---
[Exterior: The Whispering Verge — a jagged cloud reef suspended over a permanent storm front. No skyships dare pass here. The aether bends inwards. The wind whispers secrets never spoken.]
[Interior: Starwake's war room. The old maps end here. But Kaelen's journal doesn't.]
Sylrae (reading aloud):
> "Vault 1. Codename: Hollow Crown. Final seal. Location unknown—rumored to move with the wind. Last tethered to a living soul… Emperor Solen Vire."
Thane (blinking hard):
"Vire? As in...?"
Sylrae (quietly):
"Kaelen's father."
---
[Flashback: A fragmentary memory—Kaelen as a child, watching a man in gilded robes pour molten aether into a circle of bound scrolls. The man turns. He has Kaelen's eyes—but none of his softness.]
Solen Vire (echoing):
> "The sky must be ruled by will. If it cannot be ruled—it must be burned."
---
[Back to present. Starwake breaches the Whispering Verge. Stormlight fractures across its hull. Myrrenox flies ahead, carving a path with sonic gusts. Beneath them—floating stone spires, crowned by a pulsing sphere of glass.]
Thane (whispers):
"There. The Vault's heartbeat."
---
[Interior: Hollow Crown Vault. They descend into a silent chamber filled with mirrors—each one showing Kaelen, at different ages, in different clothes, in different lives. One shows him in a Bound form. Another—wearing an imperial crown.]
Sylrae (draws her blade):
"These aren't reflections. They're branches. Realities that almost were."
Voice (from nowhere—and everywhere):
> "He was meant to be the Key. Not the Breaker."
[A figure steps through one of the mirrors. Solen Vire. Unaged. Regal. But flickering at the edges—like a memory fighting corruption.]
Solen:
"Kaelen is not dead. Not truly. He left himself here. A tether. A seal."
Thane:
> "You mean… Kaelen is the final seal?"
Solen (nods):
"Yes. And the Bound know it. That's why they haven't broken him. They need him to choose."
---
[The mirrors begin to fracture. One by one, they shatter into silence. Only one remains—showing Kaelen, eyes closed, chained to a stone sky-root, floating somewhere unknown.]
Sylrae (steps forward):
"We need to find him. Not just to win—but to keep the world sealed."
Solen (smiling grimly):
> "Find him… and decide: save the man, or save the sky."
---
[Outside, a ripple tears through the clouds. The Bound have found the Verge. Ships begin to vanish in swirls of corrupted light. The race is on.]
---
End of Chapter Twenty