The pilgrimage was a grim and holy act. Their first destination was the ruin where Draven had died, the place where the conceptual Key of the Titan lay dormant, a scar on the world's soul. It took them weeks of arduous travel, navigating by Selvara's cold logic and Mira's intuitive, song-like sense of the world. They arrived, not as defeated survivors, but as priests, ready to perform a ritual they were inventing as they went.
The ruin was silent, the blood-stained rock that was Draven's impromptu tombstone a stark, powerful monument to their loss. It hummed with a faint, steady power that only they could now perceive.
"How do we do this?" Mira whispered, her voice full of a fearful reverence. "How do we… take a memory?"
"We don't take it," Selvara answered, her own voice quiet. She held the Deceiver's Mask, but she did not put it on. She was through with hiding. "We accept it. We bear it."
They stood before the rock, two small figures against the vast, empty plains. Mira, closing her eyes, began to hum, not a song of creation this time, but the deep, resonant, and heartbreakingly familiar note of Draven's own stubborn soul. She harmonized with the dormant power of the rock.
Selvara placed a hand on Mira's shoulder, and with her other, touched the rock. She did not try to deceive or manipulate. She opened her own mind, her own logic, her own grief, and offered it to the memory, a silent, intellectual acknowledgment of the price that had been paid. We see you, Draven. We remember.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the faint, bronze light of the Titan's Key within the rock flared. It did not form into a gauntlet. It did not become a weapon. It flowed, a gentle, warm, and impossibly strong current of pure, conceptual endurance, and washed over the two of them. It was not a power to be wielded. It was a blessing. A burden. A promise. They now carried the weight of the Titan within their own souls. They were stronger, more resolute, the memory of his sacrifice now a tangible, spiritual shield.
They had found their first ghost.
But as this moment of solemn, powerful victory unfolded, Lucian's attack came. It was not a physical assault. It was something far more intimate, and far more cruel.
Miles away, in his perfect, silent prison, he focused his entire, formidable will down the thin, psychic thread that connected Elara to Mira. He could not reach out into the world. But he could… push. He could inject a single, pure, and beautifully poisonous concept into the one being in all of creation his prize still had a connection to.
As Mira stood, her soul open, harmonizing with the memory of the Titan, a new voice whispered in her mind. It was not Lucian's cold, divine pronouncement. It was a voice she knew better than her own. It was Kael's.
Why didn't you do this for me? the ghost of a voice whispered, full of a laughing, tragic, and utterly convincing sadness. You and your songs… you found him. You honored him. But me? You just let me burn. Some friend you are.
Mira's eyes snapped open, her song of harmony shattering into a choked, panicked gasp. The warmth of the Titan's blessing was instantly chased by a spike of pure, ice-cold guilt. It wasn't just a thought. It felt real. A genuine, psychic echo from a soul she had failed.
"Mira? What is it?" Selvara asked, the bronze light fading from around her.
"I… I heard him," Mira stammered, her face pale, her hands trembling. "Kael. He… he's angry with me. With us."
The attack was perfect. A flawless, psychological masterstroke. Lucian hadn't tried to kill them. He hadn't sent a monster. He had simply taken the one, beautiful, hopeful victory they had managed to achieve, and turned it into a source of guilt, of doubt, of a new, internal schism. He had weaponized the very ghost they were trying to honor.
----
The reaction in the White Room was instantaneous. The moment Lucian's psychic attack landed, the moment Mira's harmony was shattered by that spike of artificial guilt, Elara stumbled as if physically struck.
The perfect, silent library around her flickered violently. A single, jagged crack of pure, black void appeared on the seamless white wall. Her prison, which she had so carefully, so willingly maintained, had just been breached. From the outside. By him.
She whipped her head around to face Lucian, her serene, controlled expression shattering, replaced by a mask of pure, murderous rage. The silent, cold goddess was gone. The furious, protective, and terrifyingly powerful girl was back. "WHAT DID YOU DO?" her real voice was a scream that cracked the very air of their perfect reality.
Lucian met her gaze, a single, perfect, and utterly triumphant eyebrow raised. He did not speak. He did not have to. His message was clear. I told you. Their suffering is your responsibility. As is their memory.
He had found the flaw in her perfect peace. He had found her leash. Her love for her friends, the very thing she had used to defeat him, was now the weapon he would use to control her, to torment her, to force her to break her own, perfect, silent cage.
You built this beautiful, quiet world, Elara, his voice was a soft, venomous caress in her mind. You and I, in our perfect, silent balance. But your… messy, sentimental attachments to the outside world? They are a vulnerability. An imperfection. A loose thread. And I am going to pull on it, and pull on it, and pull on it… until your entire, beautiful reality unravels. And you will be the one who lets me do it, to stop their new, and exquisitely painful, suffering.
Elara looked at the crack in the wall, a wound in her own soul, a direct, real-time feed to the new, subtle pain her friends were experiencing. She looked at Lucian, his face a mask of cold, triumphant logic. He was no longer trying to break her. He was going to hold her friends' souls hostage, one by one, until she willingly, desperately, shattered her own sanctuary to save them.
The stalemate was over. His new, and far more cruel, lesson had just begun. And the only way to stop him was to abandon her perfect peace and re-engage in a war she had already, in her heart, surrendered.