Even within the Hidden Archive's heart—where silence itself was sacred—a pulse began to build.
A slow, rhythmic thrum.
Not of machines.
Not of gods.
But of a pendant, suspended midair over a forgotten dais of glowing flame-runes.
It shimmered between states—sometimes crystal, sometimes molten, sometimes entirely transparent. It seemed to flicker between timelines, as if rejecting any one version of reality.
Skyler stepped toward it.
The pendant called to him, vibrating at a frequency that only he could hear.
A voice whispered with each pulse:
"If you wear me… you will remember."
"Not just your life. Not just your death. But why you were made."
Aelira touched the outer field, hand recoiling. "It's encoded to your soul only."
Orias's voice came through the communicator, barely holding back panic:
"The Sixth Seal is destabilizing. Whatever you're doing—finish it now."
But Skyler wasn't listening.
His eyes were locked on the pendant. On the flame-core within it.
He reached forward—
And the moment his fingers brushed the surface, the world shattered.
---
FLASHBACK.
He wasn't in the Hidden Archive anymore.
He stood inside a different chamber—gold, white, and bleeding red cracks. Memory-screens hovered in the air. Seven thrones surrounded a central forge.
At the center: Aeria Novaah, younger, untouched by flame, but with the same eyes—piercing, cosmic, kind.
She was alone. Crying.
Holding the pendant.
"If I can't undo the curse," she whispered, "I can at least give him the choice."
Skyler watched her forge it—using memory strands from her own timeline collapse and a fragment of the First Seal.
"He will think he is cursed."
"He will think he is broken."
"But he will remember the truth when he wears this."
She sealed the pendant, kissing it with her flame, and encoded her final message inside.
And then?
She burned the chamber from history.
---
Skyler gasped as the vision ended, back in his body, on his knees before the hovering pendant.
Aelira caught him. "What did you see?"
He looked up at her.
"She didn't curse us."
"She protected us."
He stood. Eyes glowing like twin stars.
Then… he put on the pendant.
The room went dark.
Every glyph in the Archive shut down—then reignited in gold.
The Sixth Seal on Skyler's chest cracked.
Just a hairline fracture… but enough.
"Now," the Archive intoned,
"You may face the Sixth Truth."
The floor beneath them opened—revealing a staircase spiraling downward into a dream-forge, forged from stardust and divine remorse.
Skyler turned to Aelira, his voice steady.
"I know what I am now."
"But the Sixth Seal knows why."
And together, they descended.
Toward memory's final mercy.
Toward the flame that started everything.