Chapter 63: The Scars That Echo
The ruins of Caereth did not whisper—they screamed. Through the fog-choked skeletons of towers, wind howled like memories torn from the mouth of a dying god. Sameer stepped lightly over shattered obsidian tiles that once adorned the Dome of Accord. Every step cracked open a history he had tried desperately to forget.
The Thread had once run through here.
Now, nothing ran.
Only stillness lingered, deep and heavy, like guilt grown roots.
Ashriel knelt beside a collapsed archway. He pressed a palm to the fractured stone, fingers glowing faintly. The magic here was corrupted, dreamstuff tangled in nightmare residue.
"Someone fought hard to keep this place hidden," he murmured.
Lucien emerged from the shadows, his cloak flaring like the judgment of old gods. "Or to keep something buried."
Sameer's gaze swept the ruins. The light from his left eye—the synthetic one—flickered, scanning residual chronosigils. Fragmented echoes of a battle spiraled in his lens: a cry, a blade drawn in defiance, a scream cut short.
"The past wants to be remembered," he said. "Even when we wish it wouldn't."
Eris appeared last, riding silence like a second skin. Her new regalia—the Crest of Forgetting—glinted in the ashlight. She carried no blade, no tome, only a circlet of woven hair: the memory of someone she once loved.
"What if remembering is what breaks us?" she asked.
Lucien didn't respond. Judgment had long since ceased to be a choice for him. It was a function.
They had come seeking the Heart of the Rift—the first seed of the anomaly, born where time was first denied. Only with it could they navigate the overlapping zones of Terra's shattered self.
Only with it could they hope to find Kael.
He had become myth.
Worshipped by the descendants of the Forgotten Wards, hunted by the Order of Burning Echoes. To some, he was the Riftwalker, the prophet of paradox. To others, he was the End. But for them—Sameer, Lucien, Eris, Ashriel—Kael was a wound.
Unhealed. Unhealable.
They walked together through the husk of Caereth, each step like breaking an oath. And as they moved, the ruins shifted.
Not physically.
Not overtly.
But reality here... remembered them.
A shard of mirror-glass embedded in a tree glinted at Ashriel. For a moment, he saw Jiwoon.
Smiling.
Then the vision shattered into ash.
Lucien paused at the old tribunal circle—seven black thrones, now cracked and unseated. He had sat there once. Condemned a man who would later become a god.
The silence judged him back.
Sameer's device pinged. A temporal pulse, subtle but rhythmic, pulsed beneath their feet. Eris extended her hand, fingers threading air like ribbon.
"It's breathing."
Lucien stepped forward. "The Rift?"
Eris shook her head. "The memory of the Rift."
Sameer adjusted his lens. The coordinates aligned with the tomb beneath the city—the Vault of Dissension. It had once held the words that fractured the first pact between Realms.
Now, it held the possibility of reunion—or oblivion.
They descended.
The air grew colder with each step, like descending through layers of mourning. The stairway didn't creak. It sighed.
At the bottom, doors awaited them. Not carved from stone, but from forgotten names.
Ashriel touched the surface.
He spoke one name.
"Kael."
The doors did not open.
They wept.
Tears of mist spiraled upward as the lock dissolved. Inside, the Vault was empty.
But not void.
A boy stood there. No older than fifteen, barefoot, wrapped in shifting linen.
His eyes were moons. One full, one waning.
He looked at them and tilted his head.
"Are you the ones who broke the thread?"
Lucien blinked. "Who are you?"
"I am what you left behind," the boy said. "And what remembers you."
Eris took a step forward, her voice trembling despite herself. "You're... the Witness?"
The boy nodded.
Sameer frowned. "But the Witness was older. Ancient. Bound to the Cathedral."
The boy's smile cracked like old marble. "Time is bleeding. Age is a costume. Memory is what we truly wear."
Lucien narrowed his gaze. "What do you remember of Kael?"
The boy's expression shifted. Now sorrow. Now reverence. Now terror.
"Everything."
He turned to the center of the room. A shard of the broken Thread floated there, suspended in nullspace. It pulsed, soft and sick with potential.
"This is where he made the choice," said the Witness. "Where he split from fate and became the anomaly."
Ashriel reached for the Thread, but the boy stopped him.
"You cannot touch it unless it remembers you."
Lucien frowned. "How do we make it remember?"
The boy smiled.
"You bleed."
He raised his hand, and suddenly the Vault dissolved.
They stood in another time.
The day the Thread broke.
Sameer was younger—hope in his eyes.
Lucien had not yet killed his brother.
Eris was still in love.
Ashriel had not betrayed Jiwoon.
They watched themselves from afar, ghosts of the unbroken timeline. The echo played out—Kael standing at the center of the Cathedral, his hand outstretched to the Thread. They all shouted warnings.
None were heard.
Kael touched the Thread.
It screamed.
And in that scream, they all fractured.
The vision snapped.
They were back in the Vault, breathless. The boy still stood there, hands now stained with metaphorical blood.
"You remember now," he said.
Sameer collapsed to his knees. "Why show us this? Why now?"
"Because he is waking. Kael. And he is not alone."
Lucien stepped forward. "What does he want?"
The Witness tilted his head. "He wants to end memory."
Eris stiffened. "Oblivion?"
"Worse," the boy whispered. "Stillness."
Ashriel stood. "Then we must stop him."
The boy looked at each of them in turn. "You may not want to."
Sameer's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
The Witness smiled. Sadly.
"Because Kael's dream is mercy. And yours is judgment."
The shard of the Thread pulsed.
And chose.
Lucien.
It flew into his chest like lightning seeking a storm.
He gasped, then fell.
Inside, his mind opened. And Kael spoke.
"You found me."
Lucien's vision flickered.
He stood in a world without color.
Kael waited, cloaked in threads of reality undone.
"I am tired," Kael said.
Lucien lifted his hand. It trembled.
"Then let me judge you."
Kael stepped forward.
"Only if you remember everything."
And Lucien did.
Every life he had ended.
Every truth he had warped.
Every love he had betrayed.
Tears fell. Not from sorrow.
From awe.
Kael embraced him.
And Lucien wept for the first time in two hundred years.
Outside, the others stood in silence.
The boy—the Witness—began to fade.
"The second thread awakens."
Eris caught his hand. "Will we survive it?"
The boy's voice faded like dusk.
"Only if you remember what it means to forget."
Then he was gone.
Lucien rose.
Eyes glowing.
Changed.
The Vault trembled.
And the world shifted with it.