Echoes of the First Archive

The Archive was alive.

Not with sound or movement, but presence. Reven could feel it crawling beneath his skin like static, deep and ancient, watching without eyes. The crystalline sphere hovered over the pedestal, symbols rotating in layered bands of light—each glyph pulsing with buried memory.

"What now?" Kaela asked, pacing behind him, hand never far from her blade.

"We listen," Reven said. "We let it speak."

Lirien knelt beside one of the projection nodes lining the chamber's edge. She touched the surface gently, her eyes narrowing as the symbols shifted under her fingers.

"These aren't just records," she said. "They're experiences. Thoughts. Encoded minds."

"Fragments of the people who built this?" Reven asked.

"No," Lirien said softly. "Of the ones who fell with it."

The room responded to her words.

Glyphs exploded outward from the sphere, resolving into holograms that hovered across the chamber. Scenes flickered to life—cities floating above mountain peaks, towers of light reaching into a colourless sky, winged figures in council around burning maps.

Skyborn. Before the collapse.

And at the centre of it all—a rift. A black wound in reality. Unstable. Growing.

Kaela stepped back from the image. "That's the same fracture you saw in the basin, isn't it?"

"It's worse," Lirien said. "That was just a scar. This is the origin."

Reven moved closer to the projections. One caught his eye—a sequence showing warriors in strange armour surrounding the rift. They channelled massive energy into it. Trying to close it. Trying to contain it.

They failed.

The scene shifted violently, collapsing into static and then reforming into fire and screaming.

"They tried to seal it," Reven murmured. "And it tore them apart."

Lirien nodded. "This Archive wasn't built to preserve knowledge. It was built to hide it."

Kaela scoffed, folding her arms. "Well, that worked out great."

Reven ignored her sarcasm. He touched the edge of the projection, focusing on one figure—tall, wrapped in armoured cloth, face hidden behind a mask of interwoven crystal.

The glyphs below labelled it: Warden-Class Custodian: Solen of the Last Line.

Another set of glyphs flared to life beneath the title. Coordinates. A location buried deep in the Scorchspine Mountains.

"Looks like he left something behind," Reven said. "Or someone."

"You want to go chasing ghosts now?" Kaela asked.

"If that ghost knew how to close a rift, yeah," Reven replied. "We need every edge we can get."

Lirien turned toward the pedestal. "There's something else. Look."

The light had condensed again—this time forming a narrow beam that stretched from the crystal to Reven's chest. His pendant pulsed in rhythm with the Archive's core.

"You're bonded to it," she whispered.

Reven took a slow breath. "Then let's see where it leads."

A second pulse echoed from the sphere, projecting a new map overlay. Three points lit up across the continent—one to the east, buried beneath the ruins of a drowned city. One to the north, inside the hollow roots of a dying world-tree. The third, deep in the Scorchspine Mountains.

Three Vaults. Three pieces of the same whole.

"They were scattered on purpose," Reven said. "To keep the knowledge from falling into the wrong hands."

Kaela raised an eyebrow. "You mean like yours?"

Reven shot her a look. "Like the people who built the Gravebinders. The ones still pulling strings."

Lirien nodded. "Whoever set the Rift in motion is still out there. Still watching."

Kaela walked away from the pedestal, her boots echoing. "Then I hope they're watching now."

Before anyone could respond, the chamber lights flickered.

The sphere dimmed.

Then the floor shook.

Reven tensed, hand dropping to his sword. "What was that?"

Lirien moved to the edge of the lift chamber. "Something's breaching the outer seal. Not Gravebinders."

The lights died completely.

A new hum filled the air. Lower. Older.

Kaela swore under her breath. "That doesn't sound like machines."

A sickly red glow bled through the walls.

Then the Archive screamed.

It wasn't mechanical. It wasn't human. It was the memory of a scream—pulled from whatever had last touched this place. Pain, fear, loss—compressed into one impossible sound.

Reven staggered back, gripping his skull. Lirien dropped to one knee. Kaela held firm, fangs bared, muscles trembling.

From the sphere, a final message blinked through the chaos:

IF YOU AWAKEN IT—YOU MUST BIND IT.

The lift reactivated with a violent jolt.

Without warning, it shot upward, pulling them back toward the surface.

"What did we awaken?" Kaela shouted over the roar.

Reven didn't answer.

He already knew.

The Vaults weren't just storage.

They were prisons.

The lift burst through the top of the spire, glass shattering as it launched them into open air. They landed hard among the broken basin, now bathed in that same red glow. The Wraithforged were gone.

But something else had taken their place.

Dark shapes loomed on the horizon. Not machines. Not beasts. Things with too many limbs and no consistent shape. Twisting. Melting. Reforming.

Nightmares dragged from behind the Rift.

"Run," Reven said.

They ran.

Behind them, the spire collapsed inward, consumed by the energy it once held back. The Archive was gone. The path forward, lit by three distant flames.

But Reven knew this was only the beginning.

The seals were failing.

The Vaults were waking.

And the world didn't remember what it had locked away.