MASTERS OF THE ETERNITY
CHAPTER 14: ECHOES OF KAELITH
The Sanctum pulsed like a heartbeat.
Around them, the memory-city shimmered in impossible symmetry — glowing towers untouched by time, bridges suspended on nothing, fountains that poured light instead of water. It was Kaelith before the Collapse. Or perhaps a dream of what it had once hoped to be.
Raian took a slow step forward.
Each footfall echoed with unfamiliar familiarity, like retracing a path he hadn't yet walked — or had walked once, and buried. The shard in his palm was hot now, its glow pulsing in rhythm with the city around them.
Kaelith knew him.
---
Lira trailed beside him, but her expression had changed. Her gaze darted not to the buildings, but to the shadows between them — watching shapes that flickered in and out of sight.
Izek spoke in a low tone. "This place… it's not just remembering. It's rebuilding."
Raian turned. "What do you mean?"
"The walls. The air. The resonance. It's not passive. The Sanctum is reacting to your presence. Like it's correcting the past as we walk."
Lira flinched. "It's rewriting the truth."
Before Raian could reply, the figure ahead moved.
Not walked — just shifted, like a memory reasserting itself into a story that refused to forget.
Raian stepped onto the platform.
The figure turned.
It was him.
---
Or rather, a version of him — older, scarred, cloaked in armor fused with arc-light and fractal metal. A sword hung at his back, humming softly — and his eyes glowed with a light that wasn't fully human anymore.
This Raian looked at them with both recognition… and regret.
"You finally returned," the Echo said.
Raian's voice was barely a whisper. "What are you?"
"I'm the part of you that stayed behind. The fragment the Blade needed. When you walked away from Kaelith… I remained."
Lira took a step forward. "He doesn't remember this."
"No," the Echo replied. "Because if he did… he wouldn't still be whole."
---
A shockwave rippled through the Sanctum. Buildings flickered, briefly replaced by charred ruins — as if the memory had cracked. A scream echoed faintly — not from any throat, but from the sky.
Raian gritted his teeth. "Why are we here?"
The Echo stepped down from the platform.
"To remember what was done. What must be done again. The Blade of Eternity doesn't choose the strongest. It chooses the one most willing to break themselves."
Raian stared at his reflection. "Break for what?"
The Echo raised a hand — and the shard in Raian's palm floated, trembling.
"To seal what's coming."
---
Suddenly, time collapsed.
Raian fell — or was pulled — backward through moments not his own: standing atop a burning bridge, holding a dying Lira in his arms… kneeling before the Eclipse, offering the Blade in surrender… forging a weapon beneath a sky of glass, while the world outside shattered.
Then—
He stood again, breathless, in the Sanctum.
The Echo was gone.
But before him now stood a throne of crystal and bone, surrounded by broken weapons suspended mid-air. On the throne sat a child.
No older than ten.
Eyes shut. Breathing slow.
The shard in Raian's hand pulsed once — and a voice echoed all around them:
> "This is the first bearer. The one who called the Blade into being. Not to save… but to end."
Izek's voice was hollow. "She's still alive?"
"No," Lira whispered. "She's remembered. And the memory still lives."
---
As they approached the throne, the child's eyes opened.
They were not human.
And her voice, when it came, was many:
> "You have come to ask how to forge what was broken. But first, you must break something else."
Raian knelt. "What?"
> "Your certainty."
She pointed — not at him, but at Lira.
And suddenly, Lira staggered back, clutching her head. The red mark on her chest flared, and visions poured into her — too fast, too bright:
Raian standing over her body.
A future where she held the Blade, and Raian fell to stop her.
A moment where she betrayed him… and saved the world doing it.
She dropped to her knees.
"I saw… I saw myself. Becoming something else."
Raian moved to her side, but the child's voice cut in again:
> "Only one of you may carry the Blade. But both of you will bleed for it."
---
Suddenly — the Sanctum shuddered.
A crack split across the sky.
The child looked upward. "They have breached the threshold."
"The Pale Twin?" Izek asked.
The child shook her head.
> "No. The Eclipse itself."
The memory-city began to dissolve.
The shard in Raian's hand erupted with light — drawing him, Lira, and Izek together. The throne exploded in starlight — and with a sound like the first bell ever forged, the three were cast out of the Sanctum…
---
…And landed hard on stone.
Real stone.
Dust rose around them. The stars above were no longer warped — but the air was still charged with aftermath.
They were no longer in the Flow-Split Tundra.
They stood in a great circular chamber beneath the mountains — the Vault of Resonance.
And before them, embedded in the far wall…
Was the hilt of a sword, glowing faintly. Waiting.
Lira took a step toward it.
Raian caught her hand.
The shard between them pulsed — torn between two paths.
To be continued…