The moment we step closer to the map, the chamber hums.
Not sound. Not light. Just pressure, curling around our ribs, whispering without words. The floating threads above the dais shift, reacting to our presence—aligning, narrowing.
Pointing.
Kett mutters, "It's choosing something."
"No," I say. "It's remembering."
Jeral kneels at the edge of the spiral, tracing one of the etched lines with a gloved finger. "These threads… they're alive."
"They're memory," Sov says. "Vault memory. City memory. Vellidra's memory. All woven together."
Wren moves to the dais, holding the cracked ring forward.
The threads tremble.
Then one breaks off.
Not shatters. Just *detaches*—like a single nerve snapping loose—and it winds its way down, slow and deliberate, into the floor.
A hidden seam opens.
Stone splits, dust falling into the air like snow.
A new stairwell. Smaller. Tighter.
Lira draws her blade. "We follow it?"
I nod. "We don't have a choice."
The descent is short—maybe thirty steps.
At the bottom is a second chamber, and in its center, a pedestal with a glass case.
Inside: a mask.
Old. Cracked. Covered in runes.
It pulses faintly, matching the cracked ring's rhythm.
Branvel stops beside me. "That's not yours."
"No," I whisper. "It's hers."
Vellidra's first mask. The one she *sealed away.*
Sov steps ahead. "Why keep it down here?"
Wren answers before I can. "Because it remembers what she tried to forget."
The runes glow softly as I approach.
Then I hear her voice. Not aloud—in the ring, in the threads, in my chest.
*"If you've come this far… you must be ready to choose. Silence is not peace. Power is not truth. What you wear next defines what remains."*
I reach for the glass.
It doesn't resist.
The moment I lift the mask, the chamber shifts again.
A new path opens. Not behind us. *Above.*
The ceiling cracks, revealing a tunnel leading back toward the surface—no stairs, no stone—just wind. The kind that tastes of war.
The mask hums in my hands.
And I know.
The city's true battle isn't in the streets anymore.
It's in the memory of what we were… and what we're about to become.