Ashardio stood before the monolith, a ruin half-swallowed by time and tree. The broken stones jutted like the ribs of a long-dead colossus, and beneath them, the roots of the Ashen Pines tangled like veins coiled around a wounded heart. The symbol etched faintly into the surface — a spiral wrapped in thirteen lines — pulsed once under his touch, not with light… but with memory.
The ground shuddered.
A low groan echoed beneath his feet as the roots slowly unraveled, not resisting his presence — but recognizing it. A fissure opened. Dust swirled upward like forgotten breath. Ashardio did not hesitate.
He descended.
The air thickened the deeper he went, not with heat or cold, but weight — a pressure behind the eyes, behind the soul. As if something watched from behind the stone, beneath the silence. Every step downward was a rejection of light, a pledge to secrecy. The spiral staircase led him through a tomb of stillness, and at its end: a door of petrified wood, bound in runes that hissed faintly as he approached.
He placed his palm upon them.
They didn't resist.
They opened.
⸻
The chamber beyond was unlike any of the others.
This was not a vault, or a crypt, or even a throne-room. It was a memory made manifest — a cathedral carved not by tools but by intention. The walls shimmered, not with magic, but with raw narrative. Thousands of glyphs floated mid-air, orbiting a fractured obsidian altar like mourning stars. Beneath them, a pool of mirror-glass reflected not Ashardio's face, but possibilities — versions of himself that had never walked, never breathed, never chosen the paths he had.
He stepped closer. The glyphs whispered in tongues not spoken since before time coiled.
One name repeated: Kaelith.
He reached out toward the glyphs — and they recoiled.
Something within the altar pulsed.
And then… it opened.
The altar split, revealing an inner chamber lined with relics — bone crowns, sealed vials of memory, shards of thrones carved from thought and shadow. But at its heart was a mask — black as unlit flame, carved in the shape of a serene face… with no eyes.
Ashardio staggered back.
His mind surged with visions —
The First Sundered War.
The Weavers binding the Thirteenth.
A Celestial bleeding light into a child's cradle.
His mother, whispering to a mirror that no longer reflected her.
And in every vision… the eyeless mask watched.
He fell to his knees.
This chamber had not called him to grant him truth.
It had opened… to prepare him.
Because the next door would not be stone.
It would not be guarded by runes.
It would be her.
And she would not remember who she was —
But she would remember him.
From the altar's shadows, a whisper crawled up the walls:
"The chain is a lie."
"The heir is not alone."
"The gate will not close… unless sealed by love or blood."
And the mask, still untouched, turned ever so slightly.