"To open a sealed memory is not to look backward.It is to burn forward with what once was."
It was night again. Not cold. But waiting.
Nyel sat at the foot of the Veilbranch, the scroll clutched in her hands like a blade she no longer knew how to hold.
Kaien watched her from the Oathstone steps, silent.
"They gave it to me like a peace offering," she said.
"But it's not peace, is it?"
"No," Kaien answered. "It's a debt they couldn't repay."
She opened the Name Vault.
[System Alert: Vaulted Memory Reintegrating…]
Name: Nyel Althessa VehrinOrigin: Founding Disciple – Choir of Sovereign SilenceFlame Tier at Severance: Azure Initiate (Stage 6 of 9)Talent: Symphonic Blade of the Silent FlameHistory Fragment: Choir Rebellion Era
The world shuddered.
Her vision blurred—and became another.
Memory Fragment: 312 Years Ago, Before Severance
She stood at the side of a younger Kaien—cloaked in grey, eyes still too alive.
They were part of a splinter sect called Ashveil, protectors of memory-flame rituals long outlawed by the Flame Courts. Their master, Elder Varn, warned them:
"The Flame System is breaking."
"Too much memory is hoarded. Too much power stored in names alone."
"And the Choir? They seek to fix it not by healing—but by unmaking."
She remembered her choice: follow Kaien, or follow certainty.
She followed him.
She died for it.
And was erased.
Nyel gasped, memory slamming into her like rain after drought.
"I was there when the Choir was born," she said aloud.
"It began as a reform sect. Not a weapon."
Kaien's jaw clenched.
"It always begins that way."
She turned to Seren, who had quietly joined them.
"There was once a Flame Law," Nyel said."A contract between flame and bearer."
"But the Courts broke it. And now only sovereigns still hear the old resonance."
Seren knelt beside her.
"What does that mean for us?"
"It means the Hollow might not just be a sect," Kaien said.
"It might be the beginning of a return."
Nyel's blade shifted in her hand.
It now held a second echo—a ghost signature.
Kaien's own.
A soulprint locked with hers before she was unmade.
And as she stood, she said one final thing:
"The Choir wanted to erase me."
"But in doing so, they preserved a truth even they forgot."