The Vault's quiet had become something else—watchful.
Eloryn couldn't take her eyes off Lys. He stood calmly between broken patterns of light, the kind of stillness that wasn't learned but remembered. Like a statue someone had accidentally wished into motion.
"You're a… Remnant," she said. "How is that possible?"
Lys stepped lightly over a threadline and lowered himself to the floor, cross-legged, as if the gravity of what he was saying required grounding.
"I was once a possibility. A life not chosen. A dream your third incarnation almost dreamed," he said. "We Remnants are born when echoes linger too long in the Loom. Unclaimed fates. Forgotten hopes."
"That sounds poetic," Fenn said. "And wildly unstable."
"It is," Lys replied without offense. "But recently, the Loom began to shift. Your magic pulled at the edge of what is—and brushed against what could've been. That woke us."
"How many are there?" Maren asked.
"A handful. Scattered. Some sane. Some… not." Lys's voice dropped. "Not all of them want to help you, Oracle."
Pennrick stepped forward, rubbing his temples. "This is a whole branch of memory theory I thought was myth. Remnants shouldn't exist, let alone cross into anchored reality."
"They didn't," Lys said. "Until she changed the rules."
Everyone looked to Eloryn.
She felt it again—that subtle tug at her soul, like threads twisting toward her center. Her power had always felt heavy with memory. But now it reached.
"What do you remember about me?" she asked Lys.
He studied her with impossible gentleness.
"I remember a world where you never took the Oracle's path. You were a cartographer. You mapped sleeping gods and drew bridges between the minds of dying stars. You taught children how to listen to silence."
Eloryn blinked. "That… sounds beautiful."
"You never learned war," he said softly. "But you also never saved anyone."
Fenn let out a long whistle. "Okay. Existential truth bombs are fun and all, but why are you here now?"
Lys's expression darkened.
"Because one of the others is coming. One who remembers ending you. They call themselves the Gloam."
Maren's hand drifted to his blade. "You're saying we're being hunted. By a version of Eloryn that… what, turned wrong?"
"No," Lys said quietly. "By a memory of a future where you died screaming. And it wants to make that future real."
Silence followed.
Then Pennrick muttered, "Well. That's a bit more dramatic than last week's onion prophecy."
Eloryn stepped forward, voice calm but firm.
"Then we find this Gloam. And we remind it—I choose my fate. No one else."
Lys smiled.
"That's why I came."
******************