The Verge was changing.
Ren could feel it the moment he and Valka crossed the outer threshold. Where before the place throbbed with cold silence and buried echoes, now it crackled with tension, like the breath before a storm. Static clung to their skin, pulsing under their feet.
They stood at the rim of a cavern so vast it swallowed sound. Above them, luminous red roots pulsed like veins in the sky. Below, a staircase of rusted soulmetal spiraled down into a fog that shimmered with fractured memories. Somewhere beneath that haze, a hum called to Ren's bones.
"We're not alone," Valka whispered. Her crimson spear was already in hand. Her eyes burned with quiet calculation.
Ren nodded, feeling the same pull. Something was watching them—and it wasn't afraid.
They descended in silence, steps echoing like ritual drums. As they moved deeper, a thick mist began to settle on their shoulders, whispering faint phrases in languages neither of them recognized.
But Ren understood one word: Calder.
He froze. That name—his name—spoke with such raw intent that it nearly knocked the breath from him. Not just a voice, but a memory imprint, buried and screaming.
"You okay?" Valka asked without turning.
Ren didn't answer. He was staring into the fog, which had cleared just enough to reveal something carved into the wall:
"Sovereign of the Burned Realm. You are not ready."
Then came the light.
Crimson glyphs erupted across the cavern walls. They spun in patterns Ren's memory tried to reach for—but failed. His heartbeat quickened. He wasn't just being shown something. This was a test.
The hum intensified.
From the pit below, a presence began to rise. Not a creature, but a construct—a fusion of ancient technology and spiritual residue. Eight limbs of jagged alloy. A face like a broken mask. Its chest cavity housed a swirling core of soulfire.
"Host detected," it buzzed in a voice that sounded like it had been pieced together from shattered radios. "Protocol: Judgement."
It lunged.
Valka moved first, ducking beneath a sweeping blade and slicing through one of its limbs in a single arc. Ren followed, raising a pulse of soulfire—pure Naelir-flame now, no longer just borrowed.
The construct staggered. But then it adapted.
Its metal reformed. Its core pulsed brighter.
"Its memory is reactive," Ren said, breath sharp. "It's copying us."
Valka grit her teeth. "Then let's give it something it can't contain."
Ren narrowed his focus, reaching deeper—past the surface-level power, past even the Verge. Into the throne. Into the truth.
He remembered something he had never lived.
A battlefield. A king made of fire. A scream that broke the world.
And a command: "Burn it clean."
Soulflame surged from his core, carving new glyphs into the air. His body lit up, veins aglow, as he uttered a phrase that he didn't know—but that the world obeyed:
"Veritas: Ignis Requiem."
The construct screamed.
Not in pain. In recognition.
For a brief second, it bowed.
And exploded.
Flames roared through the cavern. The walls trembled. But Ren and Valka stood untouched, a protective dome of soulfire shielding them.
When the light faded, only silence remained—and something else.
A vault.
It was built from blackstone and soulsteel, runes swirling in a language older than the Verge. At its center was a lock—shaped like Ren's burn-marked hand.
Valka looked at him. "This is it, isn't it?"
Ren nodded, stepping forward. "This is where the truth begins."
He placed his hand on the vault.
And the world changed again.