Beneath the Chainspire, deeper than even the throne roots, lay a vault that had never been opened.
Not by kings.
Not by priests.
Not even by the Warden himself.
Until now.
He descended alone.
No guards.
No light.
Only silence thick enough to choke the divine.
His breath curled in the black like smoke drifting through a grave.
And when he reached the final gate, he did not use key nor spell.
He placed a single hand upon the door
And whispered the name of the first god he had ever killed.
The stone wept blood.
The gate dissolved.
And beyond it…
Lay the Pale Bell.
It was not made of metal.
Nor wood.
It was forged from forgotten sound, crystallized into a shape that refused reason.
A bell with no clapper.
No curve.
No base.
Just a frozen hum suspended in stillness.
It throbbed with anti-memory.
Those who looked at it too long forgot their own names.
Even the Warden, whose mind had bent empires, felt something old inside him shudder.
A part that remembered being human.
He reached out.
And touched it.
Not with reverence.
But with hatred.
"He wishes to speak in silence?" he said, smiling.
"Then let him hear what true silence is."
"Let him hear the sound that makes even echoes flee."
Elsewhere…
Nihil stood at the edge of the Hollow Garden.
A sanctuary his followers had carved into the bones of the ruin, a place where no god's name had ever been spoken.
Children now trained there.
Elders taught without words.
They planted ash-roses, flowers that bloomed only in memory.
For the first time since the Chains, life began to breathe again.
Not loudly.
Not in triumph.
But in defiance.
And that was when the sky ripped.
The clouds shattered like glass.
A pulse rang through the air, deafening not by sound, but by absence.
The world paused.
Birds fell.
Dogs whimpered.
Stone cracked.
Every Echo collapsed.
Hundreds dropped where they knelt, bleeding from the eyes, gasping like fish pulled from water.
And Nihil, he staggered.
Clutched his chest.
His Echo burned.
The silence inside him... screamed.
It was the Pale Bell.
Ringing not through the ears,
But through the soul.
"He's found it," Nihil rasped, voice hoarse.
"The Bell that silences Echoes."
He stood in the center of the dying garden.
The ash-roses withered.
His followers writhed.
And Nihil closed his eyes.
Reached inward.
Past pain.
Past grief.
Past every name he had buried and every voice he had forgotten.
He found her.
Lira.
A memory. A smile. A touch.
Flickering like a candle.
"Are you still here?" he whispered.
And her voice, faint but unbroken, answered:
"I never left."
He opened his eyes.
The Pale Bell had cracked the sky.
But he was still standing.
He reached out to his Echo, not to command, but to fuse.
To become.
"You want to silence silence?" he growled.
"Then hear this."
He breathed in the Pale Bell.
The agony. The void. The rupture.
He didn't resist it.
He devoured it.
NEW ECHO FORGED — PALE DEVOURER
You may absorb Echo-nullifying forces. For every second you remain within silence born of suppression, your next action becomes an irreversible truth.
He rose.
His cloak burned.
His voice returned.
And the world tilted.
Not because the Bell had stopped.
But because Nihil had become louder than the silence.