Chapter 2: The Echoing Vault
The void no longer screamed.
In its place lingered a quiet that pressed upon the soul like the hush before a cosmic storm. Krael Virex stood upon the threshold of a place long forgotten—The Echoing Vault, a construct not born of any realm, but forged in the stillborn breath of dead timelines. The stars above it did not shine, but hung motionless, like watchers sentenced to eternal silence.
His companions had gone, scattered by the violence of their escape. He bore their memories now, stitched into his heart like fragments of lost hymns. The path ahead called to him alone.
The Vault's doors—two monoliths of obsidian veined with living flame—responded to no key or incantation. Instead, they groaned open to the weight of intent. Krael's presence, the sum of his battles and burdens, was enough.
Inside, the air was thick with resonance, not sound but memory. Each step echoed with the lives that had passed through before, some in desperation, others in madness. He felt their gazes—spectral, half-formed, remnants of selves too shattered to pass on.
But it was not their warning that halted him. It was her.
A voice, soft yet thunderous in its gravity, curled through the chamber.
"You carry the scent of shattered fates, knight of twilight. What makes you think you are worthy to tread deeper?"
From the shadows stepped a figure cloaked in prismatic dusk. Her face shifted—mother, queen, child, specter—never settling. She was the Warden of the Vault, a creature older than consequence, tasked with guarding truths too dangerous for linear minds.
Krael's eyes narrowed. "I do not seek truth for power. I seek it for war."
The Warden's laugh was not cruel. It was mournful. "Then you are already lost."
With a flick of her hand, the Vault fractured. Not physically, but temporally. Krael's form split across moments—he saw himself as a boy, lost in a collapsing citadel; as a knight bathing in the blood of kings; as a ghost wandering after annihilation. His knees buckled beneath the weight of his own legend.
"Do you see?" the Warden whispered. "You are not one man, but many. And you are broken."
But he rose.
Bruised by memory, stripped of illusion, Krael Virex stood and drew forth not a blade, but a shard of his own essence—his resolve, his grief, his hope. "Then I will forge myself anew. From broken truths, I'll build a weapon no shadow can withstand."
The Warden watched in silence.
And then, she stepped aside.
"You seek the Cradle of Threads," she said. "It lies beyond the Vault's heart. But beware—should you weave with threads not yours to touch, you will unmake not only the world, but yourself."
Krael nodded once. And entered.
The Vault closed behind him.