The passage swallowed Zara whole.
She stepped into the dark, the air thick with something ancient, something pressing against her lungs like the weight of an unsung scream. The Vault had invited her, but it had never promised to let her leave.
Noel's voice was distant behind her. "Zara—"
She couldn't turn back now.
The world shifted.
Not the way Aeroth's ruins had crumbled, not the way the Hollowed had twisted through its broken streets. This was deeper, threaded into the marrow of reality itself.
Her boots touched stone—no, not stone.
Bone.
She inhaled sharply, tightening her grip on her dagger.
The sigils lining the vault's edges pulsed, shifting with an unseen breath, weaving patterns of fractured moons and forgotten names into the hollow walls. The glyphs did not warn her.
They welcomed her.
Zara exhaled, steadying herself.
She wasn't afraid.
Not of the Vault.
Not of the truth waiting beyond its sealed doors.
But she was afraid of what she might become when she finally understood it.
The Echo flickered beside her—her own reflection, twisted into something cruel. Something expectant.
"You are close," it murmured. "Can you feel it?"
Zara swallowed hard. She could.
The heartbeat.
The same pulse she had felt beneath the ruins of Aeroth. The same rhythm she had heard beneath the fractured sigils of the Singing Grave.
It was stronger now.
Closer.
Noel stepped into the Vault, his expression unreadable but his stance sharp. He didn't trust this place, didn't trust what it was doing to her.
But he wasn't leaving.
Not until he was sure she could.
"The walls are moving," he muttered.
She turned her gaze upward.
He was right.
The Vault did not have ceilings or stone arches holding its weight.
It had bones.
Bones that shifted, curled, pressed inward like living pillars.
Bones that whispered.
Zara clenched her fists, stepping deeper into the chamber.
The sigils burned brighter.
The passage narrowed.
And then—
She saw it.
At the center of the Vault, raised on an altar of blackened ruins, stood a throne.
Not a throne built for kings.
Not a seat carved for rulers.
A throne shaped for something more.
Something older.
Something Aeroth had tried—and failed—to forget.
Zara stopped breathing.
Noel muttered something under his breath, but she couldn't hear him.
Because she knew this place.
She had dreamed of it.
She had walked through it in the visions stolen from the fracture.
This throne was waiting for her.
And the truth that sat beneath it was finally ready to speak.
***
Zara could not breathe.
The throne stood before her, carved from blackened stone, its jagged edges resembling broken crescents. The fractured mark—her mark—glowed faintly at its base, pulsing in rhythm with something deeper beneath the Vault's floor.
Noel was tense beside her, his eyes never leaving the twisted symbols stretching across the walls. He had fought enough horrors to know this was no ordinary place.
"This isn't a relic," he murmured. "This is a warning."
Zara didn't answer.
Her feet moved on their own, carrying her toward the throne as if compelled by something unseen. The weight pressing against her ribs tightened, every breath laced with the echoes of forgotten voices.
She had been here before.
Not in flesh.
In memory.
She reached for the throne.
The Vault reacted.
The sigils across the chamber pulsed once—violently, like a dying heartbeat clawing for life. The walls trembled. The passage behind them darkened, shifting in unnatural patterns.
And the throne whispered.
Not in words.
Not in sound.
In thoughts.
"You must sit," the Echo said, standing just behind her, watching with an expression that mirrored her own but twisted into something far more knowing. "You have already accepted the truth. Now you must understand it."
Zara clenched her jaw.
Her fingers barely grazed the surface of the seat when the first memory struck her.
It wasn't hers.
It belonged to the city.
To Aeroth before it was Aeroth.
To the first voice that had ever screamed.
Zara staggered, gasping as the images tore through her mind.
A temple, drowned in red mist.
A woman, kneeling before the throne, bleeding from her wrists.
A name—no, not a name. A title.
The Hollow Sovereign.
Noel moved toward her, steadying her, his voice sharp. "Zara, get out of your head. Focus!"
She couldn't.
The Vault had already swallowed her whole.
The images twisted violently, bending around her pulse, forcing her deeper into something she had barely begun to understand.
She wasn't just an Echo-bearer.
She wasn't just the broken memory the Circle had failed to erase.
She was something far worse.
Something that had been waiting to wake up.
Her mark burned brighter, threading through her veins like molten ink.
The Vault groaned.
The throne pulsed.
And then—
She saw him.
Not Noel.
Not the Echo.
The man who had once ruled before silence became Aeroth's law.
The Hollow Sovereign stood behind the throne, watching her with eyes that bled silver.
"You remember," he murmured.
Zara couldn't move.
Her pulse had ceased to belong to her.
The Vault did not just hold lost histories.
It held the first ruler of rewritten truth.
And he had been waiting for her.
Noel swore under his breath, gripping his blades tighter, but he didn't attack.
Because there was nothing to strike.
The Sovereign was no longer flesh.
He was something else.
Something bound to the city.
Something bound to her.
The Echo chuckled softly, stepping closer, its reflection flickering like distorted light. "You have finally found the first voice. The one that sang before the world forgot how to scream."
Zara tightened her grip on her dagger, chest heaving.
The Hollow Sovereign took a step forward.
The Vault shifted in response, the bones beneath them trembling.
"You must take the throne," he said.
Noel growled, eyes narrowing. "You're not forcing her into anything."
The Sovereign smiled.
"No," he whispered. "She has already chosen."
Zara's mind spiraled.
No. No, that wasn't true. She hadn't chosen anything.
Had she?
Her veins burned.
The mark on her arm pulsed harder.
The Vault held its breath.
And Aeroth waited for her answer.
Would she sit?
Would she claim what the city had tried to erase?
Would she awaken the Sovereign's truth?
Her hand reached forward.
Noel cursed.
The Echo watched.
And reality fractured.