The next morning, the Archive felt colder.
Not in temperature—but in tone. Whispers moved differently. Glyphs along the corridors flickered when Caelum passed. Once, a door he wasn't near opened on its own, then slammed shut.
Something had changed.
Serapha noticed, too.
"You're marked," she said, brushing a ward across his shoulder. "Not visibly. But the echo-space remembers you now."
"Because of the Scribe?"
She nodded. "It touched you, even briefly. That leaves scars. You've walked paths that no channeler has stepped into since the last root fell."
They were in Emera's study—an ancient observatory built into the bone of Lareth's skyplate. Books lined the curved walls, and a shallow pool of silver mana mirrored the domed ceiling above. Emera herself was absent, but she had left instructions:
A name lies buried beneath the roots of history. To find it, follow the threads beneath the Cathedral of Durell. But beware—names are power, and some truths resent being remembered.
Caelum stared at the note for a long time.
"Why do I need this name?"
Serapha answered carefully. "Because it's yours. Or it was. The Sigil of Unweaving didn't form by accident. It repeats through lives. Through echoes. If you truly are its bearer… then this forgotten name might be part of you."
The Cathedral of Durell had been off-limits for decades.
Not because of politics—because of instability.
The Weave was thin there. The site had once been the heart of the sixth magic school—Resonancecraft. When the Accord ended the Sixth Path, the cathedral was sealed, and its inner sanctum sank into the deepfold of the city's understructure.
Even the Arcanum feared it.
But Emera's sigil granted them access. They moved through the outer layers unnoticed, passing glyphlocks and crystal-sight gates until they reached the edge of the deep spiral.
Below it: silence.
They descended for hours.
Dust thickened. Light grew erratic. Caelum began to see double-reflections of himself—shadows that didn't match his posture, echoes that lagged behind his breath.
"Don't engage the visions," Serapha warned. "They feed on focus. Just observe."
Finally, they reached the foundation chamber.
It was vast, circular, and long-abandoned. Pillars of soundstone held up a domed ceiling half-collapsed. The floor was carved with sigils so old they had no known translation. And at the center was a sarcophagus—closed with seven locks of songsteel.
One pulsed.
Caelum stepped forward.
The lock opened at his touch.
The sarcophagus shuddered—and from within, a thread of memory light spiraled upward, curling into the air like smoke.
It whispered:
"He who bore no path, who wove no thread—still broke the Pattern."
Caelum's sigil flared.
The other locks released.
The sarcophagus opened.
Inside, there was no body.
Only a mirror.
It showed no reflection.
Only absence.
And then the name appeared.
Not spoken. Not seen.
Felt.
Like a scar remembered in bone.
Caelum fell to his knees.
"Elarion."
Serapha stepped back. "What did you say?"
He looked up. "That was his name. The first bearer. The one who undid the Weave."
Her eyes were wide. "That name was erased. Forbidden. If the Arcanum hears you speak it—"
"I didn't speak it. The echo gave it to me."
The mirror shifted.
And showed a field of black sand, a tower of unlight, and a child—his face not unlike Caelum's—standing before it, holding the same sigil burned on his chest.
A voice whispered:
"One echo can become many. Or none."
The image vanished.
And the chamber began to quake.
They ran.
The tremors weren't physical—they were resonant. The chamber didn't collapse—it unwove, fragments of memory and structure peeling away like loose threads.
By the time they reached the surface again, the spiral behind them had sealed itself with layers of ironglass and time.
Caelum was shaking.
Serapha caught his arm. "Are you alright?"
He nodded. "I saw who he was. What he tried to do."
"And?"
"He didn't want to break the Weave. He wanted to rewrite it."
Back in Emera's observatory, they told her everything.
The old archivist listened in silence.
When Caelum said the name again, Emera didn't flinch. But she closed the room's wards tighter than before.
"So," she said, "the thread returns. I suspected as much. The Dreamroot never believed in true endings."
Caelum leaned forward. "What happens now?"
Emera looked at him.
"You decide who you are, Caelum. The Archive may want to study you. The Arcanum will want to chain you. And the Scribes…"
She sighed.
"They will want to erase you."