Mist engulfs the scene as Hela reappears
Her violet eyes narrow. Her grin fades, just slightly. The stage around her hushes, the bones listening.
Her voice turns softer—less divine, more human.
"But before we begin this descent into what was lost... and what should never have been found..."
She raises one finger, slow and deliberate. The silence sharpens.
"Know this."
A beat. Even the dead seem to wait.
"Some stories are never meant to be told. rarely by firelight. Ne'er to children. Nor to the parts of you still pretending they're whole."
She looks directly at you now.
"If you're tender of heart—if the marrow in your soul still aches when it hears a child cry... or a god weep—then turn back now. I won't think less of you."
A breath. A shift of silk. The soft click of a skull adjusting on her throne.
"But if you stay…"
A long pause.
"Stay knowing that light has no place here."
And then.
She leans back.
The Ossuary Stage groans.
The stars blink.
And the curtain falls.
"One among you will lose their name. Another will see their past unravel like old silk. One will remember joy—and wish they hadn't."
"And still… you begged to Become."
______________________________________________________________________
It began with an eye.
A massive, vertical slit suspended in black nothingness,glowing with internal, ulcered light. The Eye-Gate loomed like a wound carved into existence itself. It didn't blink. It pulsed. Like it was waiting. Like it remembered.
Qaritas stepped forward. The air shifted, it wasn't cold, or warm. Just wrong. Thicker. Wet with memory. The Eye gazed back. It wasn't into him—through him. Peeling soul from skin, as if searching for the final truth he hadn't spoken yet.
Ayla stood at his side, silent. Her eyes narrowed—Seldom in fear. In memory.
Komus' hand hovered near Mercy. Instinct.
Hydeius cursed softly. His protective symbols melted before they formed. The Eye did not tolerate lies. Or magic.
Then the portal opened.
Somewhere beyond sight, the echo of Hela's voice brushed the veil between realms:
"When light cannot enter, only memory survives."
A tunnel of muscle and rune-stitched flesh stretched into darkness. The scent hit them first.
Rot. Smoke. Burnt sugar. Wet iron.
Then came the pull.
Each step dragged at their essence. Like memory was rewriting them one cell at a time.
They fell—forward, sideways, down.
And then—
They landed.
The fall wasn't fall. It was surrender.
Not to gravity—but to something older.
The portal didn't let them go. It released them like a lie unwilling to die.
The world screamed.
The sky was broken. A tapestry of floating skulls. Twitching limbs. Each wreathed in voidflame.
The air was sharp, metallic. It clung to the throat like shame.
The ground squelched. No stone. Nor soil. Something pulsing. Qaritas looked down: faces. Pressed and lacquered. One blinked.
The Eye-Gate sealed behind them.
They landed hard—bone to bone.
Twenty-six days. That's all Qaritas had left to Become—or be unmade. Every breath here counted. Every memory could be a wound or a weapon.
A pulse ran through the ground, slow and reverent. Something beneath the lacquered faces tried to shape itself into his shadow—elongated, winged, crowned with unspoken names. Qaritas turned away before it finished forming.
The world jolted beneath their feet, like a beast shrugging off fleas.
Qaritas looked up—and around.
The curse in his veins pulsed—slow, almost gentle. As if the realm wasn't attacking him... but welcoming him.
That scared him more.
And for one moment—just one—he saw it.
His own body, standing atop a mountain of silent gods.
Was it still a curse, if some quiet part of him had been waiting to wear it?
Skin etched with the full curse.
Eyes glowing. Empty.
Not screaming. Not laughing. Just waiting.
Waiting for the next universe to forget what mercy looked like.
He blinked—hard.
The image shattered.
But its weight remained.
The realm breathed differently through each of them.
Ayla stood stiff, eyes half-lidded, as if part of her had already drifted into the realm's memory. She didn't shake. She didn't speak. But her breath hitched like she'd just inhaled a name she thought she'd forgotten.
Komus was already tracking the landscape, jaw tight, one hand close to Mercy with little fear. With calculation. Like he was scanning for the exit that wasn't there. Like this place reminded him of a cell too well-designed to escape.
He blinked—once—and saw a boy in chains again.
He wasn't himself.
His father.
No… he wasn't his father. A man shaped into legacy. A prison with Komus's face.
This was the legacy he swore to unmake. The one Mercy was forged to kill.
Komus exhaled sharply, banishing the image.
That memory didn't belong to him anymore. But Mrajeareim remembered differently.
Cree's flame had dimmed—it had extinguished, just cautious. It flickered down one arm...
The flame had been a weapon, once. Now, it remembered loss more than heat.
But their eyes burned sharper.
For a breath, Cree's flame surged— seldom in anger, but recognition. The ground near their foot smoked. They whispered something to it— it wasn't a spell. A name. One the flame remembered, and the soil recoiled from.
A flicker of violet flame answered her in the distance, rising from the ribcage of a buried god. As if the realm remembered her too—and wanted to mimic her grief.
They smiled. Just slightly. "Good," they murmured. "Then you remember me too."
The flame didn't answer. But it pulsed once—like a hand on the shoulder of someone who had survived the same storm.
Cree didn't smile. But the corner of their mouth curled—wounded, but vindicated.
