Chapter 20 – Ashra’s Dream

At first, Ashra thought she was dreaming.

She was weightless, drifting in a sky of ink, surrounded by whispers too quiet to understand. They curled around her like smoke, sometimes brushing her skin, sometimes burrowing into her ears, into her thoughts, into memory.

But none of the memories were hers.

She saw a village burning, children screaming, a woman begging for mercy with a brand on her cheek. Then she saw a different fire—one made of light, shaped like glyphs that danced through the air as if the wind were reading.

She heard names she didn't know.Felt grief that wasn't hers.And saw eyes that blinked like stars.

Time didn't pass in the Vault. It folded.

Every breath she took echoed in loops—sometimes forward, sometimes backward. The glyphs along her skin whispered to her, not in words but in feeling. They weren't commands. They were questions. Tests.

Do you remember who you were before the mines?

She tried to answer. Her mouth opened. No sound came.

Do you remember the lullaby?

Yes, she did.

Her mother had sung it when the world was safe. Before the carts, before the ropes, before the glyph-seekers came.

"When the stone forgets your name,sing the echo back to flame…"

The words pulsed, and the darkness changed. Symbols bloomed around her like stars reflected in a black river.

She reached for one—instinct, not thought—and it responded.

♬⧫༶✾ — Lun'Serra's Thread.

Her glyph. Hers alone. It vibrated in her chest like a second heartbeat.

But as soon as she touched it, she fell.

Not in body. In memory.

She stood in her old village.

She was eight again, her hands covered in flour, standing in the shadow of her mother's voice. Men were coming. They weren't guards yet. Not then. They were "collectors."

"Does she hum often?" one had asked.

Her mother had lied. "No. Never."

But Ashra had hummed the night before.

The collectors had taken her. The last thing she saw was her mother's fingers, reaching—burned with the mark of silence.

That mark etched itself across the Vault.

⨂⟁⫷ — The Unheard Sigil.

She screamed then. Not in pain. In knowing.

Because now, in this place, she finally understood: the Vault didn't feed on power.

It fed on remembrance.

Ashra blinked again.

The sky around her shifted. This time, she wasn't in memory. She wasn't in her body.

She was in someone else's.

She stood in Kael's shadow, watching through his eyes.

Saw the escape. The child bound to the post. The glyphs burning in Kael's hand.She felt his fear.

Then—his rage.

She watched him read the scroll. Trace the glyphs.He never cried. But his soul did.

"He carries pain like ink," a voice said beside her.

Ashra turned.

A figure stood in the darkness—faceless, wrapped in silk-black shadow. Glyphs danced across its arms, fading before she could see them fully.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The figure smiled, or maybe it didn't.

"I'm the echo of what he could become."

"Kael?"

"No," it said. "What comes after Kael. The one who stops remembering and starts rewriting."

She didn't understand.

But the figure raised a hand, pointing toward her chest. Toward her glyph.It flared.

"You are not just a witness," the voice said. "You are a key. One that was never meant to sing."

Ashra woke with a gasp—but her eyes never opened.

She could feel her body suspended in the Vault, held by crystal strands.

But now, something new was happening.

The glyphs were listening. Not just to her.To him.

Kael had entered.

He had said "yes."

And now the Vault was waking.

The voices were louder. Faster.

Hundreds. Thousands.

Screaming. Laughing. Remembering.

All at once.

Ashra's voice was not her own when she spoke again, but her thoughts still curled like smoke at the center of it all.

"He is coming.""He brings the fire that forgets.""The Eye is open.""Writ undone. Memory unbound."

In her chest, Lun'Serra's Thread pulsed again—but this time, it hummed in a new pitch.

Not to soothe.

To warn.

Kael was close.

She could feel him stepping into the inner chamber, into the place where the Vault asked the final question.

"What will you sacrifice to awaken the path?"

Ashra's soul trembled.

Because she knew what the Vault wanted him to give.

It wasn't pain. It wasn't blood.

It was something worse.

It wanted him to give up memory.

To forget someone he loved.

To make room for the glyphs to grow.

And he would say yes.

She knew he would.