The temple moved come late dawn, subtle and deliberate.
Ryu awoke to the sound of stone grinding deep beneath the floor. The air had changed. Qi hung thick around them, heavy and alive, as if the temple itself had begun to breathe.
Elyra stood near the centre of the chamber; her hand pressed to the mosaic floor. "The seal is responding to him," she said softly.
Ryu stepped forward. "To me?"
She nodded once. "Not just you. Lira too. Her mark flared the moment the shift began."
From one of the upper corridors, Yan arrived, sword sheathed but her eyes sharp. "It's not an attack?"
"No," Elyra murmured, "it's an invitation."
The spiral walkway that had once led to the submerged gate had changed. It now stretched further, no longer ending in ruin but spiralling downward into the depths of the world.
Kalavan frowned. "We passed the trial of the temple, ended the threat, what else is down there?"
Elyra turned, her expression unreadable. "Something that wasn't supposed to be here."
Lira appeared in the archway, no longer the pale, distant girl she had once seemed. Her figure was full and radiant now, the build of a woman in her prime, elegant, powerful, and unmistakably alive. Her silver-blue hair flowed down her back like liquid starlight, and her once-hollow eyes now shimmered with depth, silver-tinted green, glimmering like glass touched by fire.
Her Qi pulsed visibly around her, rising and falling in quiet waves, on the verge of a breakthrough, just short of ascension.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Kalavan gave a low whistle. "You look... like a goddess."
Elyra tilted her head. "Your flame is resonating with the Eye already. It's not just awakening you, it's remembering you."
Yan stepped forward with a small nod. "You don't look like yourself. But... maybe you never were."
Lira said nothing. She stepped forward, calm and composed.
"I had a dream of the Eye," she said. "It opened and it saw all of us."
Ryu stared at her. "Did it speak?"
She shook her head slowly. "No. It remembered."
They prepared in silence. No discussion. No doubt. Their bodies were still recovering, their realms settling but whatever called them now came from deeper than the temple.
They descended the new spiral as a group past the coral-wrapped sanctums, reinforced flame-glass corridors, and ancient murals worn smooth by time. Deeper than even the lowest sanctum.
Until they reached a place where light bent wrong, and sound no longer moved freely.
The walkway ended at a dome. Perfectly spherical, like the inside of an eye. At its centre hovered a flickering point of memory-fire, suspended above a vast pool of black water.
They did not move closer. Not yet.
Across the ceiling, glyphs shimmered to life, thousands of them. A map, a record and a history.
At its centre was a mark, the same crest etched into Ryu's hand. Surrounding it were several names. Most were scorched or shattered, fractured symbols broken by time. Only one remained untouched.
His.
Elyra paced slowly along the edge of the dome, fingers trailing along the symbols. "This predates the temple," she whispered. "Predates the rifts from long ago."
She touched a glowing line near the edge. The glyph flared in response. "It's written in the language of the first bearers."
Kalavan peered over her shoulder. "That line there, what does it say?"
"well, I don't fully understand this text, but some of it I can pick up on." Elyra read aloud. "When the flame remembers its source, the bearer must choose light the world anew or seal them forever."
Yan stepped beside Ryu. "And if we do neither?"
The water below stirred. The point of light at its centre flared once, a pulse that echoed through their bones.
And then a voice spoke aloud. It came from the walls themselves. Stone vibrating with speech.
"Then fate will choose for you."
The dome lit from within. The hovering light swelled, no longer a flicker but a white-hot flare. The spiral glyphs above it halted, then turned inward.
Elyra staggered back, face pale. "It's not a memory... It's a gate. A sealed gate bound into the Eye itself."
The glyphs ignited as one.
"Enter, ones who live on this world."
Ryu moved without hesitation.
Yan grabbed his arm. "Wait."
But he kept going. The moment his foot touched the pool's edge, the water rippled outward. Qi spiralled upward from the depths, lifting the flame higher, and the Eye opened.
It wasn't a doorway in the physical sense. It was a lens through time and through memory.
A world appeared, not this one, not any they'd known.
A broken realm, skies devoured in the starlight. Ash fell in sheets over jagged mountains and through the heavens grew a tree of fire rooted in a sun long dead.
And at its centre, wrapped in flame, bound by chains older than memory, stood her.
The First Flame bearer. Alive. Awake. Watching.
A being older than the Void Emperor himself. The first to bring light into the dark. The first to reach beyond the realms and defend it from what came after.
Ryu gasped, staggering back, but the Eye did not release him.
The mark on him pulsed in rhythm with the flame. Qi surged through his veins. The Eye recognized him. It didn't just see him, it claimed him.
And in that moment, Ryu understood. The fire hadn't come to this world through the gates. It was made on this world, our world.
The world in which the first flame bearer came from was non other than our own and the dark powers that were fended off were driven far away from our realms.
The flame-bearers power was shown to other realms, worlds like ours, where humans and demi-humans and all different races begun to learn, and discovered the power of Qi.
The flame bearer taught them much, showing them how to defend themselves, how to drive off the creatures that lived in the void and consumed the all-encompassing darkness that threatened life.
Ryu now understood better than he could before, but his time to observe was limited.
The final vision before Ryu returned to his own mind and body was the flame bearer stood opposite a large rift, with an eye looking through, the eye was smaller than it was, and gentler too. The flame bearers mouth moved but Ryu heard no words, except the final word. Soft and pursed between her lips, whispered through all the rifts to the beings beyond. "Thankyou."
A tremor rolled through the dome. Cracks split the outer edge of the pool.
Kalavan's blade hissed free. "We need to shut this down now," he growled.
Yan's eyes were locked on the shifting glyphs. "This isn't a trap. It's a trigger."
Elyra shook her head, face stricken. "It's too late. The moment Ryu reached Ascendant Rank Seven, the tether completed. The Eye wasn't testing him, it was summoning him."
Lira screamed.
She fell to her knees as her reversed mark flared like a second sun. From her shadow, a figure rose, smoke-like, thin, wreathed in a distant flame.
The voice returned.
"The bearer is chosen. The key has surfaced."
The black pool erupted. From it rose a being wrapped in flame and armour, its form vaguely human, crowned in a halo of molten light. Chains of ember and memory wrapped its limbs, runes still burning across its surface.
It did not speak. It fell.
Ryu met it mid-air. Their clash split the dome with a thunderous crack.
Elyra screamed a warning. Yan's blade ignited. Kalavan vanished into shadow, reappearing above the enemy's back.
And still, the Eye pulsed. It showed more visions. But these weren't prophecies. They were live.
Other gates. Other realms. Flickering to life across the world.