Veyra hadn't spoken since the trial.
Not to me. Not to Kael. Not even to Elyra, who had stood behind her during the final judgment, flame-glow faint in her eyes.
She sat in the council chamber now, draped in gray—neither flame nor frost—like a shadow caught between choices.
She had lost.
But I wasn't sure we had won.
---
Camden entered the chamber at first light with a report scroll marked in black wax.
> "The Vault in the western cliffs is gone," he said.
"Not destroyed. Vacant."
He set down an etching.
It was a symbol burned into the earth where the Vault once stood:
A spiral devouring a crown.
Kael stared at it, silent.
Elyra whispered, "That's not a glyph of power."
"No," I said. "It's a glyph of erasure."
---
An hour later, the Hollow Regent made his first move.
Not by army.
Not by flame.
By memory broadcast.
Every priest, every Oracle, every person with a trace of Vaultline blood experienced the same vision simultaneously:
> A throne of dust.
A spiral of black sand devouring the roots of the realm.
A voice speaking not aloud—but inside the soul:
"Memory is not infinite. The Vaults overflow. Truth rots when uncontained.
Seal them—or lose the realm to recall."
Then the vision ended.
But the panic didn't.
---
In the capital, the clergy fell to their knees. Some screamed. Some wept.
In the noble districts, three families renounced their ancient oaths, fearing what the Vault might show next.
And in the street, the people asked one terrible question:
> "If the Vault holds our sins… what happens if it leaks?"
---
We gathered in the war chamber that night—my circle.
Kael.
Elyra.
Camden.
And Veyra—who finally broke her silence.
She pointed at the glyph again.
> "The Hollow Regent wasn't made like us. He wasn't born. He wasn't grown. He was... sustained."
"By what?" Kael asked.
"By everything the Vault couldn't hold. Every discarded prophecy. Every memory too fractured to serve. They poured it into one container and prayed it would sleep forever."
Elyra's voice trembled. "It didn't."
---
Camden unrolled another scroll—this one from the deep archives of a forgotten sect.
The final line read:
> "When the Hollow comes, only the First Flame may burn it back."
---
We sat in silence until Kael leaned forward.
"So… what's the plan?"
I looked at them all.
And said what none of us wanted to admit.
> "We open the final Vault."
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