The chamber did not echo with sound.
It echoed with memory.
As Kael's hand pressed into the platform, light rose, not blinding, but deep and resonant. It did not burn. It unfolded.
Elira stepped closer, her breath catching.
The walls of the chamber shimmered, then shifted, revealing shapes within the crystal, figures, faint and blurred, moving through time.
Not illusions.
Histories.
Kael saw a city suspended in the sky, larger than Eldoria, older. Its towers hummed with power. Not elemental. Not mental.
Something else.
He saw people. Not like them, but not fully alien. Eyes alight with knowledge. Some bore marks on their skin, symbols matching the ones carved in the ruins.
Then, darkness.
A rift torn through the sky.
Not by war.
By choice.
They had opened something they could not contain.
The city fell.
Its pieces scattered across realms.
The survivors hid what remained of their knowledge, buried it beneath roots and stone.
Waiting.
Kael fell backward, breath ragged.
Elira caught him.
"What did you see?" she whispered.
"Us," he said. "Them. The same thread."
He looked at the twins.
And knew:
This was not just the realm's legacy.
It was their inheritance.
And someone would come to take it.