I flinch, but he doesn’t stop.
“He won’t show you the full truth until he’s sure it won’t drive you away. He’s already let you in farther than he meant to.”
“That’s not my problem,” I snap.
“No,” he agrees. “But it will be.”
I stare at him, breathing hard.
“I don’t need protection.”
“No,” Vale says. “You need clarity. And the others won’t give it to you until it’s too late. I’m telling you now because you’re already too far in to run.” His voiceis a razor; soft, clean, sharp. “Oblivion isn’t waiting for permission. It’s waiting for a crack. One scream. One bond too deep. One moment of surrender. And then you’re not the key. You’re the fucking door.”
A silence falls between us. Something inside me doesn’t feel silent at all. It’s humming. Alive. And suddenly I need to see it again. The vault. The sigils. The truth etched in stone, in metal, in blood. I turn toward the sealed door at the end of the corridor. “I need to see them.”
Vale doesn’t follow. He just watches me as I walk. And I swear, as I reach the door, I hear him say it. Not loud or meant for me…but I hear it all the same. “I wish we had more time.”
The vault door recognizes me.
Not in the way a lock clicks open or a light flickers on, but in the way the air changes when someone important enters a room. Like the space has already shifted to accommodate me, like it knows I’m coming. Like it’s been waiting.
I press my palm to the thick metal slab, and it doesn’t resist. There’s no grind of gears, no hiss of pressure, justthe sound of a slow sigh, long and low, as the door swings inward without a command.
It shouldn’t be able to do that. It did not do that last time.
Inside, the vault is darker than I remember, not lightless, but weighted. The illumination comes from no single source. Instead, the space itself glows in soft, pulsing hues. Bronze and bone. Rust and shadow. Everything is slick with the kind of energy that feels organic, as if the walls themselves are breathing.
The sigils are where they were before. Still. Waiting.
Four symbols were carved into standing stone monoliths along the circular interior of the chamber. One, once etched into the floor at the center, was the one I saw with Riven. The one he wouldn’t talk about.
Oblivion.
I step past the threshold. The moment I do, the air presses in against my body, like a second skin. The echo of Vale’s voice lingers in my head, coiled around the truth like a blade.
You are a living sigil.
You’re not marked or chosen. You wereborn.
I move to the first stone without hesitation.
Riven’s sigil, War. It’s drawn in heavy lines like a brand—sharp, rigid, and symmetrical. Last time, it looked old. Cold. Lifeless. Now? It’s cracked. A jagged fracture down the right side, thin but deep, like a pressure fault split the stone, and no one dared seal it. I run my fingers over it. It feels hot. Alive. As if the bond between us lives here, too. As if this place remembers the moment I let him in. “Is this what I am to you?” I whisper. “A fracture?” The sigil doesn’t answer. Although I swear the crack glows faintly as I pull my hand away.
The next monolith is darker, Famine. The sigil carved into the blackened stone is more fluid, like a serpent coiled around a broken stalk of wheat. But something’s wrong with it. The lines aren’t clean. The grooves are wet. I crouch low and look closer. The carving is leaking. Black liquid, ink, or something worse…trickles down the stone in hairline streams. It evaporates before it reaches the base, but the effect is sickening. Like the stone is crying, bleeding, decaying from the inside out. I straighten and move on.
Pestilence’s sigil is carved into something bone white. Something softer than marble or quartz. Maybe ivory—yellowed, and cracked. The symbol itself is intricate, a perfect ring, almost a halo, with delicate veins branching outward. It pulses and vibrates at a pitch I can’t hear but I can feel in my teeth. A heartbeat that doesn’t belong. A sickness that wants to spread. I don’t touch it. Elias was the first one to leave a mark on my mind. I thought it was Riven, but no. The virus snuck in earlier. Quieter. Through my dreams.
And now this, the sigil? It’s waiting. I can feel it watching. It doesn’t need me yet. But it will. I move to the last monolith, Vale. The sigil is different than the rest. Simpler. It’s a vertical, hourglass-like form, two broken crescents meeting at their tips, like an eclipse cracking down the middle. At first glance, it looks stable. Still. Peaceful. The longer I stare, the more it seems to fade. As if the stone itself is forgetting how to hold the shape. As if it knows what’s coming and no longer wants to be a part of it. I step close.
“Why did you really tell me?” I murmur. “Why not let me break on my own?” No answer. Just the soft hum ofa sigil trying to vanish before the world ends. And then, finally, I look down.
The fifth, Oblivion. Etched directly into the floor, at the dead center of the room. Before, it was inert. Cold. Subtle. Just a design carved into the stone, overlooked and unnamed.
Now, it’s bleeding light. A slow, inky glow pulses from the lines. The kind of glow that doesn’t illuminate but devours. It casts no shadows, because it consumes them. It bends the edges of the chamber, warping the space around it, as if reality is struggling to contain it.
My feet move on their own. I stand at the edge, breathing slow, heart pounding. The longer I stare at it, the more the glow seeps up around me. As if it’s trying to shape me in its image. And then, quietly…I hear my voice. Not aloud. Not in memory. In the echo of the stone. “Open the door.”
I stumble back one step. Then another. Although it follows, I am not a stranger here. I am the one it’s been waiting for. With each step back I take, the glow beneath me flares.
