Kael moved through ash.
Not the kind from a fire.
The kind from memory.
The ground beneath his boots crunched like shattered bones.
Ruined towers slumped against the sky.
Everything smelled of metal, dust, and silence.
The bottle at his side pulsed in slow rhythm.
Steady.
Guiding.
Unblinking.
He passed a cracked signpost—words long erased.
But the bottle flickered.
Just once.
Then again.
A heartbeat, responding to a place it shouldn't remember.
Kael paused at the edge of a dry ravine.
Below, blackened soil curved inward like a crater,
but no fire had ever touched it.
He stepped down.
Each footfall echoed louder than it should.
In the center of the hollow:
a platform of shattered glass and obsidian veins.
He knelt.
The bottle glowed.
And then—
whispered.
Not in words.
In fragments.
Soundless syllables pressed into his thoughts like broken keys on a forgotten piano.
"…Sila…antra…Vak…"
Kael flinched.
The air warped around him.
He saw—
A child, screaming in light.
A city, submerged in vines of crystal and bone.
A bottle—
not his—
cracking.
Then it stopped.
He was alone again.
No.
Not alone.
He looked up.
At the far side of the ravine,
across the ridge—
A figure.
Distant.
Tall.
Still.
Wrapped in layered cloth that moved without wind.
One arm hung at their side.
In their hand—
A bottle.
It glowed blue.
Dim.
But clear.
And the pulse—
matched his.
Kael didn't speak.
He couldn't.
The bottle on his hip shuddered—
then fell silent.
As if listening.
As if waiting.
The other figure did not move.
But Kael felt something shift in the world.
Like gravity bending.
Like two points of origin pulling at one another.
He took a step forward.
The bottle vibrated again.
This time, not as sound.
Not as heat.
But as meaning.
Two words pressed into Kael's spine:
"Core Echo."
The figure turned.
Just slightly.
Enough to reveal that beneath the cloth—
there was no face.
Only lines.
Glowing.
Moving.
Not flesh.
Not mask.
Code.
Kael's breath caught.
His heartbeat slowed.
Then—
Without a word,
the figure turned away.
And walked into the dust.
Kael remained still.
But everything inside him had shifted.
The bottle's glow returned.
Warmer.
Sharper.
And he finally understood:
This wasn't about survival anymore.
It was about inheritance.