Calyx dreamed of roots that whispered his name.
They slithered through his thoughts like vines through stone, murmuring fragments of truths he hadn't learned yet things that sounded like memories, but tasted like prophecy. And beneath all of it, a sound like slow breathing.
When he awoke, the moon hadn't moved.
It never did.
The others were already stirring. Serah stood on a ridge just beyond the camp, her cloak tugged by a wind that carried the scent of moss and rot. Wren sharpened a small crescent-shaped blade with quiet precision, and Bast, ever silent, packed away the last of the root-meat and folded bone maps.
Calyx sat up slowly, the coin and thorn still tight in his hand.
No one had stolen them. That said something.
Serah didn't turn as she spoke. "We move today. There's a ruin not far from here. The Quiet Flame says something waits for us there."
"The Quiet Flame talks?" Calyx asked, brushing sleep from his eyes.
Wren gave a dry laugh. "No. It breathes. You just have to listen properly."
Calyx stood and walked up beside Serah. From the ridge, the land dropped into a gully where cracked stone towers jutted like ribs from the earth. Most were half-collapsed, overgrown with weeping ivy and bones of long-dead trees.
But in the middle, untouched by decay, was a single obsidian spire. No vines clung to it. No dust settled on it. It gleamed like it had just been built.
"That's the ruin?" Calyx asked.
"No," Serah said softly. "That's the heart of it."
Calyx frowned. "Who built it?"
"No one remembers. The name was erased long ago. We just call it the Hollow Vault."
"And what's inside?"
Serah looked at him, serious.
"Either nothing. Or everything."
They descended carefully. The air grew colder as they approached the vault. Not the kind of cold that made your skin shiver, but a deeper, soul-heavy chill as if the place itself wanted to forget warmth.
The cracked towers around them whispered as they passed.
Not words.
Just breath. Like a thousand mouths exhaling in rhythm, too weak to form sentences but too stubborn to die.
Calyx gripped his cloak tighter.
As they reached the base of the vault, Wren spoke up. "There's no door."
"Never is," Serah replied.
"So how do we get in?" Calyx asked.
Serah turned to him. "That thorn. Give it here."
Calyx hesitated, then handed it over.
She held it out toward the vault. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the thorn twitched. The silver thread unraveled and drifted into the air like smoke. The vault breathed in. A seam appeared along the base of the spire thin and vertical, like a scar parting.
Then it opened.
Just wide enough for them to slip through.
Inside, it was quiet.
Not silent just wrong. The kind of quiet where sound tried to exist, but the space itself refused to echo.
The floor was smooth, black stone. The walls pulsed faintly, like the inside of a throat. Everything was too clean. Too new. As if time had not been allowed inside.
Calyx whispered, "This place… it doesn't feel dead."
Serah nodded. "That's because it isn't."
They walked for a long time.
There were no torches. No light sources. Yet they could see. Not well but enough. The faint gleam from the walls seemed to follow them, like they were being guided.
Or watched.
Eventually, they came to a chamber.
It was circular, with a raised platform in the center. On the floor were dozens, no, hundreds of symbols. All carved deep into the stone, but none familiar. They moved slightly when stared at. Not alive, exactly. More like remembering themselves.
Calyx stepped toward the platform.
Serah stopped him. "Wait."
She knelt and placed her hand on one of the symbols.
It pulsed.
Then the air trembled.
A voice filled the chamber not loud, but deep enough to shake the bone.
"WHO SPEAKS IN THE HOLLOWED TONGUE?"
None of them answered right away.
Then Serah stood and said, steady as stone, "We who remember the fire before the moon."
Silence. Then
"WHAT DO YOU SEEK?"
Serah looked to Calyx. "Your turn."
Calyx stepped forward, unsure. He opened his mouth, then stopped. He thought about what he should say. Some brave, noble answer. But that wasn't real. So instead, he said the truth.
"I don't know. But I know something in me has been lit. And I need to understand why."
Silence again. Then the symbols on the floor glowed red. And the platform began to rise. From beneath it came a low hiss, followed by a rush of warm air. Something was emerging. Not a creature. Not exactly. But a shape.
Made of fire and shadow. A figure formed of burning script and flickering bone. It hovered above the platform, eyeless, mouthless, held together by memory.
Calyx staggered back.
Wren pulled his blade.
