The wind had stilled.
Beneath the twilight sky, the three figures stood before the stairway etched in time and sorrow. The stone was ancient, older than the rebellion, veined with silverlight sigils that pulsed faintly beneath the dust. Moss grew between the cracks like creeping memory, and the air grew colder with each breath.
Caleb touched the violin case slung at his side—still cracked, its strings long broken—but he felt the music stirring again, quietly, inside him. Not in his hands. Not yet. But in his blood.
"It doesn't feel like just a ruin," Serenya whispered as she traced the glyphs carved into the steps. "It feels... awake."
"Because it is," Avesari said, her voice softer than usual. "The Sanctum was never merely stone. It was built to remember. Built by those who believed truth could outlast even Heaven's silence."
Serenya hesitated. "You mean the Silent Chroniclers?"
Avesari met her eyes with a flicker of surprise—and perhaps respect. "Their ancestors, yes. This was a place of safekeeping. Of witnessing. But they didn't guard relics the way humans do. They guarded echoes."
"Echoes?" Caleb asked, stepping beside her.
Avesari nodded. "Moments. Choices. Songs sung once and lost to time. This sanctum listens. It remembers everything that falls within its walls."
Serenya glanced at Caleb uneasily. "And if it remembers too well?"
"Then it might show us what we'd rather forget," Avesari replied, already starting down.
They descended.
The stair wound deep, swallowing the moonlight behind them. The deeper they went, the thicker the air became, thick with age and something older than dust. The walls were etched with sigils long faded—some of which Serenya began murmuring translations for under her breath.
"A passage about the harmony of spheres... a warning about 'the black winged oathbreaker'..." She paused. "And... a prophecy fragment."
Avesari stiffened slightly but said nothing.
Caleb's hand brushed the wall as they walked, and for a moment, he swore he felt something reach back—cold, gentle, curious.
When the steps ended, they found themselves in a wide circular chamber.
Dozens of archways opened into darkness beyond, each etched with mirrored runes. At the center, a dais of marble floated just above the ground, cradling a crystalline relic suspended in a shaft of pale blue light. It looked like a shard of a broken star, humming with energy barely contained. The air buzzed with soft resonance, like a chorus tuning beneath the surface of sound.
"The relic," Avesari whispered, reverent. "It's still singing."
But as they stepped forward, the air shifted.
A voice echoed—not spoken, but felt.
"Who do you seek to become?"
The chamber dimmed. The relic pulsed.
Caleb stumbled slightly, then froze. The room around him shimmered and changed. He stood not in the sanctum anymore, but atop a war-scorched hill, violin in hand, corpses at his feet. Fire rained from the sky—and from behind, a voice screamed his name.
Serenya was gone. Avesari was gone. The song had stopped.
No... no, it was still there—broken, hollow, playing backwards.
He dropped the bow and tried to breathe, but the air tasted like ash and guilt.
In the real world, Avesari reached for him, her expression taut.
"He's caught in an echo," she said grimly. "The relic's testing him."
Serenya moved forward. "Then get him out."
Avesari shook her head. "No. He has to find his own melody in the storm. If I break it, he may not come back the same."
The relic's light pulsed again. A breath. A question.
"Do you remember why you sang the first time?"
Caleb dropped to his knees in the illusion, clutching his chest. He remembered screams. A ruined home. A hand in his, tugging him forward. A promise made through tears.
And then—softly, like dawn—he heard another sound.
Footsteps behind him.
A quiet voice.
"Caleb."
Avesari. Not the real one. Not quite. But still her.
"Not every song is a weapon," she said. "Sometimes it's just a bridge. You don't have to burn every one you build."
He looked up. The hill cracked apart—then shattered into starlight.
And the chamber returned.
He gasped, falling forward onto the sanctum's stone floor, drenched in sweat.
The relic dimmed.
"It let you go," Avesari said, kneeling beside him. Her voice was almost... proud.
Caleb looked up at the shard. "That... thing showed me everything I lost. Everything I don't want to become."
"Then it's doing its job," Serenya said softly, her expression unreadable. "It reveals the path forward... by forcing you to face where it leads."
"And where does it lead?" Caleb asked.
Avesari turned toward the furthest archway, where a new set of runes now glowed.
Her expression darkened.
"To the heart of the sanctuary. But we won't walk in untouched."
Serenya frowned. "What's there?"
Avesari's voice was barely a whisper.
"The place I Fell."
Silence settled again—heavy, reverent. The relic pulsed once more and dimmed, its song now hushed, as if waiting for the next verse.
They began to move toward the illuminated archway, unaware that in the chamber's furthest shadows—where the relic's light dared not reach—a presence stirred.
Eyes gleamed.
He had felt the echo shift when Caleb entered. He had felt the song resonate when Avesari spoke. The sanctum did not reject him, though it knew what he was.
Serethiel watched them silently, crouched high among the ruined archways, cloaked in stillness. His body had only just begun to reform—half shadow, half bone, veined with cracked sigils still smoldering from his last encounter. He did not rush.
He had learned patience.
He would watch. Wait. The relic had marked the boy. The fallen one had weakened. And the girl—she held truths neither of them had yet unearthed.
They would lead him forward.
He smiled, a slow curl of cracked lips.
'Let them think they'd found a path. Let them open the gates.'
When the time came, he would walk through the door they could not close.
And the sanctum would sing again—only this time, in screams.