The pillar split open like a wound.
Stone flaked away in chunks, falling into the sinkhole below with hollow echoes. Light poured from the fractures—white at first, then shifting through shades of gold and violet, then black.
Not absence.
Colour so deep it reversed everything else around it.
Kaela pulled Reven back just as the ground beneath the shard gave way entirely, collapsing inward to reveal a staircase of obsidian ribs descending into the earth. The heat rising from it wasn't warmth—it was pressure. Old pressure. The kind that sank into bone and whispered in the dark.
"What the hell did we just open?" she muttered.
Lirien stared into the opening, her feathers lifting with instinctive tension. "This wasn't a vault."
Reven stepped forward, his pulse matching the shard's rhythm as he held it.
"No," he said. "It was a grave."
They descended carefully.
The stairwell was not natural—cut in perfect geometric angles, built with a symmetry that defied the Rift-warped world above. The air was thick with something unseen. Reven felt it behind his teeth. Every footfall echoed longer than it should have. Time ran sideways here.
Halfway down, the wall shifted.
Not crumbled—shifted. Stone rearranged itself in real time, sealing passages behind them, opening new ones ahead.
Kaela's blade was out. "This thing's alive."
"No," Reven said. "It's responding."
"To you?" Lirien asked.
"To the shard."
They reached the base of the stair.
The chamber they entered was vast. Circular. The ceiling was an open dome of living crystal, showing not the sky but memory. Flickering images hovered above them: cities burning, oceans swallowing continents, a boy holding his mother's hand in a storm of ash.
A thousand deaths.
A single scream, carried through them all.
In the centre of the room was a structure—a cradle, half-machine, half-organic. And inside it: a figure.
Suspended in air.
Human.
Or something once human.
Its skin shimmered like frost over polished obsidian. Tubes of light fed into its back. It didn't breathe. Didn't move.
Kaela's voice was hoarse. "Is that a Core?"
Lirien stepped closer, eyes wide. "No. That's a vessel."
Reven felt his knees weaken.
Because the moment he stepped near it, his shard ignited and the suspended figure opened its eyes.
Pure white.
No pupils. No iris. No recognition.
And yet—it looked at him.
Directly.
Then spoke.
"Designation confirmed. Core Three awakened. Flamebearer Reven: authorization level one established. Warning: containment breach in progress."
Kaela reached for her bow. "It's speaking!"
"Not to us," Lirien said. "To him."
The vessel spoke again, louder now.
"Flame protocol reinitializing. Memory strain detected. Host threshold exceeded. Suggest re-stabilization."
Reven staggered back.
The pain hit like a flood.
Memories not his own slammed into his mind—flashes of voices, data, wars, names. Endless names. His skull felt like it would tear in half. Kaela shouted something, but he couldn't hear her over the scream building in his head.
Then everything went dark.
When he opened his eyes, he was standing in a white room.
No walls. No sky. No ground.
Just white.
And across from him, the vessel stood—no longer suspended, no longer inert. It moved now. Walked. Smiled.
"Hello, Reven," it said. "You're the first to last this long."
He swallowed. "Who are you?"
The figure's form shifted—its skin flashing through dozens of different faces, ages, voices. Then it settled again.
"I'm Echo. A preserved consciousness. One of the last Archivists. And you've just triggered the second cycle."
Reven's blood went cold. "Cycle of what?"
"Awakening," Echo said. "Of the nine. Of what's left."
"Of the Flameborn."
Echo tilted its head. "Of what comes after them."
Outside, Kaela held Reven's unconscious body while Lirien circled the vessel's cradle, inspecting glyphs.
"He's locked in," Lirien said. "Mentally. The Core's cycling through his memory imprint."
"For how long?" Kaela demanded.
"I don't know."
The shard in Reven's pouch began to rise into the air.
Then the Flamecore joined it.
Both hovered in alignment.
And the chamber began to react.
Walls pulled inward.
Light spiralled.
And beneath them, something deep began to stir.
Something that hadn't spoken in centuries.
Something older than memory.