The entrance to the Emberlight Sanctum wasn't built.
It was birthed.
As Jinryu stepped forward, the ashen ground opened like a wound, revealing obsidian stairs veined with crimson flame. Each step pulsed with ancestral Qi, older than sects, older than names.
Maeryn followed, silent.
Neither spoke.
Their Cores vibrated in sync, like tuning forks rediscovering their harmony. The deeper they descended, the harder it became to tell whose heartbeat was whose.
At the Sanctum's heart, the path opened into a circular chamber, vast and dim.
No torches.
No lights.
Only one thing:
A suspended crystal ember, hovering above a pool of still flame. Not burning — remembering.
And the moment they stepped into its radius—
Time shattered.
— Memory Plane —
Jinryu stood in a city of gold and sky.
Towering spires pierced the clouds. Birds of flame circled the horizon. People in white and red robes walked beneath floating texts, their eyes glowing faintly with divine light.
He recognized none of it — and all of it.
The Tower of Babel. Before the fall.
He looked down — his hands were smaller. Younger.
A girl stood beside him.
Red hair, warm eyes, barefoot in the marble corridor.
Maeryn. But younger too. And not quite her.
"You promised me," she said.
"Promised what?"
"That you wouldn't let them divide us."
"I tried."
She looked away. "The Elders are afraid. They say one Core cannot be held by two."
Jinryu looked toward a glowing pedestal behind them. Floating above it — a single Core, pulsing gold and crimson together. Not split. Not fractured.
Whole.
Alive.
"We can share it," she said.
"We always could."
But then the doors slammed open.
Nine Elders. Robes of white ash. Eyes like mirrors.
"This bond cannot remain," the lead one said. "It will devour the world."
Maeryn stood between them and the Core.
"We're stronger together."
"No," said the Ninth Elder. "Together, you are unpredictable."
They moved to split the Core.
Jinryu ran.
Too late.
A sound like the end of the world.
Light—
Flame—
Screaming—
And then—
Silence.
— Present —
Jinryu gasped and collapsed to his knees, the flame-pool reflecting his trembling form.
Maeryn stood frozen, hand over her heart.
"…I remember," she whispered.
The cat hissed behind them, fur bristling. "That… was the original sin."
Jinryu looked up.
"We weren't just chosen."
Maeryn finished the thought. "We were the first."
The Core suspended in the air cracked.
One fracture. Thin. But deep.
It responded not to power… but to recognition.
Their presence was waking something older than memory.
And deep within the Sanctum walls, gears began to turn. Runes once sealed by the Ancients reactivated. Old scripts flickered into view across the chamber:
"If they reunite the Core… balance ends."
"But if they remain apart… the world burns."
Maeryn turned to Jinryu.
"Do you still want to walk this path?"
Jinryu rose slowly, steadying himself.
"I don't think we have a choice anymore."
As the crystal ember cracked a second time, a shape began to emerge from the pool below — massive, humanoid, with wings of fire and a helm carved from bone.
A Flame Warden.
The Sanctum's final guardian.
And this time, it didn't care who they used to be.
Only who they were now.