The door behind the Throne creaked open like a groan from the past, revealing a spiral staircase carved into nothingness. No railings. No visible end. Just an endless path vanishing into black.
Auren turned back to the group, his expression unreadable. "This path tests not your strength, but your truth. It leads through what has been erased—memories buried so deep even the stars have forgotten them."
Sera's voice was barely above a whisper. "And if we fall?"
"You don't fall," Auren said. "You become what you tried to forget."
With that, he gestured them forward.
Carter stepped first. The moment his foot touched the first stair, the sound of the citadel vanished. No more hum of energy. No footsteps. Just silence—and the weight of time pressing in.
Sera followed, then Lysara, Ezra last.
Each step downward felt like walking into a story that was still being written. The air thickened with each level they passed, and glowing memories flickered along the walls—phantoms of lives they didn't remember living.
---
Carter's Memory
The stairs around him vanished for a moment. He stood in a garden under a silver moon. A woman knelt beside a fountain, her face soft and kind.
"Promise me, Carter," she said. "No matter what you find at the end... don't let them take your name."
He tried to speak, but his voice failed him. He reached out—but she faded, replaced by stone.
---
Sera's Memory
She was sitting alone in a tiny room, sketching stars on the walls. Her father's voice echoed from outside the door. "They'll come for you, Seraphine. You're not like them. You're not supposed to exist."
Tears welled in her eyes. "But I didn't ask to be different."
"You were born rewritten," the voice said. "They'll fear you. Because you remember too much."
---
Ezra's Memory
He was running.
Through fire. Through ash. He carried a tiny girl in his arms—her body limp, her breath shallow. Behind him, a city collapsed, its towers crumbling into smoke.
"I won't let you die," he whispered to her.
But the memory twisted. The child vanished.
And Ezra stood alone again.
---
Lysara's Memory
A hand grasped hers in the dark. A young boy with white eyes stared up at her, terrified.
"They told me you'd come," he said. "But not like this. You're not my sister anymore."
She stepped back, shaken. "What do you mean?"
"You're one of them now," the boy said. "You forgot me."
The boy's image shattered into light.
---
They all emerged from their personal storms on the same step, each changed.
No one spoke.
Eventually, the staircase ended—suddenly, with a sharp drop into an underground hall covered in glowing vines. The floor was covered with fragments—pages from books, shattered glass, crumbled statues. A single massive mirror stood in the center.
It was alive.
The surface pulsed like a heartbeat. And as each of them stepped forward, the mirror shimmered—reflecting not their appearances, but their truths.
Carter saw a version of himself standing in front of a burning library, holding a blade made of ink. His face was stern, his eyes sad.
Sera saw herself in a sky of stars, her body glowing with light, her arms outstretched toward a falling world.
Ezra's reflection was dressed in armor made of bones and hope, leading broken people across a bridge made of memory.
Lysara saw herself standing on a battlefield, alone, with every friend she'd ever known fallen behind her.
None of them moved for a while.
Finally, a voice echoed—not from the mirror, but from within it.
> "You cannot fix the future until you understand the price of forgetting. Choose."
The floor split open, revealing four paths—each glowing a different color: blue, red, gold, and green.
One for each of them.
Auren's voice echoed faintly in their minds.
> "To rewrite the Codex, you must first walk through the chapters you denied. Each path leads to a forgotten self. Only then can you face the Wyrm."
Carter clenched his fists. "Then let's do it."
They each took a different path.
And the descent truly began.