The Memory Vault remained silent after the final image disappeared.
Artyom stood before the empty crystal, unable to look away from the place where his mother had appeared.
Elara.
Sergei.
Andrei.
Three names connected by a past nobody had ever allowed him to understand.
Artyom: "My father knew her."
Caelum nodded slowly.
Caelum: "Yes."
Artyom: "And Andrei was assigned to protect me before I was even born?"
Caelum: "That is what the records suggest."
Artyom: "Then why did Andrei disappear? Why did he leave me with Sergei?"
Nobody answered immediately.
Viktor stepped closer, his expression unusually quiet.
Viktor: "Maybe he didn't leave you. Maybe someone made him believe that staying away was the only way to protect you."
Artyom glanced at him.
Artyom: "You're defending him."
Viktor: "I'm questioning what we think we know. There's a difference."
Artyom lowered his eyes. He wanted to reject the possibility, but every new memory made his childhood feel less like a story of simple abandonment and more like a puzzle assembled by people who had been terrified of its final picture.
Then Lucien approached the crystal.
Lucien: "There's something else."
Caelum turned sharply.
Caelum: "What did you find?"
Lucien pointed toward the lower edge of the Memory Vault. A thin line of silver symbols had appeared beneath the crystal, almost invisible against the dark floor.
Lucien: "The record didn't end naturally. Someone interrupted it."
He knelt and traced one symbol without touching it.
The silver line brightened.
Words appeared above the floor.
PROJECT ORIGIN: FINAL AUTHORIZATION
SUBJECT AR-01: PRESERVED
PROTECTOR: ANDREI MOROZOV
SECONDARY WITNESS: SERGEI SOKOLOV
THIRD WITNESS: ROMAN VOLKOV
Viktor went completely still.
Viktor: "My father?"
Artyom turned toward him.
Artyom: "Roman was involved too?"
Viktor: "He never told me anything about Project Origin."
Caelum: "Perhaps he wasn't permitted to speak about it."
Viktor: "My father doesn't keep secrets because someone asks him politely."
His voice was cold, but Artyom noticed something beneath it: uncertainty.
For the first time, Viktor wasn't standing in front of an enemy he could identify. He was standing before a secret that might have existed long before either of them had been born.
The symbols shifted again.
A final message appeared.
THREE WITNESSES. THREE OATHS. ONE CHILD.
Below it, three seals emerged.
The first belonged to the Sokolov family.
The second bore the Morozov crest.
The third carried the black raven of the Volkovs.
Artyom stared at the seals.
Artyom: "They all promised something."
Caelum: "Yes. But we don't yet know what each oath required."
Lucien: "The records are locked behind three separate bloodline authorizations. We have the Sokolov seal's response, but the other two remain dormant."
Viktor looked at the black raven.
Viktor: "Then the next answer is in my family's possession."
Artyom: "Your father might refuse to tell us."
Viktor: "Then I'll ask him a question he can't ignore."
Artyom: "And if he still refuses?"
Viktor met his eyes.
Viktor: "Then I'll find another way to uncover the truth. But I won't let you face it alone."
For a moment, Artyom said nothing.
He had spent years believing that his family had discarded him because he was inconvenient. Now, every revelation offered a different explanation, but none could erase the loneliness of those years.
Understanding the past would not make the past painless.
Still, he wanted the truth.
All of it.
He turned back to the crystal.
Artyom: "Open the next record."
Lucien hesitated.
Lucien: "There's a condition."
Artyom: "What condition?"
Lucien pointed to a small inscription appearing beneath the three seals.
THE WITNESSES MUST ANSWER IN PERSON.
Caelum's expression darkened.
Caelum: "The Sanctuary is demanding the presence of all three."
Viktor: "Andrei, Sergei, and Roman."
Artyom looked toward the distant passage leading out of the vault.
His father was somewhere beyond the Sanctuary's walls. Andrei Morozov remained an unanswered mystery. Roman Volkov was the only one of the three who could potentially be reached through Viktor.
Three men had guarded the same secret.
Three men had made promises about one child.
And now the Sanctuary was demanding that they stand before the truth they had buried.
Artyom straightened, the silver ring on his hand catching the crystal's light.
Artyom: "Then we'll bring them here."
This time, he wasn't asking permission to learn about his past.
He was choosing to face it.