Skyler couldn't move.
Not because he was paralyzed—but because the past had hijacked the present.
He stood in the hallway of the Novaah compound—but it wasn't the hallway anymore. It flickered. Shifted. Walls turned into white columns. Floor tiles cracked, then mended themselves with symbols. A child's laugh echoed… but not from Saya.
From himself—a much younger Skyler, no older than five, chasing a glowing orb through a corridor of flame-stained mirrors.
"He's slipping," Saya said urgently, from the edge of the flicker.
"The Third Seal's trying to force a Recall Phase too early."
Orias activated a stabilizer rune on the wall, but it shorted out instantly—consumed by the temporal surge radiating from Skyler's chest.
"He's entering a Memory Flicker Loop," Orias growled. "It's choosing which moment to force into reality."
Skyler fell to his knees.
His hands… were smaller. His voice… younger. His memories… louder.
He looked up—and saw her.
Aeria Novaah.
Radiant. Alive. Wrapped in a cloak of silver flame, kneeling before the child-version of himself.
"Veritas," she said gently. "You have to forget me now. But not forever."
She placed a sigil—a burning star—on his forehead.
He cried.
"I don't want to forget you, Mama."
She smiled, even as tears rimmed her eyes.
"You will. That's the curse. But you'll find me again. In every flicker. In every seal. In every echo of the blood."
"And when the last seal burns, I'll be waiting where memory ends."
Time shattered.
Skyler gasped, thrown from the flicker, body convulsing. The hallway snapped back—but now, his forehead shimmered with a new glyph—in the shape of a burning star, just like in the vision.
Saya knelt beside him, wiping blood from his nose. "You're bleeding memories."
Orias looked graver than ever.
"That wasn't just a hallucination. That was your first real memory. A direct inheritance from Aeria."
Skyler blinked, dazed. "She knew this would happen. She built… something into me."
"She built you," Orias corrected.
Then the Book of Recalled Flame flared again, and a message branded itself into the chamber wall:
"Seal Three Imminent. Memory Singularity Detected."
And from deep beneath the compound, a distant, seismic boom echoed upward—shaking the walls.
Saya looked toward the lower levels, then back at her brother.
"Something ancient just woke up. Something below the house."
Skyler stood—his eyes now burning with three distinct flame marks.
"Then it's time we went deeper."