The sanctuary's breath was steady now.
The ley-heart pulsed in the center of the chamber, casting green and gold light across the dome's smooth walls. Threads of ancient metal gleamed beneath vines like veins of buried stars. Dust floated in the stillness like suspended ash.
Kaelen stood near the core, silent, eyes fixed on the glyph-rings spinning above it.
Behind him, Auren knelt before the seal, one hand pressed flat against its surface. His breathing had slowed, and though the blood hadn't stopped, his posture had changed.
Not broken.
Focused.
"They're tracking us," Kaelen said, voice low. "The forest's gone quiet. Too quiet."
Auren didn't look up. "I know."
Kaelen turned. "You're bleeding. You should be resting."
"I'm done resting."
The glyph beneath Auren's hand pulsed once dim and gold. The leyline responded not to power, but memory.
Auren's.
Kaelen moved toward him. "What are you doing?"
"Listening."
The ley-heart flared.
And then they were somewhere else.
A sound. Wind. Screaming metal. A child's voice calling out. The scent of charred wood and ash. A figure on the steps of a great temple, blood staining her dress. Her face blurred. Familiar.
Kaelen staggered back. "What-?"
Auren gritted his teeth. "The Wyrd doesn't just remember places. It remembers pain."
The vision fractured like glass. They were back.
Auren sank to the floor, his hand shaking. "I forced it to show us. It fought back."
Kaelen looked at him. "You're telling me the leyline has a memory of its own?"
Auren nodded. "It absorbs what happens near it. Suffering leaves a deeper mark than anything else."
Kaelen's voice was low. "And we're walking on a graveyard."
A crack echoed above.
They both looked up.
A flicker of shadow at the entrance stair.
Kaelen gripped his blade. "The Echo?"
Auren stood slowly. "No. It's gone."
He stepped forward. His hand reached toward the air, where a faint shimmer of golden threads still hung like spider silk.
"I pushed it away. Not with force… with recognition. It's not a monster. It's grief. Mine."
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. "That's it?"
"No. It'll come back." Auren's voice dropped. "But next time, it'll know I'm not running."
Silence fell again.
Then the ceiling flared.
The mural blazed across the stone two figures, the Flame and the Ghost. But this time, the image shifted.
Kaelen saw not just a still image but motion.
One brother pulling another from a burning city. The other standing between a collapsing wall and a crowd of terrified faces. A blade raised against the sky. A fall. A hand reaching but never catching.
The scene stuttered. Flames devouring gold.
The Wyrd wasn't showing prophecy. It was showing possibility.
Auren whispered, "It's not fate. It's memory. A warning."
Kaelen stared. "So we're not meant to fulfill a prophecy."
"No," Auren said. "We're meant to avoid it."
Up above, far above, the forest groaned.
And then it screamed.
A ripple of white flame tore through the canopy, turning trees to ash in seconds.
The Echo, still drifting near the monolith, convulsed and vanished into the dirt with a hiss.
The Vesperborn had arrived.
Inside the sanctuary, Auren's eyes snapped toward the stairwell. "It's here."
Kaelen's voice was sharp. "We hold them off?"
"No," Auren said. He took a shaky breath. "We use the Wyrd."
Kaelen blinked. "What?"
"I can channel the seal. Not for long. But I can turn this place into a warded tomb. It'll delay them."
Kaelen's face hardened. "That'll kill you."
Auren gave a weary smile. "Only if you leave me behind."
"Then don't ask me to."
"I'm not. I'm asking you to get ready."
Above the forest, the sky burned gold.
And the flame that came for them walked on silent feet, wrapped in divine ruin.