The corridor opened like the throat of a sleeping beast, swallowing the trio in the breathless dark. Pale blue light traced the carvings in the stone, glowing gently with every step they took—as if the passage remembered the tread of royalty.
They emerged into a vaulted chamber.
Massive.
Cavernous.
The air here felt different. Thicker, heavier. Not with dust, but with history—sorrow sealed into stone.
Torch sconces lined the walls, long extinguished but still enchanted. As Lysander passed them, one by one, they flared to life, casting golden light across the chamber.
At the centre stood a circular dais, raised slightly from the rest of the floor. Upon it, hovering just above an altar of obsidian and bone, floated a scroll—no ordinary relic. This was old. So old the magic humming from it felt frayed at the edges, like the threads of an oath long broken.
Symbols shimmered along its binding: celestial gold, infernal red, and something deeper—demon royal black, the kind that drank the light rather than reflected it.
The chamber walls were etched with frescoes, cracked and worn, depicting scenes of celestial courts kneeling before winged figures with crowned horns. A ring of pillars circled the dais, each carved with a name that pulsed faintly as the trio approached.
Seraphine's breath hitched. "The Accord."
Lysander stepped forward slowly, eyes fixed on the scroll. "The one that ended the First War."
Mira reached out toward the dais, not touching—just hovering. "But it's fractured."
Indeed, the scroll was incomplete. Cracks ran through its illusionary image, as though it had been forcibly copied and stolen from itself. Yet it still pulsed with terrible power. The air around it shimmered with ancient tension, like a blade drawn but never swung.
Whispers stirred in the edges of the light. Not words—just sensation. A thrum of betrayal. A promise half-fulfilled.
Before anyone could move further, a sound echoed behind them.
Boots.
Cloth.
Weapons being drawn.
The vault entrance had been breached.
Seraphine spun, blade already in hand.
From the corridor, a half dozen masked figures strode forward. At their centre walked a taller man—cloaked in black, with an ashen-grey sash etched in blood-coloured thread. His mask bore the Eye of Law. Not painted. Carved.
"Step away from the scroll," he said.
Lysander drew his blade in one smooth motion.
"I don't think so."
The lead enforcer lifted his hand—and the walls groaned in response. The glyphs flickered, the chamber resisting the intrusion.
"They're trying to disable the bindings," Seraphine warned.
"They won't have time," Lysander replied.
The battle was instant.
Flames leapt from Seraphine's fingers as she danced between attackers, her blade a blur of light and wrath. She ducked under one slash, twisted behind another, and kicked a masked figure into a pillar, hard enough to shatter his ribcage. Her every movement invoked both elegance and violence—like a flower blooming with thorns.
Lysander met the lead enforcer head-on.
Steel clashed, and the chamber filled with a sound like breaking glass. The enforcer's blade was forged of law-steel—rigid, precise—but Lysander's was faster, colder. It sang.
Each clash echoed.
Each step left frost across the floor.
Lysander's eyes glinted with flickers of golden light. With every swing, the air thickened with frost, creeping tendrils of cold lacing over the ground and climbing up the pillars like ivy made of winter.
Mira crouched behind the altar, chanting softly. The jade shard in her palm shimmered, reacting to the energy in the scroll. She didn't know how she knew the words—but they came anyway.
Her voice echoed off the chamber walls.
The scroll began to glow.
A pulse shook the chamber.
Everyone froze.
The scroll shifted.
Lines of power exploded outward from its base, locking into place over the altar like a sigil net. Runes lit up on the floor—one under Lysander's boot, one beneath Seraphine, and one beneath Mira.
Three seals.
Three keys.
The chamber responded.
"Back!" shouted the enforcer—but it was too late.
The scroll expanded, unfolding mid-air. Light and shadow raced across the walls, showing flashes of memory:
—A king with horns knelt in chains.
—A blade shattering a celestial tower.
—A woman with Seraphine's face, crying blood as she signed her name in flame.
—A child with golden eyes hidden in fire.
Then it stopped.
The scroll dropped to the altar.
Silent.
Mira's eyes rolled back. She collapsed.
Seraphine caught her, whispering protection runes. Her hands shook as she cradled the girl. The heat in the scroll had burned her fingers, but she didn't let go.
Lysander stood still, the golden glyph on his palm burning bright.
He looked up, eyes narrowed.
"They wanted the scroll?" he said. "Let them see what it contains."
He pressed his hand to the altar.
The runes surged.
The vault doors slammed shut, locking everyone inside.
The enforcer cursed and charged forward again, aiming a strike at Mira—
—but Seraphine stepped between them, her blade flashing as she parried.
"You will not touch her."
More masked figures tried to flank.
Lysander raised his free hand. Ice bloomed like glass spears from the floor, forcing them back.
The scroll began to speak.
Not with words.
With memory.
The air filled with voices—not heard, but felt. Shouts of betrayal. Whispers of oaths broken. The screams of the innocent and the lies of the righteous. The story they were never meant to know.
A storm of images unfurled:
—The original Blood Accord being signed by reluctant hands.
—Demon elders forced to kneel as their ancestral lands were sealed by celestial decree.
—The Black Mask Society accepting coins laced with celestial sigils.
—Seraphine's house burning, her mother clutching the same jade pendant Mira now bore.
And above it all, a final phrase, spoken by a voice both male and female, young and ancient:
"The blood of the fallen shall rise, and the pact shall shatter, not by war… but by remembrance."
Then silence.
And breath.
The vault had become something more than a prison. It had become a witness.
Lysander raised his sword.
"Now we finish this."