The passage narrowed behind Kael.
Each step forward dimmed the sound of the world—
until only his breath remained.
Even that, eventually, was too loud.
The tunnel sloped down, then out.
Into a space that wasn't carved by hand
or shaped by time.
It was built.
Or born.
Walls of glimmering stone curved around him,
etched with pulsing veins of emerald light.
The floor responded to his steps—
rippling with code
like water remembering a name.
The bottle warmed.
Then burned.
Not painfully—
but with intent.
Kael reached for it.
It pulled from his grasp.
Floated forward.
And stopped above a pedestal of obsidian glass.
The veins in the walls thickened.
Blinked.
And spoke.
Not in words.
But in memory.
Kael saw his mother's face.
A child crying in a firelit room.
A bird broken beneath stone.
Elric—
younger,
fiercer,
angrier—
burying something in snow.
Then himself.
Now.
Here.
The bottle descended.
Rested on the pedestal.
The lines on Kael's arm ignited.
Gold.
Then green.
Then deeper—
a color not found in nature.
His knees buckled.
The pedestal pulsed.
And the world tilted.
He was standing.
Nowhere.
Everywhere.
His body stretched through space that wasn't space.
A voice—
no, a thought—
threaded through him.
"You were not the first."
Kael tried to speak.
Couldn't.
His mouth was gone.
Only thought remained.
"The others burned. Broke. Bent the wrong way."
"You… lingered."
Kael's awareness pulsed.
"Why me?"
Silence.
Then—
"Because you listened."
The bottle hovered before him.
No longer glass.
No longer vessel.
Now a core.
A heart.
A thing with will.
"I chose you."
Kael's veins lit.
Everywhere.
His skin cracked—
not with pain,
but with light.
Lines bloomed along his chest.
His spine.
His skull.
A map.
Not of land.
But of truth.
He fell.
Not down.
Inward.
Kael awoke on the pedestal.
Breathing hard.
The lines on his arm were still there—
but no longer gold.
No longer green.
They shimmered with shifting light—
colors without names.
The bottle lay beside him.
Dormant.
Heavy.
Sleeping.
But within it,
he could feel a hum.
Not a pulse.
A heartbeat.
He sat up slowly.
His body felt strange.
Too quiet.
Too calm.
Like something had been removed—
or added.
He touched his chest.
No wound.
Just warmth.
The memory of the voice lingered.
I chose you.
Kael looked at the bottle.
Then at the path ahead.
He wasn't the same.
Couldn't be.