Gravehollow slept like a beast drugged by centuries of silence.
But beneath its crust, old sins stirred.
Auren moved with quiet purpose, his footsteps muffled by damp moss and the ash-stained path. Lyra followed, silent this time, her mismatched eyes alert. The hill they climbed was called "Saint's Spine" by the locals, though no saints were ever buried here.
Only mistakes.
"Here," Lyra whispered, kneeling near a half-buried stone slab. "I saw light coming from it. Not firelight… something else."
The wind hushed. The earth seemed to hold its breath.
Auren pressed his palm to the slab.
Nothing.
Then—pain. A sudden flare from the scar above his heart. Not burning, but pulling, like a tether buried deep. The stone reacted. Runes flickered red, then gold. The ground cracked in a perfect circle.
With a slow rumble, a staircase revealed itself—descending into darkness.
He didn't hesitate.
Stone walls lined with forgotten scripture. Air thick with regret and time. As he descended, faint whispers followed — fragmented confessions echoing from the dead.
"I stole from the offering bowl…""…forgave him… but I never meant it.""…I let her burn."
At the bottom, an altar stood. Above it, an ancient tribunal symbol — the Scales of Karma, broken in half.
Auren stepped forward. His hand instinctively reached toward the pedestal. Something clicked. A pulse shot through his body.
And then—he saw it.
A fragment of his old blade, impaled in a stone basin, covered in rust, blood, and divine ash.
His fingers wrapped around the hilt.
He collapsed.
A flash — not memory, but echo.
A battlefield of crimson fog. Screams from angels and dragons. And a knight of fire and chains, shouting his name before impaling him.
When he came to, Lyra had her hand on his shoulder.
"You were… glowing," she said.
Auren's voice was low. "The world remembers what I don't."
His blade fragment shimmered, faintly.Not fully divine. Not yet. But… awakening.
He looked up at the broken Scales of Karma.
And for the first time since his fall…He felt judgment stir.
"Ashes are memory's final shape—but from ash, flame remembers." — Gravemark Inscription, Tribunal Ruins