The horizon was broken.
Not by mountains or skyline, but by glass—vast panels of it, jagged and uneven, rising from the landscape like the bones of a shattered god. Sunlight refracted across their surfaces, splitting into kaleidoscopic shards that danced over the cracked terrain.
Reven stood at the edge, the Flamecore quiet in his hand.
He hadn't spoken since they left the salt plains. Not out of fear. Not even awe. But reverence—for a world that had, against every expectation, remembered him back.
Kaela stood just behind him, arms crossed, blades slung low on her hips. She didn't speak either. Not at first.
"This place is wrong," she finally said.
"It's meant to be," Reven replied.
Lirien touched down beside them, wings catching the wind with practiced control. "Scout relay's blind out here. Can't get signal. Can't send one either."
Kaelex stepped into view from the opposite ridge, her expression unreadable. "The next Core is inside. Beneath the panels."
"How deep?" Kaela asked.
Kaelex hesitated.
"As deep as guilt."
They moved slowly through the glass field.
The panels rose higher the farther in they travelled—some as tall as watchtowers, others leaning in at strange angles, as if bending toward one another in silent conversation. Beneath their feet, the ground was slick with frost and dust, the temperature falling without explanation.
Kaela brushed a hand along one of the panels. "Feels like a mausoleum."
"It is," Kaelex said. "A vault of reflections. The system built this place to contain the sixth Core. Not protect it. Imprison it."
Reven frowned. "Why?"
She looked at him.
"Because this Core didn't accept its bearer. It rejected them."
Lirien's feathers ruffled. "You mean it's hostile?"
"I mean it's afraid."
They reached the base of a massive sloped panel, almost entirely buried. From beneath its edge, a soft violet glow pulsed. Not bright. Not warm. But steady—like a heartbeat beneath glass.
Reven knelt and placed his hand on the surface.
The Flamecore answered with a slow, matching rhythm.
"I can feel it," he said. "It's… different."
Kaela crouched beside him. "Different how?"
"Familiar."
And then the ground opened. The descent wasn't physical. One moment Reven stood in the light.
The next, he was somewhere between memory and machinery—suspended in a chamber that had no walls, only frames of fractured mirror and slow-turning wheels of light. Beneath his feet, a spiral of script curled like smoke across a surface that shifted with his breath.
A voice greeted him. Not hollow. Not synthetic. Soft.
"You've come too late."
Reven turned. A figure stood at the chamber's far end—tall, slim, cloaked in memory. Not data. Memory. Its face was obscured by layers of shifting symbols, but its voice was human.
"They buried me here. Not because I failed. But because I remembered too well."
"Who are you?" Reven asked.
The figure stepped forward.
"I am the bearer the Core rejected."
The chamber pulsed. Reven felt it then—like heat on his skin. Not from the Core. From the shame. This wasn't just a failed connection. It was a burial. The Core hadn't protected the bearer. It had consumed them and when they'd tried to give it back. The system had sealed them away. The figure looked at him now, and for a moment, the shifting face resolved and Reven saw himself. Not a version. Not a mirror. A record. A life the system had lived and discarded.
"You are not the first, Reven," the figure said. "You are the last."
Then the chamber shattered.
He dropped back into his body like stone into water. Kaela was gripping his shoulder, eyes wide.
"You stopped breathing."
"For how long?"
"Too long."
Reven sat up, the wind biting at his skin.
Kaelex stood nearby, arms crossed, but her expression was gentler than usual.
"You saw him," she said.
"I saw what came before me."
Lirien narrowed her eyes. "Was it Hollowlight?"
"No," Reven said. "Worse."
Kaela helped him to his feet. "Then what do we call it?"
Reven looked back at the glass panels—at the way they reflected nothing, as if unwilling to remember.
"We call it what it was."
He turned.
"We call it the cost."