The mask sat unmoving at the heart of the chamber. Yet something inside Ashardio pulsed in rhythm with it — as though it were a second heart, long dormant, now waking in echo. The glyphs that once floated passively around the altar now spun faster, forming a spiral above the mask. Each symbol hummed like the strings of an invisible harp.
A voice — ancient, neither male nor female — slid into the chamber, not as sound, but as thought:
"To open what is sealed, you must answer what is felt but never named."
Ashardio stood motionless. The mask's blank face seemed to tilt slightly toward him, expectant. Then the glyphs coalesced into the form of a question — a riddle carved of memory and enigma:
"Born of flame, yet colder than death.
It binds the kind, it sunders kin.
It breaks the brave, yet makes gods kneel.
You cannot see it, yet it sees through you.
Name it — or be unmade."
The chamber darkened. The air thickened into something syrupy and slow. The roots above him groaned as if drawing tighter. His thoughts scattered like birds chased from a burning tree.
He whispered under his breath, repeating the riddle.
"Born of flame… yet colder than death. It binds… sunders…"
He closed his eyes.
Visions flashed —
His mother holding him in the rain.
Kaelith standing beside him in the ruins, laughing softly.
The scream he did not utter when the First Guardian fell.
He remembered feeling something at each turning point. Something that defied reason. That changed him — and caged him. He remembered reaching for her when she began to vanish from his memories. He remembered rage, yes. But beneath it…
Not rage.
Not vengeance.
Not fear.
Something colder.
Deeper.
Grief.
His breath caught.
He opened his eyes.
And spoke the word aloud:
"Grief."
The silence broke like glass.
The glyphs exploded into starlight.
The mask cracked — not in destruction, but in release.
And from its core, a staircase descended — made not of stone, but echoes.
Steps carved from every moment he had ever doubted himself.
Every loss. Every unspoken goodbye.
The voice returned:
"The door opens. But beware… for grief is only the key.
What lies beyond… is shaped by what you refuse to grieve."
Ashardio stepped forward.
And the chamber folded around him like a secret being remembered.