The Core pulsed louder that night.
Kael barely slept. Neither did Lira.
The guards had mentioned a test. A compatibility assessment. They said it in hushed tones, like they weren't sure if it was a ritual or a death sentence.
Lira tried to joke about it.
But her hands trembled when she thought he wasn't looking.
---
As they lay in the dark, her fingers brushed his.
Kael felt it like a jolt.
Not pain.
Memory.
---
He was somewhere else.
A different place.
A different body.
He stood beneath a sky on fire, wearing robes of white threaded with gold. His eyes glowed with runes, and before him knelt thousands — Echoes, mages, and kings.
His name then was Solyn Kael.
And he had not been hunted.
He had been worshiped.
"We must seal the Flame of Memory," he said, voice thundering. "Too many fragments, too much madness. The world must forget… or it will fall again."
Around him stood twelve cloaked figures.
The First Cradle.
He had formed it.
To protect the world.
To seal the dangerous truths.
To erase the past.
And in doing so…
He had set in motion his own damnation.
---
Kael gasped, snapping back into the cell. His breath came hard. Sweat beaded down his back.
Lira stared at him. "What did you see?"
"Myself," he whispered. "Not as I am. As I was."
She nodded slowly. "The memory wants to wake."
He shook his head. "No. Not the memory. The guilt."
---
The next morning, they came.
Two masked technicians. Two Woken guards.
"This one is stable," one technician said, gesturing to Kael. "And she's shown rare resilience."
"They may be compatible," the other murmured. "The Core is calling. Let's see if it answers."
---
Kael and Lira were chained and led through a corridor neither had seen before — down into the black-glass halls beneath the lab. Lights pulsed along the floor. The air grew heavier. The walls vibrated like they were made of breath.
Lira gripped his hand tight.
"If we survive," she whispered, "we change everything."
Kael didn't answer.
But as the doors opened to a chamber shaped like an eye, he felt it — the stir of something ancient.
Not rage.
Not power.
But remorse.
And a whisper in his mind:
"You made this. Now unmake it."