The moment Seliora placed her hand in his, the world shifted.
Auron blinked, and the Sable Wastes vanished. In its place stood a ruined city, half-submerged in time. Towers crumbled under vines. Marble streets were cracked and dry. The wind carried no sound, yet everything felt alive—haunted, heavy, waiting.
"This…" Auron whispered. "This place is real?"
Seliora nodded, walking beside him. "It was called Tanariel. The capital of our dream. The first kingdom we built together. Before memory broke."
Auron stared at the fallen arches and shattered statues. Each one carried marks that stirred something deep inside him. Carvings of wolves wrapped in chains. The crest of a sun eclipsed. A language half-lost to him, yet strangely familiar.
"We ruled this place?"
"Not as rulers over people," she said. "We were building a world free from the cycle—free from the system's design."
"And what happened?"
Seliora stopped.
"They turned on us. The Council of Thrones. They feared what we were becoming. So they rewrote us out of history, one fragment at a time. First the people. Then the cities. Then… us."
Auron stepped forward, running his hand across the base of a broken statue. The face had been carefully destroyed—chiseled off. The body wore a mask. His mask. Only older. Regal. Worn with pride.
"I didn't just lose my throne," he muttered. "They buried the entire age."
Seliora looked at him quietly. "Now do you understand why I wouldn't help you until you remembered? This isn't just your revenge. This is a war against the design of the world itself."
He turned to her, eyes cold but steady. "Then I'll break it. All of it."
Seliora walked ahead, motioning toward a domed building still mostly intact. "There's more."
Inside, the walls glowed faintly with runes. In the center stood a long crystal mirror, cracked through the middle. Within its reflection, images began to swirl—visions from another time.
He saw himself, younger. Standing with Seliora on a balcony overlooking a sea of banners. They smiled. They spoke words he couldn't hear, but he saw peace in their eyes.
Then the scene changed.
Fire. Betrayal. Chains binding them both.
A circle of masked figures watched from shadows.
The mirror went black.
Auron stepped back. "Who were they?"
"The ones behind the system. Behind the rewriting. The Echo Lords," Seliora answered. "Not all who sit on thrones are remembered. But they remember *us*. And they're waking up now because you're shaking the world again."
"Then let them come," Auron said. "I'll make them remember *why they tried to forget me*."
Seliora turned to face him. "Then there's something you must claim. A piece of yourself they couldn't erase. It's buried deep beneath this city. If you find it, you'll be able to command not just a throne—but the will of kings long lost."
He looked at her. "Another trial?"
She smiled faintly. "No. Just a truth buried in darkness."
He drew his sword.
"Then I'll dig it out with steel."
Together, they walked into the depths of the forgotten city, where ghosts of an erased empire waited… and the next step toward shattering the false world