Nyra
The realm feels… quieter.
After the storm of light and whispers, the silence almost hurts. The ground beneath us hums, threads of gold weaving faintly under my bare feet — veins of power, pulsing like they remember me.
Kael walks beside me, close enough that our shoulders brush. His presence steadies the tremor in my hands, but not the one in my chest. Every breath I take seems to draw the realm's gaze closer, as if the air itself is waiting for me to speak a forgotten command.
Ahead, a passage curves downward, swallowed by silver mist. I can feel something beyond it — a heartbeat, vast and ancient, slow as stone.
"The path leads there," I whisper.
Kael doesn't answer right away. His eyes scan the shadows, his hand hovering near his blade though both of us know metal won't save us here.
Finally, he says, "And what waits at the end?"
I almost smile. "Something that remembers me."
Kael
The way she says it — calm, certain, almost reverent — makes my skin prickle.
The mist ahead moves as though alive, coiling around her words. I can feel the pull of it too, faint but insistent, like the realm itself is listening.
She steps forward before I can stop her, and the light under her skin answers. It spreads from her mark, down her fingers, into the air. Every time she takes a step, the path blooms with pale fire.
I follow, because I can't not follow. Because the thought of her walking into the unknown alone feels wrong.
"Nyra," I say softly. "If something remembers you here, that means you've been here before."
She hesitates. Just for a breath. "Maybe not me. But the one who carried this mark before I was born."
Her voice is distant — part wonder, part dread.
Nyra
It's strange, what the realm remembers.
Every wall is etched with symbols I almost recognize — not from study, but from feeling. They twist in my mind like half-formed memories: laughter in a burning field, the taste of rain and ash, a promise whispered beneath broken stars.
When I blink, I see flashes. Not visions — recollections. My hands reaching for someone through fire. My name called in a voice I can't place.
"Kael," I whisper, pressing a hand against the wall. The stone is warm, like skin. "It's alive."
Kael
She doesn't see what I see.
To me, the walls are not alive — they're bleeding light. Threads of it crawl toward her, drawn by the pulse of her mark. And though she stands tall, there's a tremor in her frame — something between awe and surrender.
Her mark flares again. I reach for her wrist before she can touch the center of the wall.
"Don't," I warn.
She turns those otherworldly eyes on me, and for a second I see the reflection of something vast inside them — a shape moving beneath the stone, aware, watching.
"Kael," she breathes. "It knows my name."
The wall shudders.
Nyra
A voice spills through the crack like light breaking open.
You have come back to us, little flame.
The sound fills every corner of my mind, soft and endless. I can't tell if it's speaking to me or through me.
Kael tightens his grip on my arm, grounding me again — his hand hot, real, solid.
"I heard it," he says, eyes wide. "Nyra—"
But I barely hear him. The voice grows clearer.
We remember what you promised.
A pulse of memory hits me like lightning — my hand sealing a covenant, my blood marking a circle of runes, Kael's face not yet born, my world not yet broken.
And underneath it, the whisper that started everything:
The mark binds you not to power, but to what you love.
Kael
Her knees give out. I catch her before she falls. The air thickens, pressing against us from all sides — light streaming down from the ceiling in long, thin beams.
I can't see what she's seeing, but I can feel it. Her mind surges against mine, the bond flaring so hot I taste iron.
"Nyra, stay with me."
Her eyes flutter open, glowing faintly now, softer. "It's showing me," she says. "The truth of what I am."
"What are you?"
She gives a trembling smile, and I hate the sorrow in it. "The one who broke the world once. And maybe the only one who can end it again."