Kael awoke before dawn.
The fire hadn't gone out—it had gone cold. Pale blue flames flickered without heat, burning quietly in reverse, drawing warmth inward instead of giving it away. The spiral on his palm pulsed in rhythm with the flickering light.
His breath misted. Not from cold, but from something deeper—like the world around him had exhaled something else into the air.
He stood.
Above him, birds circled high, moving in endless loops.
Behind him, Elira stirred. Tovan muttered in his sleep.
Kael didn't move.
His shadow stretched the wrong direction.
By sunrise, the three of them reached the nearby village.
It wasn't on the map.
Not just in name—it simply wasn't there before.
The terrain was the same, the hills familiar, but a collection of stone homes and worn paths had formed where none had existed days earlier.
The villagers looked at them with uneasy curiosity.
A child stared at Kael, then turned and drew a perfect spiral in the dust with a stick.
"The man is coming," she said.
Elira paled.
Tovan cursed under his breath.
Kael said nothing.
In the local tavern, the relic on Elira's wrist buzzed and clicked every time Kael came close.
"The flow is unstable," she murmured. "Like something's projecting outward from you. Magic fields are twisting."
Tovan crossed his arms. "Feels more like they're listening. Like the world's trying to figure out what you've become."
Kael closed his eyes, searching inward.
The Vault was gone.
But its echo remained.
That night, Kael tried to remember what he'd chosen—what had truly happened in the spiral.
He knelt in silence, eyes closed.
Visions came in fragments.
A hand pressed to light.
A voice saying: "You didn't seal me. You became me."
The sound of memory folding in on itself.
When he opened his eyes, the spiral on his palm had deepened, its edges sharp as etched glass.
Just after midnight, travelers arrived at the edge of camp.
They were quiet, strange-eyed, wary.
One stepped forward—a young woman with a cracked relic shard hanging from her belt.
"We saw you," she said. "Not here. In a dream. Walking through stars that bled like wounds."
Tovan reached for his sidearm.
The woman raised her hands. "We came to find you. Or follow. We didn't know which."
Elira stepped beside Kael. "What did he do in the dream?"
The woman's gaze never left Kael. "He opened something. And something walked out behind him."
The spiral on Kael's hand flared.
The woman's relic fragment glowed, then cracked with a pop—splitting into dust.
Everyone froze.
Then the wind spoke—not aloud, but through feeling. A pressure. A memory pressing down like weightless stone.
And all of them heard it.
"He walks the echo. And it walks back."
Later, as they lay in their tents, Elira whispered, "What's coming next?"
Kael stared into the dark.
There was no answer.
But deep inside him, something burned bright.
He could see a place—far across the continent—where spirals shimmered in stone, calling him.
A beacon.
A warning.
Or both.
The seal is broken.
And the world is remembering too much.
He didn't know if it was summoning him, or if part of him had already gone ahead.