The Axis of All Ends was not a place, but a decision—one that the world had made long ago and then desperately tried to forget.
The path led the Traveler through a dead garden where flowers bloomed backward—blossoming into seeds and burying themselves in the soil. Each step he took left no footprints, but the trees leaned toward him like mourners recognizing the condemned.
Behind him, Elen followed, silent.
But she was changing.
Something in her eyes—once soft, unsure—had gone sharp. Cold. A sliver of knowledge too large for the human soul now glinted behind her gaze.
"Where are we going?" she asked, though she already knew.
The Traveler didn't answer.
He feared the answer.
They reached the heart of the Axis by nightfall—though time bent so strangely here, the concept was meaningless. Before them rose an ancient amphitheater carved from bones the size of towers. Ruins twisted in impossible geometry. And at the center:
A throne of black vines and star-glass.
Empty.
Waiting.
Elen approached it.
"I know this place…"
She knelt before the throne, placing her hand on the ground—and the world responded.
The bones glowed with violet runes.
Shadows gathered.
And then—
A figure stepped from behind the throne.
He looked… human.
Old. With eyes of polished obsidian and a smile that had been sharpened on centuries of silence. He wore no crown—but the world bent around him as if he bore one.
The Traveler's heart stopped.
"You—" he whispered. "You died in the War of Flame and Salt."
The man tilted his head.
"So they said."
Elen stood. "Who are you?"
The man turned to her. "I am what you would have become—if you hadn't forgotten your name."
She froze. "…You're me?"
"No. I am what walks instead of you when you run from fate."
The Traveler drew his sword.
"Memory Echo. Hollow Manifestation. You were sealed at the edge of the Fifth World."
The man stepped forward.
"I was invited back."
He looked to Elen. "And she is my door."
The earth trembled.
The throne pulsed.
And around them, shadows began to rise. Shapes formed from forgotten names, speaking languages never meant for human mouths.
"I do not wish to fight," the Echo said.
"But I will take back the crown."
Elen whispered, "It's mine."
The Echo smiled.
"Then prove it."
The fight began—not with weapons, but with memory.
Visions slammed into Elen's mind: her birth, her past lives, her days in the garden of dying stars, her role in the breaking of the Covenant. Each memory hit her like a blade, tearing through her soul.
She screamed.
The Traveler stepped between them, his blade humming with defiance.
"She's not ready—"
The Echo raised a hand—and the blade shattered.
"Neither were you."
But something strange happened.
The boy—yes, the boy—appeared on the edge of the amphitheater.
Eyes glowing.
Floating slightly above the ground.
"I know you," he said to the Echo.
The man's smile faltered.
"You…"
"You were the one who unmade me before I was born."
Flashback.
A chamber made of stardust and void. A child in a cradle of silence. The Echo leaning over him, whispering, "You do not exist. You never will."
But something had gone wrong.
The child had remembered.
Back in the present, the boy raised a hand.
"You took my name."
The throne cracked.
The stars blinked.
The amphitheater burned with memory.
"Give it back."
And the Echo screamed.
Not in pain—but in rage.
The boy's name roared through the world like a storm:
"CAEL."
The Traveler gasped.
Elen turned to the boy—Cael—and saw him for what he truly was:
The Fragment of the Forgotten King.
The Echo collapsed into light and vanished, swallowed by the throne's shadow.
Elen dropped to her knees, panting.
The Traveler looked at Cael, stunned.
"You're… one of us."
Cael nodded, exhausted. "I was the first. The one they erased."
The sky above them turned black—and a new star was born.
It pulsed three times.
A signal.
Far away, in a temple carved from weeping moons, a priest raised his head.
"The Star of Return has been lit."
"The King is remembering himself."