The mist coiled around them like breathing silk, but Serai walked through it unbothered, her bare feet whispering against the ancient stone path that hadn't seen daylight in centuries. Adrien followed, the Dragonheart Gem thudding against his chest like a war drum.
Behind him, Kaelen hovered nervously. "Just checking—but this isn't some elaborate hallucination, right? Because if it is, it's the most convincing one yet."
Adrien ignored him. He couldn't take his eyes off Serai.
There was something unsettlingly familiar about her. She moved with the fluidity of fire, calm and dangerous. Like she had seen too many endings and had chosen, deliberately, not to flinch from any of them.
"How long have you been down here?" he asked.
Serai glanced over her shoulder. "Time doesn't pass the same way in the Hollow. The seal that kept me asleep also kept me ageless. But if you're asking how long since the Fall... then nearly five hundred years."
Adrien felt the weight of it. "You're the last living soul from the Sovereignty."
She gave him a sidelong look. "No, Adrien. You are."
They descended into the Hollow, past veined crystal arches and withered braziers that flared to life as they approached. Serai led him into a cavern lined with dragon bones fused into the walls—skeletal wings and spiraled horns forming architecture from death. And there, at the center of it all, was an altar of obsidian shaped like a dragon's eye.
She turned to face him. "Put the Gem there."
Adrien hesitated. "Why?"
"Because it will show you the truth the Sovereignty tried to forget."
Kaelen frowned. "Is this the part where the glowing rock explodes and we all die horribly?"
"No," Serai said. "This is the part where he remembers who he really is."
When Adrien placed the Dragonheart Gem on the altar, the world convulsed.
Light burst from the stone, a cascade of gold and crimson fire unraveling across the chamber. The walls shifted, turning translucent—then vanished.
And suddenly, he was not in the Hollow anymore.
He was standing in the throne room of the Skyhold Citadel, but not as a ghost.
He was in Aurenis's body.
He could feel the fire in his veins, the Soul-Flame singing through his bones. Councilors shouted around him. Lysaria was bleeding beside him. The storm of betrayal was already tearing the sky apart.
He saw Nytherra. Saw the first dragon fall. Saw the oath he made—the last vow of the royal line.
"If we burn, then let it be by our own hand—not theirs."
The vision shattered.
Adrien collapsed, gasping, the taste of ash still in his throat.
Serai caught him before he hit the floor. "Now you understand."
He nodded slowly, voice raw. "Aurenis didn't just die. He chose to end the Sovereignty before the Obsidian Hand could claim it."
"And sealed the truth in the Gems," she said. "So only his heir could find it."
Kaelen hovered nearby, stunned silent for once.
"But there's more," Serai said. "That wasn't just memory. It was a binding. You carry more than his blood, Adrien. You carry his Flame. His soul is inside you."
Adrien staggered to his feet. "That's why the visions feel so real. Why I can do things I haven't been taught."
"You're not learning," she said quietly. "You're remembering."
Elsewhere...
In the ruins of a sunken temple, Virelith stood over a new artifact: a shard of broken skyglass, still humming with ancient dragonlight.
The changeling beside her hissed. "Another Gem just awakened."
Virelith smiled, slow and sharp.
"Good," she said. "Let him gather them. Let him bring the pieces together."
She lifted the shard to her lips and whispered a single word: "Unmake."
The stone pulsed once.
Then shattered.
Back in the Hollow, Adrien's eyes snapped open as the Gem on the altar cracked.
Not shattered.
But splintered—a hairline fracture down its center.
Kaelen's voice rang out, panicked. "What was that?! That didn't feel like a good thing!"
Serai's face had gone pale.
"They've started the Unbinding," she whispered. "They're unraveling the Flame itself."
Adrien turned toward her, fire burning behind his eyes.
"Then we find the rest of the Gems before they do."
He picked up the fractured Gem.
"I don't care if they rewrite the ending," he said.
"I'm writing a new one."