The spring water looked innocent again.
Silver moonlight, soft ripples, the faint scent of night-blooming jasmine drifting across the clearing. A lie so perfect it felt obscene.
Elara knelt at the edge, palms flat on the cool stone rim. Her reflection stared back—sixteen-year-old face, violet-gold eyes, silver-white hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat and spring water. She looked like a child playing dress-up in someone else's apocalypse.
Behind her, Thorne stood rigid, arms folded so tight the seams of his leather bracers groaned. The scar that carved from temple to jaw still glowed—first blue, now flickering gold. Every pulse felt like a countdown.
The system hovered above the water, patient and merciless.
Spring's Blessing – Choose Your Burden
Memory of the First Binder (Risk: Unknown)
Veilblood Awakening (Risk: Moderate)
Eternal Companion Oath (Risk: Low)
Time remaining: 58… 57… 56…
Elara's mouth tasted of copper. She could still feel the phantom blade the woman in the vision had driven into her own heart. The way the chains had exploded outward like living sunlight, wrapping the world so tightly it screamed.
She glanced at Thorne. "What happens if I pick nothing?"
His answer was immediate. "The spring claims what it's owed anyway. It always does."
Fifty-one seconds.
She thought of Earth—of neon rain, empty apartments, the truck's headlights. Of waking up here with no idea why she, of all people, had been chosen to carry this weight.
Forty-three seconds.
The bond thread between them quivered, feeding her fragments of Thorne's memories again: a younger Thorne, barely fifty summers, watching his mother kneel at this exact spring. Watching the water rise up her arms like golden shackles. Hearing her last words before the light took her: "Do not let them make you choose."
Thirty-one seconds.
Elara closed her eyes.
"I'm not her," she whispered. "I'm not your mother. I'm not the First Binder. I'm just… me."
She opened her eyes and chose.
1 – Memory of the First Binder.
The spring answered instantly.
The water did not rise. It fell inward, as though someone had pulled a plug at the bottom of the world. Elara's knees buckled. She would have gone under if Thorne hadn't lunged forward and locked an arm around her waist.
The surface became a mirror of molten gold.
Then it showed her everything.
She saw the First Binder—not a statue, not a myth, but a living woman named Elyra Valdris, the original owner of the face Elara now wore. She saw her standing in this same glade thirteen thousand years ago, surrounded by twelve companions whose faces were already fading from mortal memory.
She saw the thing they were trying to cage: a wound in reality shaped like a screaming mouth, large enough to swallow continents. From it poured the Unbinder—an entity that wore every shape and none, a living paradox that promised freedom by erasing the concept of cages entirely.
She saw Elyra Valdris make the only choice left.
She drove a blade forged from her own soul into her heart.
Light—raw, impossible, agonizing—exploded outward. Chains of solid veil-matter lashed across the world, stitching the wound closed. Realms were torn apart and sealed behind barriers so no one could ever reach the Unbinder again.
And Elyra Valdris, dying, whispered a final command into the chains themselves:
"If the cage ever fails… send me back.
Make me remember why I built it.
Make me choose again."
The memory released her.
Elara hit the moss on her hands and knees, retching golden water that steamed where it touched the ground. Her lungs burned. Her skull felt cracked open and poorly glued back together.
Thorne's grip on her shoulders was the only thing keeping her upright.
System Notification – cascading across her vision in blood-red text
Hidden Truth Fragment #0002 Unlocked
Title Gained: [Echo of the First Sin]
Passive Skill: [Echoes of the Binder] – Randomly receive thoughts, emotions, or final words of Elyra Valdris.
Curse Applied: [Mark of the Unbinder] – Certain ancient entities now sense your heartbeat across realms.
Springwater Tear (1/3) consumed automatically to prevent soul collapse.
She laughed. It sounded broken.
"So that's it," she rasped. "I'm her do-over. Her reset button."
Thorne's voice was raw. "You are not her."
"Look at my face, Thorne. Look at the memory. Tell me I'm not."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. The scar on his face flared so brightly it lit the clearing like daylight, revealing the truth he hadn't wanted her to see: the exact same golden light now leaking from the wound that had never fully healed.
Elara stared. "Your scar…"
He looked away. "My mother tried to stop the First Binder. She failed. The chains marked everyone who stood in that circle."
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft drip of the spring.
Eventually, Elara pushed herself to her feet. Her legs shook, but the bond thread steadied her like an invisible harness.
"I'm not going to become her," she said. "I'm not building any more cages."
Thorne met her eyes—storm-gray and ancient and suddenly very tired. "Then what will you do, Elyra Veilborn?"
She looked at the spring. At the faint reflection of chains beneath the surface that only she could see now.
"I'm going to find out why she thought there was no other way."
A new notification appeared—small, almost shy.
Secondary Quest Unlocked
Path of the Echo
Objective: Discover the twelve truths the First Binder hid within the veils.
Reward: The right to make a different choice.
Penalty for refusal: None… yet.
Elara dismissed it with a thought.
Above them, the auroras shifted. For one heartbeat, they formed the shape of a colossal bird, wings spread wide, chains dangling from its ankles like broken jewelry.
Then the sky went dark.
Far below the glade, deeper than roots or stone or time, something that had slept for thirteen millennia opened a single eye the color of dying stars.
And smiled.
[To be continued]