The temple corridors twist like veins; wet stone and silent breath. Each step echoes too loudly, like I'm waking something that should've stayed asleep.
Ren walks ahead, torch raised, muttering to himself about "cursed places and very bad decisions," but I barely hear him. There's a pull now. Subtle. Soft. A tug in my chest like gravity's changed direction.
Something is calling me.
The room appears as if it always existed just beyond my vision; a circular chamber buried beneath the sea, hidden behind layers of stone and time. The air changes as soon as we step in, thick with magic and memory. Mosaics climb the walls, cracked and half-faded. A mural shows a figure cloaked in night, holding a blade of bone.
I don't recognize them.
Not yet.
But my heart stumbles.
There's something resting on the altar.
It's nothing dramatic.
No glowing lights, no angelic music.
Just a necklace. A simple chain. A pendant shaped like a circle of thorns wrapped around a tiny gemstone. Black. Like obsidian caught mid-scream.
Ren doesn't seem to notice it at first. But something shifts in the air the moment I see it.
Something pulls me closer.
And I'm already moving, already reaching.
"Don't touch that," Ren says sharply.
"Why not?" I ask, not looking up.
"Because it's glowing."
"It's not glowing."
"It wants to glow. That's worse."
But I don't listen. My fingers brush the metal and—
A jolt shoots up my arm like lightning made of memory.
I gasp.
The world cracks.
It's like being thrown backward through a thousand lifetimes.
Like every name I've ever had is whispered all at once.
I hear the sea scream.
I hear someone call me beloved.
And I see eyes—golden, cruel, heartbroken.
"If you love him… then suffer."
The pendant clatters to the floor. My knees hit the ground with it. I'm not breathing. Not really.
Ren is beside me in a blink, hands hovering but afraid to touch me.
"Hey—hey, what happened? What did it do to you?"
I blink, vision swimming.
The pendant sits where it fell, cold and small and innocent.
But it is not innocent.
Because somehow, I know it now.
That necklace was mine.
Not in this life.
But in my first.