The light swallowed everything.
For a moment, Kael felt weightless — drifting through brilliance so absolute it felt like being erased. When the radiance dimmed, he stood on a stairway carved from translucent stone, each step pulsing faintly beneath his boots, like veins carrying ancient light.
The air was neither warm nor cold. It carried whispers — not of voices, but of thoughts that had once been alive. Mira walked beside him, her hand brushing the rough wall as though the stone might breathe back.
"This place," she murmured, "isn't built by hands. It's shaped by memory itself."
Kael stared into the glowing depths below. "Then whose memory are we walking through?"
Mira hesitated. Her eyes glimmered like the Vault's light. "That's what you must find out."
They descended slowly. Around them, the Vault shifted and pulsed like a living heart. The walls weren't stone but a translucent substance that changed hue with each step — sometimes blue like mourning, sometimes gold like old sunlight caught in glass.
Etched across them were symbols — thousands, millions — faintly glowing, some moving like streams of light running through an unseen circuit. Kael reached out, tracing one with his fingertip.
It burned — not with pain, but memory. Images flashed behind his eyes.
A tower burning under a red sky.
A hand clutching a blade of impossible design.
A scream that sounded like his own voice echoing through ages.
He stumbled back, gasping. Mira caught him before he fell.
"It's showing you," she said softly, "what was left behind."
"Left behind?" Kael's breathing was uneven. "These are mine."
Mira's expression didn't change. "Not all memories belong to the living. The Vault stores fragments of what once existed — and what could exist again."
Kael looked around, his heartbeat steadying. "It feels… wrong. Like it's alive."
"It is," she said simply. "This Vault is older than any god. It remembers everything they tried to erase."
They reached the bottom of the stairway. The chamber that opened before them was vast — endless pillars stretching upward into dark mist, each one covered in sigils that pulsed in sync with Kael's heartbeat.
At the center was a pool of black glass. The surface rippled faintly, though there was no wind. Floating above it was a shard — a fragment of crystalline metal shaped like a tear.
Kael took a hesitant step forward. The shard glowed faintly as he approached, pulsing faster, resonating with him.
Mira's eyes widened. "It's reacting."
"What is it?" he asked.
"The Origin Sigil," she whispered. "The first mark. The blueprint of all other powers."
Kael frowned. "Then why does it know me?"
Before she could answer, the Vault shifted — light bending around them. The sigils on the pillars began to rearrange themselves, forming patterns that spun like constellations. The air trembled, and for a heartbeat Kael felt his pulse match the rhythm of the Vault itself.
Then the floor vanished.
He was falling — through light, through shadow, through something that wasn't space at all. Mira's voice echoed faintly, calling his name, before everything dissolved into silence.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn't in the Vault anymore.
He was standing on a battlefield.
The sky was red, torn apart by fire and storm. The ground was littered with bodies — soldiers clad in armor that shimmered like molten glass. In the distance, colossal towers burned, collapsing into the sea of light.
Kael turned, breathing heavily. His armor — he was wearing armor. His hands glowed faintly with sigils etched into his skin, the same pattern that pulsed in the Vault.
"This isn't real," he whispered. "It's a memory."
From behind, a voice answered — deeper, colder. "No. This is what you chose to forget."
Kael turned.
A man stood there — tall, cloaked in shadow, but his face was Kael's own. Older. Sharper. His eyes burned with that same golden light.
Kael took a step back. "Who are you?"
The double smiled faintly. "You. Before you turned away from what you were meant to become."
He raised his hand — and suddenly the world fractured.
The battlefield dissolved into glass and flame. The bodies rose, their hollow eyes glowing with light. The air screamed with echoes of dying gods. Kael clutched his head, trying to block it out — but every sound was a memory, every flash a truth.
He saw himself — kneeling before a throne of light, surrounded by others who looked like him. Not mortals — something more. Each bore a sigil glowing in their chest.
They were the Pulsebearers, the first who consumed souls not for survival, but for ascension.
And at the center of them all was Kael — not as he was now, but as the first. The one who betrayed them. The one who took the Origin Sigil and vanished into the mortal world.
Kael screamed — the sound half human, half something else. The vision shattered like glass, and he fell again, crashing back into the Vault.
Mira was kneeling beside him, her hands glowing with faint light, trying to stabilize his pulse. "Kael! Breathe!"
He gasped, clutching his chest. The markings on his skin were glowing faintly, like old wounds reopening.
"I saw it," he whispered. "I saw… them. I saw me."
Mira's expression softened. "Then you understand now. The power you carry — it wasn't given. It was stolen."
Kael looked up at her, his eyes burning gold. "And they're still out there, aren't they? The others."
Mira hesitated. "Maybe not as they once were. But something of them remains — in echoes, in fragments. And if you're seeing this now… it means the cycle is starting again."
The Vault trembled. The sigils across the walls flared brighter. From the black pool, ripples spread — and Kael's reflection rose from it, identical and smiling.
It spoke in his voice. "Welcome back, Origin."
Kael froze. Mira stepped between them, her aura flaring, but the reflection only laughed — a low, distorted sound that reverberated through the chamber.
"The Vault doesn't forget," it said. "It only waits for you to remember."
The floor split open once more, light pouring upward like liquid gold. Mira grabbed Kael's hand. "Don't listen to it! It's the echo of what you were — not what you are!"
But Kael couldn't tear his gaze away. His reflection's eyes blazed with the same hunger that haunted his dreams.
For a moment, he couldn't tell which version of himself was real.
Then the Vault went silent. The reflection faded, leaving only ripples on the black glass.
Kael collapsed to his knees, shaking. Mira knelt beside him, holding his shoulder.
"The Vault has shown you the beginning," she said quietly. "Now it's up to you to decide how the story ends."
Kael looked up — the light around them dimming, the sigils slowly sinking back into stillness.
"I'm not ready for the truth," he whispered.
Mira smiled faintly. "No one ever is."
The last pulse of light flickered, and then — silence. Only the sound of their breathing remained, echoing in the ancient dark.