The stairway descended endlessly, carved not from stone but from frozen echoes of time itself. Each step pulsed beneath their boots with forgotten memories — glimpses of battles lost, Realms devoured, promises broken.
No one spoke.
The silence of Voidspire wasn't just oppressive — it listened. The deeper they descended, the more they could hear it. Whispers. Soft. Insistent.
"Do you remember who you were before the flame?"
At the base of the descent, they emerged into a cavernous chamber — wide as a city, lit only by strands of violet lightning crawling across the ceiling. The air was thicker here, tainted by a presence neither alive nor dead.
In the center of the room was the Whispering Core.
A massive sphere hovered mid-air, encased in fractured rings that rotated independently, each inscribed with languages long dead. Tendrils of memory flowed into the core from the walls like rivers of mist.
Riven's voice trembled "This… this is where the Void keeps history."
Lyra stepped forward. Her flame sputtered slightly as if hesitating.
"This place is a wound," Vaelion muttered "A scar from when time was broken."
Kaela approached one of the walls, brushing her fingers along a floating glyph.
Instantly, the room flared — a vision flooded their minds:
A star-bleached battlefield. Starborn warriors screaming. A radiant city falling into the void. Serian standing alone as the skies shattered.
Kaelen grunted and stepped back, breaking the link "This is no archive. It's a prison. And it's holding something we were never meant to remember."
Lyra turned toward the core.
"The third piece of the Starflame is here. I can feel it."
Suddenly, the Core shifted — rotating faster.
The whispers grew louder.
And a voice, deep and cracked, echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once:
"You seek the Truth? Then bear the Weight."
The ground trembled. The air collapsed inward. And the Core cracked open.
From within, a figure emerged.
Not void-born, nor flame-touched. A man — tall, regal, wearing robes of twilight and gold. His eyes were galaxies in decay.
"I am The Chronicler," he said, voice brittle as old parchment "Last of the Remembered. Keeper of the Forgotten Flame."
The group instinctively readied themselves, but Lyra held up a hand.
"Why guard the fragment?" she asked "Why keep it hidden?"
The Chronicler gave a weary smile "Because every flame cast a shadow. And the third fragment… was never meant to be rekindled."
He raised a hand, and the space around them shifted.
Suddenly, they were standing in a memory — but present inside it.
A Starborn citadel. Gleaming towers, radiant beings, and a throne forged from celestial crystal. And in that throne sat… Lyra.
Not her — but a version of her.
Wearing the full crest of the Starflame. Surrounded by a council. And before her knelt Serian — bound in aether chains.
"You ordered his exile," the Chronicler whispered "You feared what he saw. What he knew."
Lyra trembled "This… this isn't real."
"No," the Chronicler said "It's worse, It's memory."
The vision shattered.
Back in the Whispering Core, the Chronicler stood before her once more.
"You are not new, Lyra. You are the return. The Starborn do not reincarnate… they echo."
She felt it then. The flame inside her. The guilt. The rage. The memory.
"I condemned him," she whispered "And he chose the Void."
Kaelen stepped forward "That was another life. Another world."
"But the same war," Vaelion added "We finish it this time."
The Chronicler bowed his head.
"You may take the fragment… but know this: when the last piece is forged, the Realms will not ask who you are, but who you were."
He stepped aside.
The third Starflame fragment drifted toward Lyra, embedding itself into the Aether Key.
The chamber began to collapse — not from attack, but from completion.
"The Core's purpose is done," Riven shouted "It's collapsing time around us!"
"Portal out!" Kaela barked.
The team formed a circle. Lyra flared the Key — now pulsing with three points of light.
The Nightingale's emergency beacon responded.
A swirl of flame and light enveloped them.
And then — light.
They awoke aboard the Nightingale, orbiting safely outside Voidspire's veil.
Lyra clutched the Key to her chest, breath steady.
"Three fragments," she said "Four more to go."
Kaelen nodded "And one ancient brother to confront."
Far away, on a Realm yet unnamed, Serian sat on a throne of glass and silence, watching a map of constellations shift.
"She remembers," he said "And that… changes everything."