When Cled awoke, the world was quiet again. Too quiet.
The mountain's glow had dimmed, the fissures sealed by frost. Yet beneath his skin, the glow hadn't faded. It pulsed — faintly green now, not gold.
He sat up slowly, chest aching. The Heart's ember still hovered faintly over his palm, but it was darker, pulsing unevenly like a dying star.
"What… did you do to me?" he whispered.
No answer. Only the sound of melting frost dripping into silence.
Then, from the corner of his vision, came movement.
A figure stepped out from behind a crystal column — tall, robed in gray, face hidden beneath a hood. The air around him shimmered like heat on ice.
"Who are you?" Cled demanded, raising his broken dagger.
> "A remnant," the man said softly. "The mountain's last echo. You should not have survived."
Cled frowned. "The Heart judged me."
> "And the Abyss chose you. That is not survival — that is inheritance."
The man lifted his hand. Symbols of gold and green danced in the air between them, forming a sigil older than time.
> "You've opened the Seal of Souls. Every fracture in the sky now knows your name."
Cled's blood ran cold. "The… seal?"
> "The barrier between life and what waits beneath it."
The figure stepped closer. His voice grew softer, sadder.
> "You carry both light and ruin. You are the balance that should not exist."
Before Cled could respond, the mountain trembled again — not from anger this time, but from awakening. The crystals began to hum, echoing the pulse in his veins.
The man turned toward the glow, then looked back at him.
> "When you leave this mountain, the sky will test you again. The world above is not as you left it."
Cled blinked. "What do you mean?"
> "You slept longer than you think."
The words hit him like a thunderclap. "What—?"
But the man was already fading, his form turning into motes of light.
> "Seek the city that floats on broken clouds. There, the truth of the Sky Immortal begins."
And with that, he was gone.
Cled stood in silence, heart pounding. The mountain's ceiling cracked, letting in a single beam of sunlight — the first he'd seen in what felt like ages.
He looked at his reflection in a shard of crystal. One eye glowed gold… the other green.
"I'm… changing."
He clenched his fist around the dim ember and turned toward the light.
"Then let the sky see what it made."