Aloysius froze. The gate's light dimmed for him alone, the vast presence momentarily distant as if the world had taken a single step back.
"Rena…?" His voice trembled, tasting the name he hadn't spoken in years.
No one else reacted. Kaelis's stance hadn't changed, Elyon's eyes were still locked on the chained figure. They hadn't heard it.
The whisper came again, clearer this time, wrapped in the warmth of memory."You can't trust it, Aloy. It will take more than it gives."
He spun, searching for her, and for an instant an instant that might have been madness she was there. Standing in the half-light, hair tangled, wearing the same pale scarf she had the day she vanished.
He stepped toward her, but his boot struck stone. The image shimmered like heat over sand.
"You're not real," he whispered.
Her eyes softened. "Maybe. But the danger is." She tilted her head toward the First Fragment's prison. "It doesn't want to be free it wants you bound."
Behind him, the voice of the Fragment rolled like distant thunder."Ignore the ghost. She is but a splinter in your mind. A wound that never healed."
Aloysius's breath quickened. The shard in his palm pulsed faster, caught between two calls the pull of something infinite, and the pull of something he'd lost.
Kaelis shot him a glance. "You're faltering. Decide now."
The chains rattled, the air warped, and in that crushing moment, Aloysius realized the choice before him wasn't release or refuse.
It was who he would listen to.