The walls of the Vault trembled, as if the city itself was holding its breath. The mark on Zara's arm pulsed like a warning—no, not a warning. A command.
She had been pulled into something far older than Aeroth's rewritten histories, something her mother had once bled to keep hidden. But now, the truth refused to stay buried.
Zara stepped forward.
The Echo did not stop her.
"You hesitate," it whispered, the fractured version of herself watching with hollow amusement. "You fear what is already yours."
Noel gripped his blades tighter. "Zara, this isn't the time to—"
She ignored him.
The Vault was open now. It would not wait for her indecision.
The air thickened, laced with something unseen, something pressing against the edges of reality like a tide waiting to flood the ruins. The altar of broken glyphs pulsed, rearranging themselves in patterns she did not fully understand.
Yet, they understood her.
She reached forward, fingertips grazing the ancient stone, her breath uneven.
A voice spilled through the vault—low, resonant, laced with sorrow and fury.
The Blood Moon will rise.
Zara stiffened.
Her mother's voice.
No. Not hers.
A memory.
A warning.
Noel cursed under his breath, stepping back as the sigils ignited—red, raw, burning through the layers of silence Aeroth had wrapped around its darkest secrets.
The Vault was not just a chamber.
It was a gate.
And something was waiting on the other side.
Zara clenched her fists, teeth grinding. "This isn't over."
The Echo smiled—her own smile, twisted into something cruel.
"No," it whispered. "It is only beginning."
***
Zara felt the Vault breathe.
Not metaphorically. Not as some distant sensation buried in half-forgotten dreams.
The stone exhaled.
The air around her thickened, as though reality itself had stopped pretending Aeroth's past was buried. The altar pulsed with something deep and resonant, shifting glyphs curling into patterns she did not recognize—but recognized her.
Noel's breathing was steady, but she could hear the tension in it. He had fought too many things that should not exist to mistake this for anything other than the first step into something worse.
Zara tightened her grip on her dagger. The Echo stood beside her, its shifting form wearing her own shape but twisted, the version of herself that had embraced the cult instead of fleeing. The smile on its face was cold. Knowing.
"You have already opened it," the Echo murmured. "Now you must step through."
Zara inhaled sharply, grounding herself against the overwhelming pressure rising from beneath the Vault. The moment the altar had shifted, the darkness below had stirred—deep, watching, waiting.
This was not just a hidden chamber.
This was something Aeroth had sealed for a reason.
Noel took a step toward her, his voice measured but firm. "Zara, don't rush this."
She didn't respond.
Her pulse was too loud.
She wasn't rushing.
She was being pulled.
Her mark burned hotter. The glyphs along the altar twisted again, forming something new—a crescent moon fractured down the center, surrounded by sigils she did not understand.
Then—
The first sound.
Not a whisper.
Not a voice.
A heartbeat.
She knew it wasn't hers.
It wasn't Noel's.
It wasn't from the Echo beside her, watching with an expression that could only be described as expectation.
This heartbeat came from below.
She took another step forward.
The Vault responded.
The altar split apart—not violently, not in destruction, but in deliberate unraveling. Stone folded like pages of a forgotten book, shifting inward, revealing the passage beyond.
Zara sucked in a breath.
Darkness waited beyond the doorway.
Not absence.
Something alive.
Something that had been waiting for her all along.
Noel muttered under his breath, barely audible. "Zara..."
She turned to him.
She saw it in his eyes.
He was afraid.
Not of what lay beyond the passage.
Afraid of what she might become if she stepped through it.
Zara clenched her jaw. "This is what I've been searching for."
Noel didn't argue.
Because he knew it was true.
The Echo beside her chuckled, the sound laced with something deeper—something resembling triumph.
"You were always meant to return."
The Vault pulsed again.
The fractured crescent moon carved into the altar shimmered, the sigils surrounding it vibrating in tandem.
Zara exhaled slowly, shifting her grip on her dagger. She didn't feel fear.
She felt inevitability.
This was her choice.
And yet, it wasn't.
She stepped forward.
Toward the darkness.
Toward the rising heartbeat.
Toward the truth Aeroth had tried so hard to forget.
The passage swallowed her whole.
And the city screamed.