Then—just briefly—their eyes flicked shut. And they whispered a name they hadn't said in three lifetimes. It tasted like ash. And safety.
Hydeius muttered something in a voice only the dead could hear.
His soul-orbit dimmed, the lights around him trembling like old memories trying to flee.
He closed his fist once—and three flickers went out. Not extinguished. Buried.
Hydeius had survived gods and ghosts—but not all of them survived him.
"It knew me," he growled...
Niraí was staring into the sky—or what passed for it—brows furrowed. Her fingers sparked briefly with gate-light, then went still...
She tried again—tracing a sigil in the air. A ripple formed. Then broke.
It wasn't defiance she felt—it was shame. Her sigils used to sing. Now they screamed.
It shattered—mocked.
A smaller, reversed version of her spell looped back toward her fingers, unfinished and upside down. She jerked her hand back, blinking.
"This place remembers my magic," she said quietly, "but that wasn't what I meant ."
Daviyi had gone motionless— She wasn't stunned, but focused. Her eyes scanned everything. The ground. The blood-soaked ruin. The bones twitching behind the horizon. Her voice was low when it came, almost reverent:
"This place isn't architecture. It's memory pretending to be shape."
She blinked—once.
"I've read about this," she murmured.
Daviyi didn't just study forbidden things. She carried them. Ink on her skin. Teeth in her dreams.
"Not here. But... in a forbidden archive, bound in skin. A place where Ecayrous carved pain into geography. He didn't build Mrajeareim. He remembered it. And forced the rest of us to follow."
"This realm isn't a weapon," she said, almost reverently. "It's a bibliography of cruelty. And we're its footnotes."
She turned, gaze sweeping them all. "Stay sharp. This place isn't evil. It's editorial. It will rewrite you if you let it."
A gust of memory-laced wind blew through the space between them—nor real, or cold, just recognizable.
It smelled like ink and ash. Like the kind of promise you didn't realize you'd broken—until it started crying.
All seven flinched—different tells, same wound.
Cree whispered a name they hadn't used in centuries. Ayla's hand reached for the shard at her throat. Niraí's mouth opened—but no sound came.
And for one breathless instant, each of them saw the version of themselves they had been before they were chosen. Before the Rite. Before power.
Qaritas didn't speak. But his hand curled tighter.
Not around a weapon.
Around his name.
As if holding it tighter might stop the realm from rewriting it first.
And like all memories, it grows sharper the longer you try to forget it.
Qaritas exhaled.
They were all still standing.
But none one of them was untouched.
They stood like names at the end of a forgotten prayer—fading, of something that hadn't yet erased.
This wasn't a new place.
It was a memory returning without mercy.
Ayla didn't move. Not at first.
"This isn't how I remember it," she whispered. "It's... bigger. No. Worse."
Her gaze drifted—and caught on a child's footprint, burned into the ribstone. Too small. Too familiar. She blinked, and it was gone. But the ache remained. but it wasn't in her body. In her breath.
And still, that tiny print remained. Like a bruise the world refused to forget.
She moved forward one step, then stopped.
Her knees nearly gave. Her eyes welled—not from pain, but recognition.
"That's where I ran," she whispered. "The day he took my name away."
The footprint darkened, just a shade. The ribstone cracked, barely. As if the world acknowledged the confession—and agreed it wasn't hers to carry alone.
Silence followed. No one dared ask who she meant.
Komus's brow furrowed.
"The Tower of Breath was over there," he muttered, pointing toward a crumbling ruin wrapped in sinew.
But now, it wept blood from its spire, reshaped like a cathedral of wounds.
Ayla blinked slowly, voice low.
"He rewrote it. Like a poem torn up and fed to something hungry."
Beyond the far tower, something shifted—just a silhouette. Thin. Unmoving. Watching. it wasn't threatening. Just... familiar. Too familiar.
Qaritas didn't mention it. Neither did Ayla. But both looked.
And somewhere beneath the pulsing ground, something laughed— It wasn't with joy, but with recognition.
The Eye twitched again—and for a split breath, its pupil narrowed in on Hydeius.
His soul-lights flared, screaming soundlessly. One orb shattered, spraying spectral ash across the ground.
He grunted, jaw clenched.
He looked at the scattered ash—one soul he'd sworn to protect. Gone, it wasn't from death, but by memory's appetite. "That one wasn't ready," he said quietly. "Neither was I."
He remembered her name. Barely. A child of the Ember Line. Too young to burn. Too brave to hide. Her last words had been laughter—he'd promised to carry it.
No one spoke. The soul-ash shimmered once—then sank into the flesh of the ground, as if the realm had swallowed the apology whole.
And then... the ground beneath their feet pulsed—twice. it wasn't violent. Rhythmically.
Like a heartbeat.
No. it wasn't a heartbeat. A laugh.
Mrajeareim wasn't just watching.
It was waiting.
For one of them to crack.
For the story to start over again.
None of them spoke it aloud, but they all felt it:
The story had started again.
And this time, it would forget who the heroes were.
The Tower of Breath groaned again—a sound like a name being misremembered by something that used to love you.
And the Eye twitched—once. Just enough to remember which of them would forget themselves first.