The air in the catacombs was thick with memory.
Kaelen Virelth descended first, torch in hand, his breath clouding in front of him despite the heat rising from the stone walls. Behind him, twenty of his best — rogues, ward-breakers, flame-eaters — moved in practiced silence.
Above them, somewhere beyond layers of rock and old faith, the Dominion was preparing to breach the Vault.
They had hours. Maybe less.
The tunnel was older than any Dominion record had admitted. Older than even the Oracles believed.
It twisted like a serpent through the earth, its walls carved not by pickaxe but by ritual — glyphs etched into every surface, pulsing faintly when touched. Some had been burned out. Others still glowed.
As they passed a collapsed arch, Rovanna Kael turned to Kaelen.
"You realize this tunnel wasn't made to reach the Vault," she said.
"I know."
"It was made to escape it."
They reached a wide chamber where the path split in three. At the center stood a massive obsidian pillar carved with twelve faces — all screaming. The sound in the room was wrong. Not silent, but listening.
Maera Virelth knelt beside the stone.
"This isn't Dominion work."
"No," Kaelen said. "It's pre-Flame."
"Which means—"
"They sealed something down here. Something they feared more than the gods."
As they moved deeper, the walls began to shimmer — not with light, but with reflections.
Kaelen saw himself walking ahead, only it wasn't him.
The reflection bore a crown. Its eyes burned gold. And in its hand was the First Flame — not as a weapon, but as a child made of fire and sorrow, cradled in blood.
He stumbled back. The vision vanished.
Behind him, Rovanna swore. "We're in the dreaming layer now. These tunnels... they show what you could become."
Kaelen didn't answer.
He already knew what he could become.
Two soldiers went ahead to scout the narrowing throat of the passage. Only one came back.
The other's corpse was folded, impossibly bent, eyes melted into glass.
"It didn't touch him," the survivor gasped. "It just... looked."
Maera drew her blade. "What is in this mountain?"
Kaelen stepped forward, heart pounding. "A truth they buried in fire."
At last, they reached a stone threshold, glowing with heat but iced at the edges. Beyond it, a single passage led upward — toward the Vault.
They were close.
But the threshold bore a warning in three languages. The final one, ancient and jagged, translated only loosely:
To awaken the Flame is to break the world again.
Choose the hand that touches it.
Or let none pass.
Kaelen raised his torch. He could feel it now — the pull of the Vault, the weight of fate pressing against his chest like a blade.
Behind him, the rebels waited.
Above, Serenya stood on sacred ground, poised to open the door.
And between them, the mountain stirred.