But Serah raised her hand. "No. It won't hurt us… unless he fails."
"Fails what?" Calyx asked.
"The test," she said.
"Test?"
But the figure was already moving toward him.
And then without warning it lunged.
The burning figure surged toward Calyx.
It wasn't fast but it didn't need to be. Its presence filled the room like pressure in the lungs, each step a slow collapse of space between them. The symbols on the floor shimmered red-hot, bleeding embers that curled upward before fading into ash mid-air.
Calyx didn't run.
He couldn't.
His legs felt locked in place, as if the stone itself had swallowed his knees. The flame-shape stopped just a breath away, close enough that heat began to sting his skin, but not burn.
Its head tilted.
A voice, quiet but absolute, filled his mind.
"Do you remember who you were before the moon first saw you?"
Calyx blinked.
The world shifted.
Suddenly, he stood in a village he hadn't seen in years. Familiar rooftops. Dusty roads. Children's laughter echoing in the air like soft bells. He looked down at his hands.
They were smaller. His arms were thin, bare. His fingers unscarred. He was younger. A voice called from behind.
"Calyx! Get away from there!"
He turned.
A woman his mother. Hair in a tight braid, apron dusted with flour. She was smiling, but stern, hands on her hips. Behind her, the smell of baked roots and warm broth drifted from their cottage.
"You'll fall in the river again if you keep climbing like that," she warned.
And he remembered this. This exact moment. He had been seven. Curious. Climbing the stone wall near the river bend where frogs gathered.
He remembered what came next. The screaming. The fire. The men with no faces. The bright flash as the moon turned red. The scene shifted. He stood in ash. The village was gone.
Nothing but charred bones and smoke. The wind howled through empty windows, carrying whispers that tugged at his ears.
"Name yourself."
"Remember yourself."
"Before the flame. Before the fall."
Calyx clenched his jaw.
"I'm not that child anymore."
"Then what are you?" the voice asked.
He looked down at his hands.
The thorn Serah had given him was back in his palm. It pulsed faintly, warm but not painful. The silver thread had faded but something else had taken its place.
A mark. Like a rune scorched into the back of his hand. A spiral of ash. He held it up.
"I'm the one who walked through the fire."
The voice quieted. Then.
"Good."
Reality returned like a breath after drowning.
Calyx fell to his knees, gasping.
The burning figure was gone.
The chamber was still glowing but gently now, less a threat and more a heartbeat.
Serah helped him up. "You passed."
"What… was that?"
She pointed to his hand.
"That mark? That's yours now. A memory given form. You've started shaping yourself."
"Shaping into what?"
Wren sheathed his blade. "Into something dangerous."
Bast stepped forward, pointing toward the now-open passage behind the platform. It led down, deeper still.
"Come," he said. "The vault's core waits."
The path narrowed.
They walked in silence for a time, each step sounding too loud in the stillness. Calyx noticed the deeper they went, the more the stone walls looked… wrong.
They breathed.
Not literally. But the walls had subtle ridges like ribs and every few paces, he swore he felt a pulse beneath his palm if he touched them.
This ruin wasn't dead. It was sleeping. Eventually, the tunnel opened into a final room.
There, a massive sphere floated above a pedestal of blackened bone. The sphere looked like the moon but fractured. Pieces missing. Surface cracked. Inside it pulsed with threads of red and violet.
Serah bowed her head. "The Vaultheart."
"What is it?" Calyx asked.
Wren spoke. "A prison. A seed. A memory."
Serah looked to him. "It's yours now."
He stepped forward. The Vaultheart pulsed. And in his mind. Images. Visions.
Cities made of silence. Thrones built from sorrow. Wings of flame. Names torn apart and sewn into new ones. A girl with glass eyes reaching for him. A serpent made of forgotten gods. A moon screaming.
And one name. Not his own. But tied to him. Ashwrought. The Vaultheart shattered. Light exploded outward.
Calyx fell again but this time, he didn't lose consciousness. He felt the surge pass through him like a tide. When he stood, the mark on his hand had changed. Grown.
A second spiral joined the first. A sign.
Wren nodded. "You're being remembered now."
Serah placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You've begun your song."
Calyx looked toward the passage ahead. No longer afraid.
"What comes next?"
Serah smiled faintly.
"The world hears you now. And it's going to start singing back."