The sanctuary was dead.
Not just abandoned — dead, in the way only forgotten places could be.
Beneath the shattered skeleton of Velkaris, the ruins of the Old Concord Temple sagged in upon themselves, as if the very stone had grown weary of carrying history's lies. Crumbling statues lined the broken nave, their faces melted by centuries of fire, rain, and betrayal. Chains, rusted and pitted, dangled from the high vaults, clinking with the soft, almost sorrowful sound of lost prayers.
The air itself tasted of ash and old magic.
And at the heart of that silence—
Crimson.
The Crimson Shade had closed around us, their formation like a living blade, sharp and merciless.
Blood-red glyphs pulsed against the plates of their armor, absorbing the fragmented remnants of the sanctuary's magic, feeding off the memory of what this place used to be.
I stood there, sword half-raised, every muscle burning with tension as my heart hammered a defiant rhythm against my ribs.
Beside me, Elira moved subtly, her fingers twitching near the glyph-disruptor embedded in her gauntlet.
She wasn't watching the soldiers.
She was watching her.
The one who stepped forward from their ranks — the woman who moved like memory made flesh.
Commander Lysara Veylan.
"You shouldn't exist," she said.
Her voice was a raw thing, worn down by time, by battles fought both in the world and within herself.
The way she looked at me—
It wasn't hatred.
It wasn't fear.
It was something far worse.
It was grief.
"You..." Her voice caught, just for a moment. "You saved us. You burned yourself away to hold the fracture closed... and they wiped your name from the world."
Slowly, deliberately, she removed her gauntlet.
Revealing a scar — a twisted, broken star etched across her palm.
She lifted it toward me, as if offering something sacred.
"You did this," she whispered, almost reverently. "To save me. To save all of us."
I didn't answer.
What could I say?
When even my own memories tasted like someone else's lies?
The Crimson Shade tightened the ring, weapons humming with killing intent.
I felt the weight of it, heavy as chains.
But Lysara raised a hand, halting them.
"You have a choice, Kael Solhart," she said.
Her voice sharpened, like a blade honed too long on grief.
"Come with us to the Crown Spire. Stand trial. Let them decide your fate... honorably."
I felt my lips curl into something almost like a smile.
Almost.
"And if I refuse?" I asked, my voice low, drawn from a place even darker than the ruins around us.
Her gaze hardened, the Commander reasserting itself over the broken woman beneath.
"You'll be erased," she said. "As if you never existed at all."
For a moment, I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
But because it was pathetic.
"Honor," I spat onto the broken floor.
"From an Empire built on forgetting."
I stepped forward, slow and deliberate, my voice cutting through the temple's hollowed corpse.
"How many truths have you burned to keep your thrones standing? How many memories did you silence to protect your precious timeline purity? How many names?"
Silence fell like a shroud.
Some of the soldiers shifted where they stood.
Tiny movements.
Cracks forming in armor that no sword could pierce.
And then—
The ground beneath us trembled.
At first, it was subtle — a whisper beneath the skin of the world.
But I felt it, deep in my bones.
Something was calling.
Instinct drove me forward.
I reached down, brushing away the ash and rubble, uncovering a relic half-buried in the debris.
The moment my fingers touched it—
The world tore itself apart.
The ruins vanished.
Reality peeled away like old skin, and in its place—
A memory.
Not a vision.
Not a dream.
Real.
We stood together on a battlefield, Lysara and I.
Her blade gleamed with starlight, her armor scorched but unbowed.
We fought back to back, surrounded by enemies that should have broken us a hundred times over.
But it wasn't just duty that bound us.
It was something more.
Through the smoke and blood, she turned toward me, her face streaked with crimson and defiance.
"Promise me!" she screamed, voice breaking against the roar of destruction. "Promise me you'll find a way!"
I remember gripping her shoulder, anchoring her, even as the world tried to tear us apart.
"I will," I said.
I meant it.
And then—
White fire swallowed me whole.
The memory collapsed, snapping back like a broken chain.
I stumbled, gasping, reality and past weaving together until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
"Kael!" Elira's voice was sharp, pulling me back before I drowned.
She moved with swift precision, activating a glyph on her palm.
A spiral of light burst outward, disrupting the memory field that had trapped me.
Commander Lysara staggered, her face twisted in momentary confusion—
Mind-lock.
Elira pressed her hand against my shoulder, steadying me.
"You were never just a soldier," she said, fierce and urgent. "You were the Empire's greatest betrayal."
The Crimson Shade hesitated.
Doubt.
The smallest crack.
And that was enough.
Elira didn't wait.
She slammed her hand into the floor, the glyph burning brighter, tearing open a rift — a memory fold — unstable, but just wide enough for escape.
The portal yawned before us, unstable, screaming its protest.
We stepped toward it—
But behind us—
"Kael!" Lysara's voice shattered the temple's rotting silence.
"You told me to remember you! And I did! Even when the world forgot!"
I hesitated.
Just for a breath.
Turned back.
Met her eyes.
Those eyes, filled with a grief I had carved into them with my own hands.
"Then remember this too," I said.
My voice didn't waver.
Not anymore.
"This time, I won't die for them."
And then we stepped into the fold—
And the sanctuary, the Crimson Shade, the broken gods of Velkaris—
All fell away into silence once more.