The air was different beneath the ruins.

It wasn’t just dust or decay—it was memory.
Old. Wounded. Heavy.

Auren led the way through the shattered cathedral, its ceilings collapsed, its altars melted into strange obsidian shapes. Lyra walked beside him, holding her lantern close, though the light flickered as if resisting the dark itself.

“This place doesn’t want us here,” she whispered.

“Good,” Auren replied.
“That means it remembers.”

They passed through arches carved with worn symbols—dragons, yes, but not the winged terrors of mortal tales.

These were regal, adorned in heavenly patterns. Some bore halos of fire, others wreathed in stars. And at the center of the main hall…

…a mural of a Karmic Knight, standing beside a celestial dragon.

But the knight’s face had been scratched out.

Intentionally.

“You’ve been here before,” Lyra said, quietly.

Auren stared at the wall. His fingers reached toward the missing face.

“Maybe not me.
But someone like me.”

Deeper they went.

Down into the under-vaults.

Into the Ashen Halls, where time had no grip, and the only sounds were their own footsteps… and distant breaths, like slumbering titans.

They entered a grand chamber. At its heart: a crystalline egg, blackened and cracked.

Auren approached it. The sword on his back pulsed in warning.

Too late.

The moment his shadow touched the egg, it split.

Not hatched.

Unsealed.

From the cracks came not a creature—but a memory. A projection.

A voice filled the chamber, echoing off every ancient wall:

“If this vault has opened, then the flame returns to the hands of man.
He who bears the Willbrand must remember this—
The Pact was broken.
We fell for your war.
We will not fall again.”

And with it, a vision was forced into Auren’s mind.

He saw a battle.

Not in his time.

Dragons—celestial, divine, with runes glowing along their wings—being struck down not by mortals, but by knights who bore the same armor as his own.

Karmic Knights.

His predecessors.

And among them… one in silver and red. Wielding a blade like his.

His face was blurred, but his power unmistakable.

This was the one the dragons trusted.
This was the one who betrayed them.

Auren collapsed as the vision ended.

Lyra caught him.

“What did you see?”

He looked up, breath ragged, hand clenched tight.

“I saw the beginning…
of the end.”

And far above, in the Tribunal’s throne room, one of the masked gods paused.

“The vaults have stirred.”

The Gold Mask tilted ever so slightly.

“Then let the dragons return to the board.”

“In every sealed vault lies a betrayal too great for time to erase.”
                                                   — Ashen Halls Inscription Fragment