The mountain trembled as if remembering a sorrow too deep to voice.
Aryan stood at the edge of a jagged precipice within the catacomb of shadows, his chest heaving as the tremors quieted beneath his boots. The air here was heavier than before.... thick with ancient grief, with dust that shimmered like faded memory. His eyes, still haunted by the confrontation with his own reflection, flickered to the seal now burned onto the inside of his wrist: the Fourth Mark. It pulsed like a second heartbeat.
He should have felt triumph. But all he felt was distance.
From her.
"Elanora..." he whispered, the name clawing up his throat like a prayer and a wound. He had felt it....when the fire shifted, when light lanced through the cracks in the mountain. Something in her had changed. She had made her choice, and the world had felt it breathe differently.
And now, something else stirred. The next seal.
The corridor before him narrowed, walls of blackened obsidian closing in like teeth. Each step sent a cascade of shadows slithering across the ground, responding to his presence. The silence here was deep, almost sentient, broken only by the occasional whisper....too soft to understand, too familiar to ignore.
His pendant...now darkened with soot and spidering cracks...shuddered with each step, reacting to the proximity of the next trial. Or perhaps, to something more alive.
At the bend of the corridor, the path split into two. One spiraled downward like a wound burrowing into the mountain's heart. The other veered upward, bathed in a faint silvery glow.
But before he could choose, the air shifted.
"Aryan."
The voice was not her voice. It was deeper, older. Male.
He turned.
Out of the shadows stepped a figure draped in a mantle of ash and smoke. His face... was his own.
No....older, etched with ruin. This was not a mirror, as before. This was a future.
Aryan's hand hovered instinctively over the hilt at his side, though no blade had ever eased this kind of dread.
The shadow smile....with cruelty, but with sorrow.
Shadow-Aryan: "You think you're close to saving her. But the closer you come, the more you will lose."
Aryan: "You're not real. You're just another illusion. Another lie in this cursed place."
Shadow-Aryan: "Am I? Or am I the only truth this mountain dares to show you? The man you will become, if you do what you think you must."
The pendant seared against his chest. Aryan flinched.
Aryan: "I won't become you. I've seen what that path looks like. I've turned away."
Shadow-Aryan: "Have you? You left her once. Not in this life.....but in another. And each time you try to rewrite it, you bring the ruin closer."
The chamber began to warp around them. Flames bled through the cracks in the stone, winding like serpents. The fourth seal shimmered on Aryan's wrist and bled light like it was breaking.
Shadow-Aryan: "Tell me, if saving her meant becoming this.....would you still do it?"
The mountain waited for his answer.
Aryan's fists clenched, his body trembling. Behind his eyes, memories not his own flickered.....Elanora in a white city swallowed by dusk, her eyes wide with betrayal. Him, walking away. Again. And again. Across lifetimes.
He staggered forward, seizing the shadow's cloak.
Aryan: "Show me the truth. All of it. Not fragments. Not riddles. I want to remember why I left."
The shadow stared at him with something like pride....and pity.
Shadow-Aryan: "Then come."
The stone beneath them shattered.
They plummeted.
He landed in silence.
Not stone. Not fire. But sand.
Golden grains slid between his fingers as he rose. Above him stretched a sky torn in twilight.....a place neither here nor real. Time had no tether here. He was in the Between.
And before him stood the city from his dream. Tall spires carved from alabaster. Flags fluttering in a wind that whispered her name.
He took a step forward.....and the vision rippled.
Elanora, standing in a court of light. Dressed in gold, her hair woven with laurels. Her face radiant. But her eyes searched.....hollow.
And he....Aryan.....knelt before a different queen. One crowned in flame.
Queen of Ashes: "Do you love her enough to destroy her fate?"
His past self did not answer.
A sword was laid in his hand. A war declared. A bargain struck.
And Elanora, in the distance, turned....too late.
Aryan gasped, falling backward.
The sand bled away.
Back in the mountain. The seal on his wrist flared.
He now remembered.
He had left her not out of cowardice....but out of sacrifice. He had joined the Queen of Ashes to shatter the cycle. To burn the bindings of the prophecy. He had become destruction so she could have peace.
But it hadn't worked.
He had only ensured they would forget. Begin again. Suffer again.
Aryan (hoarse): "I thought I was saving you. But I only bound us deeper."
A voice....not the shadow's, not his own....answered.
Whisper: "Then unbind her. Or you will lose her forever."
The corridor split again. But this time, there was no light. Only two shadows.
One led toward the Fifth Seal.
The other...to her.
He knew the choice was coming. Not yet. But soon.
And it would burn.
Far above, beyond walls of fire and veils of smoke, a pendant pulsed on Elanora's chest.
She stirred in her sleep...deep in a healing trance after her last trial.
Her lips moved.
"Aryan."
And somewhere beneath the mountain's pulse, he heard her.....