The wind howled like a warning across the jagged cliffs. Before them stretched the Shadow Rift—a gaping scar in the earth that shimmered with otherworldly energy. The sky above it twisted in hues of purple and black, and lightning forked silently across the clouds.
Lioren stood at the edge, his cloak billowing. The ground trembled faintly, as if the rift itself was breathing.
"This is it," Saerin whispered. "The point of no return."
Behind them, their small expedition stood silent. Kael adjusted the straps on his armor, eyes narrowed. Elyra had sent with them a shard of the Arcanum's core—a guiding relic that would help them navigate the unstable pathways inside the rift.
"It won't be time or space as we know it," Elyra had warned. "Memories can become real. Thoughts can kill. And fear... fear will feed them."
Lioren took a breath and stepped forward.
The world shattered.
It wasn't like falling. It was more like being rewritten. Each step into the rift peeled away a layer of perception. For a moment, Lioren saw himself as a child again, crying beside a fire. Then he was on a battlefield, soaked in blood. Then... nothing.
Then everything.
When he awoke, he stood in a forest that smelled of smoke and flowers. The sky above was full of shifting constellations. The rest of the group appeared nearby, disoriented but alive.
"This place... reacts to us," Kael muttered. "I saw my brother. He's been dead for years."
"They say the Rift mimics the soul," Saerin said softly. "It tests you. Weakens you. And then devours you."
Suddenly, the ground pulsed—and creatures emerged. Twisted forms that looked like memories come to life: a headmaster that Kael once feared, a shadowy version of Lioren himself, a dying version of Saerin's mother.
"They're not real," Lioren growled. "Don't believe what they show you."
The battle was not fought with weapons alone. Each slash was a denial of fear, each block a defense of will. Kael cleaved through a shadowy knight. Saerin used her magic to dispel illusions. Lioren, facing the specter of himself, simply whispered:
"I am not the boy who failed."
The creature dissolved like mist.
Hours—or was it days?—later, the path shifted again. Now it was a winding bridge over nothingness, stars spinning below.
In the center stood a lone figure.
Clad in dark silver armor, the figure's face was hidden behind a helm, but his voice echoed as though coming from deep within the Rift.
"You seek the Heartstone," he said. "But to claim it, one must pay the price."
"Who are you?" Lioren demanded.
"I am what remains of the last who tried—and failed," the figure answered. "I am the Warden of Memory. To pass, you must surrender what you fear losing most."
Silence.
Kael stepped forward. "You'll take a memory?"
The Warden nodded. "A memory, a bond, a truth. What you give, you never reclaim."
Lioren clenched his fists. "What if we refuse?"
"Then you remain. Forever."
The choice lay heavy in the air.
Lioren finally stepped forward. "Take my memory of peace," he said. "If I must fight till the end, I will not need it."
The Warden paused. "So be it."
A flicker of light passed between them, and Lioren gasped as the feeling of stillness, of quiet mornings and gentle laughter, drained away.
Kael gave up his memory of his brother's smile.
Saerin gave away the name of her first love.
And with that, the bridge shifted—and before them, floating in a crystal prism atop a monolith, was the Heartstone.
It pulsed with raw energy.
They had made it.
But as Lioren reached for it, a crack split the sky above.
Something ancient and vast was awakening.