Chapter 19: The City That Burned
The glyph collapses behind them.
Kael and Naia stumble into light—but it is not comforting. It is too perfect, too still. The sky is silver, unmoving. The clouds do not drift. The sun does not warm.
Naia looks around. "Where are we?"
Kael doesn't answer right away.
They stand atop a balcony of a massive tower, overlooking a city unlike any Naia has ever seen. Roads twist in clean arcs through the air. Towers float in circles. The architecture is seamless, gravity-defying—too beautiful to be real.
And yet… empty.
Kael's voice comes low and bitter. "This was Solus."
Naia frowns. "The capital of the old world?"
Kael nods slowly. "The city where we decided to seal the Door. Where we decided to erase ourselves."
He grips the balcony railing so hard his fingers go white.
"This was the day everything changed. The day I—"He stops. Breathes. Tries again."The day I chose the world over the truth."
As they walk the streets of Solus, the memories start playing around them like ghosts projected on glass.
People laugh in cafés that no longer exist.
Children run across bridges made of pure light.
A procession of silver-armored Sentinels pass by Kael's younger self—Vaeren, standing tall with the Council.
Naia watches. "That's… you?"
He nods. "This was hours before the vote. Before we decided to bury the truth of what lay beyond the Door."
They pass into the Great Hall, where mirrors covered the walls. Each mirror showed not reflections—but possibilities. Alternate timelines. Forks never chosen.
Kael walks to the center of the room.
"This is where I gave the order to seal the first Lock," he says quietly. "Where Thalia… stood against me."
Naia is stunned. "She was against sealing it?"
"She believed the people deserved to remember. Even if it hurt."
"And you didn't?"
Kael closes his eyes. "I believed in peace. In lies."
Suddenly, the Hall shifts. Reality cracks. The air grows colder.
From the far end of the chamber, a memory-echo forms.
Thalia.
Alive, bright, furious—her hair braided in silver threads, her eyes blazing with conviction.
"You lied to them, Vaeren," she says in the projection. "You told them we were protecting the world. But really, we were afraid."
The younger Kael in the memory steps forward. "We were doing what had to be done. You saw what they became. The Forgotten—"
"We became Forgotten the moment we turned away from the truth," Thalia spits.
She draws her blade and hurls it at the central mirror.
It shatters.
And with it, the world begins to burn.
The fire spreads fast—too fast.
Memory-fire.
The echo of a city collapsing beneath betrayal.
People running. Screaming. The sentinels turning on themselves. Reflections leaking out of the shattered mirrors, rewriting history in real time.
Naia grabs Kael's arm. "This isn't just memory—it's unraveling."
Kael doesn't move.
He stares at the crumbling version of himself, kneeling over Thalia's body.
Her blood is not red. It's light.
"I let her die for silence," he says. "For control."
Naia pulls harder. "Then do something now. Forgive yourself later."
Kael raises his hand—and the spear of memory reforms in golden blaze.
He slams it into the floor.
The flames freeze.
A ripple of truth pulses through the collapsing world.
And from the wreckage of the Great Hall rises the next seal:
The Third Lock.
But it's different from the others.
Not circular. Not chained.
It is a heart, suspended in the air. Beating. Bleeding.
A whisper curls into Kael's mind:
This is not just your memory, Vaeren.It is the world's grief made flesh.To open it, you must speak the name you swore never to speak again.
Kael steps forward.
Naia looks at him, eyes wide.
He whispers—
"Thalia."
The heart shudders, glows, and splits open.
Inside it is not a key.
Not a weapon.
But a seed—glowing white, swirling with fragments of forgotten memories.
Kael takes it in his hand.
Immediately, his mind floods with screams.
But beneath it… a whisper.
Thalia's voice.
"You were never the villain, Kael. Just the one who had to remember."
Chapter 19 End