit eyes — were filled with something too human to hide.
Pain.
The chamber was quiet again.
Only the soft hum of the walls — ancient runes breathing faintly — gave any sign that the world hadn't just ended.
Nael sat up slowly.
Elaria didn't move.
She watched him with the silence of someone who had watched too much already. Her body was still, but her hands were trembling. Just a little. Just enough for him to notice.
"You've seen it," she said.
Nael nodded.
"The sky… the graves… the gods…"
"You died. Over and over."
"Good," she whispered. "Then the seal is failing."
She stood, her bare feet leaving no trace on the stone floor. Her hair shimmered with strands of moonlight that hadn't been there before.
Nael frowned.
"Is that… good?"
She turned to him.
"No."
They walked through the chamber in silence.
Elaria passed her hand over a broken archway, and it groaned open like a mouth reopening after centuries.
Beyond it was a staircase.
It didn't go down.
It went up.
Carved into the rock, spiraling toward a faint blue glow like a star too far away.
Nael hesitated.
"What is this place, really?"
Elaria answered without turning.
"A tomb. A prison. A promise."
He blinked.
"Which one are we in?"
"That depends," she said. "On whether we survive the climb."
They ascended in silence.
The deeper they went, the more Nael began to remember things he'd never lived. The weight of a thousand choices. The silence of the stars. The scream of a god dying alone.
And with every step, the runes on his arms pulsed brighter.
Elaria stopped once, her fingers brushing the wall.
"Nael," she said quietly. "There's something you must understand."
He waited.
"The gods are not gone. Not really."
"They're buried. In time. In flesh. In names."
"Some will try to rise again."
"And if they do?" he asked.
She looked down the endless staircase they had already climbed.
"Then we bury them deeper."
They reached a massive door.
Covered in chains.
Carved with wings and suns and swords.
In the center, a keyhole shaped like an eye.
Elaria placed her hand on it. The runes on her arm flared to life.
"Behind this gate," she said, "is the path to the surface. To the world that forgot us."
"What will we find?"
"Ruins. Memory. And war."
"And you?" he asked.
She finally turned to him — and for the first time, truly smiled.
"I'm not your guide," she said. "I'm your echo."
"But I'll walk with you. Until the gods remember why they feared you."
With a shuddering crack, the door began to open.
A wind rushed in. Cold, clean, alive.
Nael took a breath.
Above him… a sky that remembered fire.
Below him… a grave that remembered gods.
He stepped forward.
Into the world.