The memory fold slammed shut behind us, snapping the world into a suffocating darkness.
It wasn't just the absence of light.
It was a crushing, ancient gloom—the kind woven from abandoned sins and imperial regret.
The air smelled of scorched stone and rusted dreams, each breath heavier than the last.
The Obsidian Vault.
Or what was left of it.
We stumbled forward, the ground beneath our boots cracked and trembling like it resented our intrusion. Veins of fractured stone glowed faintly along the walls, pulsing with the residue of powers long forbidden.
This wasn't just a prison.
It was a graveyard... and a confession.
Kael Solhart—the man I am—felt it in his bones.
The empire hadn't just buried its enemies here.
It had buried its guilt.
Elira moved ahead carefully, a small prism light floating above her palm, cutting swaths through the choking dark. Each step we took stirred whispers—faint, maddening, just out of reach.
At first, I thought it was just aftermath noise from the fold.
Residual echoes.
Static.
But then...
I saw them.
Not reflections in mirrors.
Not hallucinations.
They were stitched into the very air itself—flickering, wraithlike images breathing in the gloom.
A warrior bearing my face, cloaked in black and gold armor.
A mage chanting in a tongue my mind should not have recognized—but somehow did.
A man, dragging a broken sword, bloodied and whispering into the ruins:
"Remember the oath, Kael. Even if they don't."
My hand instinctively shot out to steady myself against the wall, heart hammering.
"Kael!"
Elira's voice cracked sharply, dragging me back. "They're not memories. They're echoes."
I turned toward her, jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
"What the hell did they do to me?"
There was hesitation in her eyes.
A battle raging behind them.
And then... finally... she spoke the truth.
"I was created," Elira said, the words falling from her mouth like broken glass. "Part of Project Elarion. A secret bloodline initiative... designed to awaken relics of the past."
She swallowed hard, voice almost lost beneath the humming walls.
"Relics like you."
I stared at her.
At everything she was.
And everything she wasn't.
"I thought I was rebelling against the Empire," she continued, a bitter smile flickering across her lips. "But I was just following its last command. To find you. To awaken the Eidolon-Class Entity they buried under centuries of lies."
I exhaled slowly, a laughless sound scraping my throat.
"Not a soldier," I muttered.
"Not a savior.
A weapon."
Elira's gaze never wavered.
"Maybe," she whispered. "But you don't have to stay one."
The words hung there, fragile and dangerous.
We pressed deeper into the Vault, drawn forward by something older than history.
Past stairwells swallowed by roots of crystallized time.
Past shattered terminals flickering with ghost-data, muttering prayers to dead empires.
Until finally...
We found it.
A chamber—a vast, circular cathedral carved into the earth itself.
Runes older than Velkaris etched deep into the stone, circling the cracked ground like forgotten wounds.
And there, in the center...
Suspended inches above the floor...
The Echo.
He looked as if he had been carved from the bones of fallen stars.
Golden armor, unblemished by time, gleamed with impossible radiance.
In his hand, the Eclipsebrand—a blade pulsing faintly with the light of dead constellations.
And his face—
My face.
Untouched by doubt.
Untouched by grief.
Untouched by failure.
Perfect.
He moved first.
"You have come far," the Echo said, voice resounding through the chamber like a hymn echoing across a battlefield.
"But you are fractured. Broken. Unworthy."
He raised his sword—not in salute, but in judgment.
"Prove yourself, Kael Solhart."
The words slammed into me harder than any blade.
I drew my own sword—the battered, stubborn weapon that had followed me since my first awakening.
Steel met memory.
The chamber erupted in a clash that was less a battle, and more a reckoning.
The Echo fought with mechanical precision—every strike, every parry, an execution of purpose I could barely match.
His blade didn't just seek to wound.
It sought to erase.
I staggered, battered by a storm of perfection I no longer believed in.
But then—
As my knees nearly buckled, as despair gnawed at the edge of my mind—
I understood.
I wasn't meant to be him.
I was meant to surpass him.
The next blow, I caught—not with strength, but with will.
Trapping his blade in the crook of my elbow, dragging him close until I could feel the cold radiance bleeding off him.
Breathing ragged, teeth gritted, I forced the words between us:
"I'm not your shadow."
I shoved him back, every ounce of rage and defiance bursting outward.
"I'm your consequence."
The Echo faltered.
A hairline fracture traced across his golden chestplate.
And then—
He shattered.
Splintering into a storm of gold and ash, dissolving into the breathing darkness.
A single sigil of light remained—small, flickering.
I reached out instinctively.
The moment my fingers brushed it, it fused into my skin—burning a new truth deep into my soul.
One lock broken.
Many more awaited.
Elira sprinted toward me, wide-eyed, her hands trembling.
"Are you—"
"I'm fine," I cut her off, flexing my hand, feeling the new weight clawing at my spirit.
No.
Not fine.
But moving forward anyway.
At the far end of the chamber, a battered imperial terminal sparked to life—its glow too bright in the gloom.
Against better judgment, I touched it.
Data lines unfolded like dying flowers.
And together, we read the classified edict:
Null Directive 01: Authorization of Full Memory Erasure.
Target: Kael Solhart.
Charges: Treason by Temporal Anomaly Interference.
Sentence: History Reallocation and Witness Purge.
The Empire hadn't just erased my victories.
It had forbidden my existence.
The wars I fought.
The sacrifices I made.
The names I bled for.
All reassigned.
All buried under names I would never know.
My hands trembled... then stilled.
Because anger wasn't enough anymore.
I needed something stronger.
The truth.
All of it.
At the heart of the Vault, embedded deep in the cracked stone, we found it—the relic that pulsed like a wounded heart.
I pressed my hand to its surface.
The air ignited.
A star-map unfolded before us—a spiderweb of constellations, sanctuaries, and forgotten bastions sprawled across the world like veins of a broken god.
But at the center—
Brighter than anything else—
Burned a single symbol.
A crown.
Wreathed in chains.
Elira's voice was low, almost reverent.
"That's not a location," she said. "It's a prison."
I stared at it, the mark searing itself into my mind, branding my next step.
I clenched my fist until my knuckles went white.
"I'm going there."
Because whatever was locked inside that prison—
It was the key to everything they tried to make me forget.