The wind inside the Forbidden Verge didn't howl. It breathed—slow and heavy—like a dying god exhaling its final thoughts across the bones of a forgotten realm.
Ren staggered forward through the violet fog, each step sinking into the half-formed ground that pulsed with memory like living tissue. Around him, shadows flickered, not cast by light, but by thoughts. He saw glimpses of faces he didn't recognize, echoing across fractured time. A woman laughing. A child crying. A man begging as flames devoured a throne of mirrors.
"This isn't real," Ren whispered, clutching his chest as the pain there flared again—like something inside him was being peeled back, layer by layer.
But the System's voice was silent. No alerts. No guidance. Just static and that same growing pressure behind his eyes.
Then he heard it. A voice—not Naelir's, not his own. Not even the System's.
"Welcome home, First Echo."
The fog before him parted, and a figure emerged.
It wore no face. Its body rippled like wet ink on parchment, barely keeping shape. But its presence… it felt ancient. Older than any Reclaimer. Older than the Protocol.
Ren's hand twitched toward the hilt of the spectral blade still bound to his will, but the moment he reached for power, it vanished—his soul threads frayed and unresponsive.
"You are not allowed to lie here," the thing said, stepping forward with the sound of glass cracking. "Only truths survive the Verge."
"What are you?" Ren rasped, backing away as memories he hadn't lived began bleeding into his vision.
"Not what," it answered. "When. I am the memory of your potential. The graveyard of your might. The Verge remembers what you've forgotten."
The fog thickened again, this time curling with clarity.
He saw the Obsidian Throne.
He saw himself on it.
He saw the world burning beneath him.
"No—no, that's not me," Ren gasped, falling to his knees.
It didn't matter. The Verge wasn't asking. It was showing.
The creature—the Echoform—drifted closer. "You were made to fall. Made to burn. But something… interfered."
A flicker of red light cut across the fog. Naelir's presence flared within Ren like a blade of fire cleaving through nightmares.
"You are not ready to remember this."
Naelir's voice echoed in his mind, distant, distorted—but furious.
The Verge trembled. Cracks split across the air like lightning, revealing other layers beneath—chambers of memory, some burning, others frozen in impossible stillness.
And then—a voice Ren did recognize.
"Ren?!"
Valka.
She wasn't in front of him. She was above him—somehow outside this place, her voice echoing down like sunlight through water.
Ren surged up. "Valka! I'm here! Don't—!"
But the Echoform lashed out, striking his chest with a tendril of living memory.
He convulsed.
Visions poured into his skull—
—Himself standing over the body of someone he loved.
—A throne room filled with screaming souls.
—The flame god Naelir, shackled to a spire made of bones and dreams.
—And then: a girl. Red eyes. A dagger. Whispering:
"I remember you."
The Verge buckled. Everything collapsed inward.
Ren screamed, but no sound escaped. The world shattered—and reformed.
He was lying on the cold stone floor of the ancient sanctum again. The Verge was gone. So was the fog.
Above him, Valka stood panting, holding what looked like a cracked sigil stone pulsing with runes.
"You idiot," she snapped, kneeling. "You soulburned your way into a sealed god memory?! What were you thinking?!"
Ren's lips parted, dry and cracked. "I… needed to know… what the Reclaimers hid."
Valka stared at him, her expression unreadable. "And did you?"
Ren looked past her—into nothing.
"I saw myself. Burning the world. And sitting on its ashes."
Silence.
Then Valka helped him sit up. "Well," she muttered, "that's horrifying. But we've got bigger problems. The spire guardians are waking up."
A deep rumble echoed through the sanctum, shaking dust from the ceilings.
From the shadows, mechanical forms stepped out—hulking, soul-infused constructs with Reclaimer sigils burned into their chests. Their eyes glowed with ancient fury.
Ren clenched his fists, power returning in fragments. Naelir stirred inside him.
"I don't know what I am anymore," he whispered. "But I'm done running."
The nearest construct roared.
And Ren ran toward it.