The clash of steel echoed through the chamber like thunder in a sealed tomb. Sparks hissed and scattered as Lysander's frost-veined blade collided with Veylan's obsidian short sword, which pulsed with residual celestial magic—raw, sanctioned, brutal. The jarring contact reverberated through Lysander's bones, numbing his arm for a split second, but he gritted his teeth and pressed forward.
The vault was no longer silent. It pulsed with ancient energy, awakened fully by blood and memory. The walls, once dormant, shimmered faintly with shifting glyphs—some familiar, others too old to be named. Each pulse of combat was mirrored in the architecture: cracks forming, runes flickering, stone groaning as though the tomb itself remembered violence.
The ceiling, domed and ringed with circular sigils, seemed to pulse like a beating heart. With each clash below, faint light would ripple along the etched circles, as if the fight was turning gears in an unseen mechanism. The vault lived and breathed with them.
Lysander moved with instinct sharpened by something deeper than training. Veylan was older, more practised—but his motions were measured, as though he fought not to kill, but to test. Lysander's style, by contrast, had become something else—wild, reactive, laced with precision that seemed inherited from a piece of memory not his own.
He spun low, ducked under a slash aimed for his throat, and retaliated with a sweeping arc. Frost trailed the blade like a comet's tail, cutting into Veylan's cloak and drawing blood—a fine spray across the vault's ancient floor. The blood sizzled upon contact with the runes.
"You've improved," Veylan said, voice steady even as he stepped back. "Your father never could have moved like that."
"I'm not my father." Lysander surged forward. "I remember now. Enough to hate you properly."
Veylan's eyes narrowed.
"You remember the flames, then?" he asked. "The screams?"
Lysander's next blow nearly broke his blade. "I remember my mother's hands over my ears. I remember your sword at her back."
The vault trembled.
The symbols on the dais flared.
But it wasn't just rage fueling Lysander.
It was resonance.
Each clash of their weapons sent tremors into the altar behind them. Each drop of Lysander's blood that hit the floor caused the runes to shift further, unlocking more of the hidden glyphs. The vault was reacting to his presence like a long-lost key returned to its lock.
Their duel became a dance of past and present, a ritual in motion. Flames guttered in braziers that had not burned in centuries. Runes flared like constellations on the stone walls. Each spin of Lysander's blade left trails of frost on the stone; each deflection of Veylan's sword sent crackling energy back into the ceiling.
Seraphine, watching from the shadows of the tunnel above, felt her breath catch. "The rite is triggering," she whispered. "He's waking it."
Beside her, Mira clutched her pendant tighter. "It's calling to him." Her eyes glistened as the jade fragment pulsed against her chest, beating in rhythm with the vault.
As Lysander fought, the stone beneath the altar split. A hidden compartment emerged—slow, reluctant, as if fighting to stay buried. Within it lay a stone slab etched with glowing sigils and a fragment of bone—long, curved, unmistakably not human.
Lysander's blade locked with Veylan's.
"You've been running your whole life," Veylan hissed.
Lysander leaned in, their faces inches apart. "No. I've been waiting."
Then, with a sudden twist, he let go of the lock, spun to the side, and sliced across Veylan's ribs.
The older man stumbled.
The altar responded.
The bone within it ignited—burning with blue fire that gave no heat.
The vault screamed.
Not aloud. Not with sound. But with memory.
Images filled the air like smoke:
—A crowned demon kneeling, hands bound, blood pouring from his mouth.
—Celestial scribes etching false contracts with trembling hands, glancing over their shoulders.
—Veylan, younger, more afraid, standing among bodies, hesitating, blade dripping.
—A newborn swaddled in crimson silk, marked with a crest that glowed faintly even in dream light. The child blinked with golden eyes, then vanished into flame.
Lysander cried out, not from pain, but from the weight of truth slamming into him. Every image struck like a blade, every memory crashing into the next.
The temperature dropped as a second bone fragment rose from the dais, suspended in light. It rotated slowly, revealing a seal carved into its surface—an ancient crest of the demon courts: the Twin Serpents entwined around a blazing sun.
The serpent eyes glowed faintly, as if aware of the watchers.
Lysander stared at it.
He knew that crest. He had seen it in dreams, on dusty walls, in the half-burnt pages of books he wasn't supposed to read. Once, as a child, he had sketched it by instinct on a school wall, only to be scolded for "drawing cursed symbols."
A new voice echoed in the vault.
Not Veylan's. Not Lysander's.
It came from the air itself, resonating in bone and blood.
"Blood answers blood. The pact was broken, but the heir remembers."
The pillars of the vault trembled.
Veylan froze mid-step, face paling. "That voice—no... impossible."
Lysander took a shaky step toward the altar. The flames did not burn him. They parted for him.
He reached for the bone. The moment his fingers touched it, another vision exploded in his mind:
—A coronation in twilight, horns crowned with silver.
—A betrayal signed with gold.
—A child cast into shadow to survive, branded as lost.
—A sword buried in fire, singing his name.
Lysander staggered.
But he did not fall.
His blade pulsed in his hand, its runes flaring in sync with the glowing crest.
He turned to face Veylan, breath misting in the cold.
"You didn't just kill my family," he said. "You tried to kill memory itself."
Veylan's hands trembled. "I did what was necessary. We all did. There was no other way."
Lysander took another step. "Then you'll die knowing it wasn't enough."
The vault rumbled.
The altar opened wider.
And deep within, the stone split again—revealing not another relic, but a sarcophagus.
Carved from obsidian, etched in bone and flame-script, bound with chains of forgotten alloy. A crest shimmered faintly upon the lid.
The Twin Serpents.
It began to stir.
A breath escaped the seams—centuries held within one exhale.
An aura rolled outward from the stone, not violent, but vast. It passed through walls and minds alike, brushing across every conscious thought with one message:
Awaken.
From above, Seraphine murmured, "The tomb of the Trueborn."
Mira's eyes widened. "It's his ancestor, isn't it?"
No one answered.
Because the vault already had.