The Weight of Remembrance

Elias sat in the dust of the Forgotten Path, his shoulders hunched under the weight of the resurfaced memory. His breathing was ragged, as if he'd just run through his past instead of reliving it.

Evelyn placed a gentle hand on his arm. "Elias… what mistake?"

He didn't answer immediately. Instead, his gaze lingered on the crumbled ruins around them, as though searching for a different answer. Finally, his voice broke through the silence, filled with regret. "That night, I walked away from someone who loved me. Because I believed my father. Because I thought I had no choice."

Dorian let out a slow exhale, his expression unreadable. "Ah. Love and duty. A tale as old as time."

Lucien frowned. "But if we're seeing this now, that means it wasn't just a personal regret, was it? There's something more."

Elias swallowed hard. "She disappeared that night. Vanished without a trace. No one ever found out what happened to her. And I... I convinced myself that maybe she had left because I pushed her away. That she had found a new life, free from the Everhart name. But something about that memory… it felt wrong."

Evelyn's brows furrowed. "You mean something was altered?"

The shadowed figure remained motionless before them, its whispers twisting in the air. It extended its hand once more, a new fragment of light appearing. This one flickered, unstable, as if it were struggling to exist.

"The truth is buried beneath time." The voices layered over each other in an eerie chorus. "It was stolen. Forgotten. But not lost."

A chill ran through Evelyn. "Stolen?"

Lucien tightened his grip on his sword. "That means someone wanted to erase it. Which means we aren't just here to remember, are we? We're here to uncover something."

Elias hesitated before reaching for the new fragment. The moment his fingertips brushed it, the ruins around them trembled. The world blurred again, but this time, it wasn't a ballroom they landed in.

It was a darkened corridor, the scent of damp stone clinging to the air. Torches flickered along the walls, barely illuminating the path ahead.

Elias's voice was a whisper. "This isn't my home."

Evelyn turned to him, eyes sharp. "Then whose is it?"

A slow, deliberate sound echoed through the corridor—footsteps approaching from the shadows.

Dorian smirked, though his fingers twitched near his dagger. "Well, looks like we're about to find out."