The glyph hovered between us, pulsing with golden fire.
Three crowns, linked.
Not symbolic.
Literal.
Kael touched it first. "It's power."
Veyra corrected him. "No. It's a binding. It's the seal that kept the Hollow Regent outside the Vault. And now that it's broken, it's trying to return—not to destroy us… but to become us."
Elyra stepped closer. "It wants form. A throne."
She reached into the glyph—and recoiled.
> "It's not just a seal. It's a key. And the door it locks... isn't to the Hollow Regent.
It's inside one of us."
---
Silence followed.
The glyph shimmered again.
And showed us a truth none of us wanted to see:
A future split into three visions.
In one, Kael wears a crown of frost, seated on a throne made of regrets. The kingdom obeys—but no one remembers why.
In another, Elyra burns in blue flame, keeping the Vault sealed—but alone, forgotten by time, revered only in name.
In the last, Veyra stands atop the ruins of a rebuilt empire. Unified. Ordered. Empty.
Each future ended in silence.
Each required one of us to offer ourselves—not to death…
…but to erasure.
One legacy. One name. One identity.
Burned away to contain the Hollow Regent forever.
---
Kael turned to me. "We have to choose."
Elyra stepped forward. "No. We have to offer. Not force."
Veyra said nothing.
Then, softly: "If I do it, you win. The Vaults remain sealed. You get to rule in peace."
I turned to her.
"It's not about winning. It's about remembering who we are when everything else is taken away."
---
Outside, the Hollow Regent reached the outlands of the capital.
Entire neighborhoods fell quiet.
People forgot their names. Their families. Their purpose.
Guards stood in the streets, staring blankly. The cathedral bells rang—but no one remembered to silence them.
The city was unthreading.
---
Back in the Vault chamber, I reached into the glyph.
Pain surged up my arm—not heat, not cold.
Absence.
It tried to erase me.
But something pushed back.
A spark.
Kael's voice.
> "We choose together. No one sacrifices alone."
He stepped forward. Then Elyra. Then Veyra.
The glyph responded.
Its light tripled—then reshaped.
Four interwoven arcs.
A fourth path.
A shared seal.
---
But it came with a condition:
> No future.
No heirs.
No remembrance in books.
No songs.
We would save the realm.
But it would forget who did it.
---
I looked at them—my circle, my fire, my family.
And I smiled.
"We were never doing this for glory anyway."
---
Together, we stepped into the glyph.
The Hollow Regent reached the throne steps.
The city fell to silence.
And then…
We lit the sky.
Golden flame surged upward from the heart of Vaylen Hollow.
It painted the heavens.
The Hollow Regent paused, turned toward the light—
And was consumed.
Not by fire.
By memory restored.
He screamed—
As the Vault sealed him one final time.
Not beneath the world.
But within our names.
---
The people returned.
Their minds cleared.
Their names remembered.
But none could recall the ones who saved them.
There were no statues.
No holidays.
Only a whisper carried on the wind…
> "A crown does not make a kingdom.
A memory… does."
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