The Ruined Citadel
Guided by clues from the Watchers' map, Cael and Mireth travel to the shattered remains of an old citadel on a cliff, known as Vael'drin Hold. Mireth has been quiet the whole journey.
She finally speaks:
"This is where I died."
Cael thinks she's joking—until he sees the seal mark burned into her back, near her spine. It's faded. Broken.
Flashback: The Citadel Before the Fall
We shift into a flashback, told through Mireth's memory.
Years ago, Vael'drin Hold was a training ground for elite Essentia Wardens—mages trained to detect and close minor Void tears. Mireth was one of them.
She was the youngest ever to form a Tier 2 core in the Warden order.
One day, she and her team discovered a growing Fracture beneath the citadel—a hairline rift too thin to close.
"We thought we could contain it with layered seals."
But it whispered back.
Catastrophe
The rift erupted—one of the seals cracked inward, pulling half the team into nothing. Mireth's friend and lover, Daien, was among them.
She tried to pull him back… and felt her own Essentia signature unraveling.
"I survived. But something inside me didn't."
The Warden Order declared her tainted. She fled. The rift eventually sealed itself—half-naturally, half through collapse.
Back to the Present
Cael listens, silently, as Mireth stands over the crater where the seal once was.
"I joined the Sealbearers not for duty. For revenge."
She kneels and touches the old scar on the earth.
Suddenly, Cael's Void shard pulses in response.
The ground beneath them trembles… and a phantom echo of the past ripples into view.
They see a silhouette—Daien—flickering in and out of reality, mouthing words they can't hear.
Mireth gasps: "He's still somewhere."
A Dangerous Choice
Cael realizes: the shard responded not just to location, but emotion. Her wound is a resonant anchor.
He considers using the bone quill to amplify the moment—to record Daien's echo into something stable. But Mireth stops him.
"Not yet. Not like this. We do it right. Or not at all."