The void around Nameless warped, the silence replaced by the sound of chanting and the scent of blood. Tianlong did not guide him through the memory; he plunged him into it as he narrates. The dragon forced him to stand once more on the cold cathedral stone, to watch again as the woman drew a sigil of war with her own lifeblood.
He was made to feel the chains as they drank her essence. He was made to hear the final, ragged breath she took not in pain, but in surrender—a surrender that was a declaration of war.
"She did not die because she was weak," Tianlong's voice echoed, not as a narrator, but as a scalpel dissecting the memory. "She died because she chose to. Immortality was her prison; a single, mortal moment was her freedom. And she spent it on you as she recovered her memories."
A cold dread, heavier than any stone, settled in Nameless's gut. "Who was she?" he demanded, his voice a low growl. "Give me her name, Are you familiar with that woman?."
Tianlong ignored the question. Instead, the memory sharpened, focusing on the moment Nameless had knelt by her side. On the spark of recognition in her dying eyes. On the way his own soul had answered a call it couldn't name.
"Look closer," the dragon commanded. "You feel it, don't you? The echo in your bones. The phantom limb of a memory you can't recall. You knew her. You said you'd protect her. You swore an oath to shatter worlds for her."
The scene dissolved, leaving only the image of her face, pale and bloodstained, her lips forming a final, soundless word.
"Who was she?" Nameless repeated, the words now raw, desperate, a plea scraping its way out of his throat.
Tianlong's voice fell, the sound of a star collapsing into a black hole. It was quiet, absolute, and it shattered everything.
"The woman who summoned you from your prison... the Keeper who died in your arms while you mourned a stranger... was Elara."
For a moment, there was nothing. No sound. No thought. The void itself seemed to hold its breath. The revelation did not strike Nameless like a sword; it passed straight through him, leaving a hole where his reality used to be.
He staggered back, a hand flying to his chest as if he could physically hold himself together. "No," he whispered, the word a puff of disbelief. "No, she... was... chained..."
Then the silence broke.
It was not a scream. It was a roar of pure, undiluted agony that tore from his lungs—a sound of such cosmic grief that the void around him cracked. Lightless fissures spread through the emptiness, and the very fabric of the space between worlds trembled.
Ryne cried out, stumbling back as a wave of raw, unrestrained power washed over her. Her face went pale with terror, not of him, but for him. She had seen gods die, but she had never heard a sound like this. It was the sound of a soul being unmade. The Grandmaster's ageless calm shattered; for the first time in centuries, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, his knuckles white.
Nameless's crimson eye burned with a light that was no longer fury, but pure, incandescent madness. "THE SEVEN!" he bellowed, his voice splitting the void. "I WILL DRAG YOUR THRONE ROOMS THROUGH THE HELLS YOU CREATED! I WILL MAKE YOUR CROWNS A GRINDING STONE FOR YOUR BONES! I WILL ERASE YOUR NAMES FROM CREATION SO THOROUGHLY THAT EVEN OBLIVION WILL FORGET YOU EXISTED!"
The promise was not a threat; it was a physical law being written into the universe. But just as quickly as the rage erupted, it collapsed inward. He choked, his body convulsing as the fury imploded, leaving only a grief so vast it had no sound.
He fell to his knees, his head bowed. "I wasn't there," he choked out, the words broken shards of glass. "I swore... I promised to be her shield... and I was rotting in a prison while they tortured her all along." His gaze lifted, lost and utterly broken. "And then she called me. She saved me... and I knelt over her body and didn't even know her name."
He laughed, a horrifying, hollow sound. "A weapon that arrives after the war is over. A promise that suffocated on its own silence. I failed. In the past, and in the present. I failed her twice."
The raw, unrestrained power around him began to coalesce, to sharpen. Ryne held her breath, watching in terror as his sorrow, a force powerful enough to break reality, began to change shape.
It was Tianlong's voice that cut through the storm. "She did not die to forge a monument to your failure," the dragon stated, his tone hard as diamond. "She died to ignite the weapon of her vengeance. Her life was not a price for your grief. It was the fuel for your purpose. Do not dishonor her sacrifice by drowning in it. Use it."
Nameless's trembling hands stilled. He slowly lifted his head, and the eye that met theirs was no longer broken. The grief was still there, an ocean of it, but it had frozen over. It was now a solid, unmoving mass of cold, precise, and merciless resolve.
"Her purpose," Nameless repeated, his voice dangerously quiet. He rose to his feet, no longer a grieving warrior, but a living embodiment of retribution. "Then her purpose is now mine, Like you narrated that story."
He turned to Tianlong, his gaze so intense it could crack planets. "Tell me where they cast the pieces of my soul if you're aware. Tell me every prison, every warden, every forgotten hell they built to keep me broken."
"They are scattered," Tianlong replied, the stars within him flaring. "But her final act gave you a key. The sigil she drew was a summons, tied to an ancient artifact. To begin, you must find the Warden of Echoes which lies in the second realm."
"I will," Nameless said, the words cutting like razors. He took a step, and the void itself seemed to recoil. The Grandmaster found his voice, stepping forward.
"Be warned," he said, his tone heavy. "The path you walk now will not only lead you to the Seven. It will wake things that slumber in the dark between realms. You will become a threat to the very balance of creation."
Nameless glanced at him, and for the first time, he smiled. It was a terrible sight, devoid of all warmth, a predator baring its teeth.
"Let them know," he whispered. "I want them to see me coming." He turned back to the void, his shoulders set like a mountain range. The first name he had to reclaim was hers. He spoke it, and the sound was both a prayer and a death sentence.
"Elara."
And as he breathed her name, Ryne and the Grandmaster knew they were no longer standing in the presence of a broken warrior. They were witnessing the birth of a living extinction event, a being who had turned his own shattered heart into the universe's most unforgiving blade.