The walls shimmered as Aya and Elrik descended the obsidian spiral, their steps swallowed by silence. This part of the Spire felt less like architecture and more like memory carved into form. No torches, no fixtures, just walls that pulsed faintly with emotion, crystalline veins lighting up at each breath they took.
Aya ran her hand along the surface. The wall didn't resist, it responded. A flicker of her sister's face, the sound of her mother's prayer, a rainy afternoon in her youth. All of it was hers, twisted subtly. Not illusions. Questions.
"You see it too?" she asked.
Elrik nodded, jaw tight. "It's not projecting. It's inviting."
A pulse reverberated through the corridor, soft, yet rhythmic, like a heartbeat just under the floor. Aya stopped walking. The sound wasn't hers. Nor Elrik's.
"It's leading us," she said.
"Or testing us," Elrik replied, his tone neutral.
Aya's fingers curled. The Sovereign was awake. And aware.
They continued in silence, the heartbeat growing louder, though it never came closer. Their reflections warped slightly in the walls, twisting into expressions neither of them wore.
Aya tried to focus on the mission, on Dex's last transmission, on Kael's recent surge of power, but doubt gnawed at her. Not about the Rift.
About Kael.
They rounded the final step. In the distance, the corridor split open like cracked glass, a single glyph marking the next chamber: VARIANCE.
Frozen echoes stood in rows, figures sculpted from the Rift's memory. Not statues. Not projections. Possibilities.
Aya stepped into the chamber cautiously. The air here was thin and cold, like breathing through silk soaked in grief.
She stared at a figure half-submerged in glass. Dex. Or... a version of him. Older. Worn. But still Dex.
"Look," Elrik murmured, pointing. Near the far end, Kael. At least, that's what it looked like. The figure's posture was regal, almost serene. But its eyes were wrong. Empty. Hungry.
Aya drifted toward it.
She reached out, brushing a glyph etched near the figure's shoulder. A whisper sparked from it—her voice.
"He's not stable. Not yet. He's the reason they're breaching faster."
The sound punched through her. That memory, she'd said it at the Vault. Only once. In doubt.
"You said he was dangerous," Elrik said beside her. His tone wasn't cruel. Just factual.
Aya didn't look at him.
"I saw something in the Memory Vault," she said finally. "Kael... commanding the Rift. The Sovereign reacting to him. Like he wasn't a mistake. Like he was meant to lead it."
"And you still trust him?"
She hesitated.
"I trust what he's trying to become. But what he's becoming... I don't know if even he understands it."
Elrik said nothing.
Another pulse beat beneath their feet, vibrating through the chamber. Aya touched the figure of Kael again.
This time, the glyph whispered:
"He won't choose us."
She recoiled.
And moved on.
The air changed.
Gone was the stale stillness of frozen echoes. Ahead lay a corridor that breathed. Walls of soft flesh-like crystal stretched and contracted as if inhaling. Veins pulsed in sync with the heartbeat below.
Aya and Elrik stepped carefully. Each movement triggered a new reaction in the walls, light flows, soft clicks, even brief vocal echoes in long-dead languages.
Aya reached out.
The wall didn't resist. Instead, it pulsed beneath her palm, and her vision cracked open.
She was nowhere and everywhere. Riftlight fell in spirals.
Kael knelt at the heart of it, his arms outstretched. He wasn't shouting, but the Rift roared from his throat. Not his voice, another's.
Dex stood nearby, glitching. Flickering in and out.
And far behind them, a throne of roots and stars. Occupied.
The Sovereign.
Watching.
Aya stumbled back. Elrik caught her.
"I saw it," she whispered. "It's not just waking. It's... studying him. Every step. Every change. It's interested."
"In Kael?" Elrik asked.
"In all of us. But through him."
Elrik's gaze darkened. "Then we're already late."
They continued down the breathing hall, each step faster. Behind them, the walls began to hum.
The pulse no longer felt external.
It was within them now.
A threshold of bone greeted them, an archway made from fused skulls, all humanoid. Some ancient. Some recent. One bore the insignia of the Time Authority.
Aya entered first, breath held.
Inside, the chamber whispered.
The walls, a network of ossified faces, murmured secrets, fragmented thoughts. Names. Betrayals. Confessions.
One voice rang louder than the others.
"She who turned from fate will light the gate."
Aya paused.
That was about her. About leaving the Authority. The words weren't a curse. They were... a prophecy.
Elrik knelt by one wall, brushing aside ash.
He uncovered a symbol, Time Authority crest, broken in half.
"They didn't build this place," he said. "They found it. Tried to contain it."
Aya nodded slowly. "This is older than them. Maybe older than the Rift as we know it."
A long pause.
"If they knew Kael would emerge..." Elrik began.
"They'd have buried this place deeper," Aya finished.
And now, none of that mattered.
Because something was waking that the Authority couldn't stop.
The final chamber was circular and empty, save for a hovering sphere, liquid, reflective, pulsing with a silver-black sheen.
Aya stepped toward it. The mirror flickered, and showed her.
Older. Alone. Eyes hard. She wore the Authority uniform again. No Kael. No Riftwalkers.
She stepped back.
Elrik's turn. The mirror revealed him handing over something, glowing, to a cloaked Riftbound figure. He looked sick. Regretful. Betrayed.
"I'd never..." he muttered.
The mirror broke.
Cracked in a web of light.
And from within it, a voice.
Not male. Not female. Not even language. Just meaning.
"The Sovereign remembers."
"The thread of betrayal is woven."
The sphere exploded, not with force, but pressure. Both Aya and Elrik staggered back, ears ringing.
Visions clung to their skin like ash.
Aya looked at Elrik.
"We're not just here to find Dex," she said. "We're part of whatever's waking."
Elrik nodded grimly.
And the hum began again.
Dex's fractured chamber
Dex stirred.
He was lying sideways now, breath shallow, skin clammy.
But the shard, the broken one, was glowing.
Pulsing.
In rhythm with something far away.
He felt it.
Aya. Elrik. Near the Sovereign's core. The chamber knew them. Reacted to them.
And something responded in return.
The air in Dex's prison bent. A low hum started to rise, not noise. A tuning. As if the world were adjusting to a new frequency.
Then,
A tendril.
Thin. Black. Laced with shifting glyphs. It breached the wall.
Dex pushed himself up. Barely.
He held the shard to his chest.
Not in fear.
In offering.
The tendril froze.
And then
It bowed.
Dex's breath caught.
He whispered: "Aya... it knows her."
"And it's waiting."
The chamber began to collapse.
He didn't run. Just stood there.
Because now, they all felt it.
"The Spiral is not just a passage. It's a test. And we've already started failing."