The Crescent Row back alley had been a tram line. Now it was filled with silence, broken glass, and dying streetlamp light. Lira moved quietly, her cloak clinging to her shoulders. Vessa did not know she was away. She had not informed her.
The pendant led her here.
Its gentle pull was impossible to misinterpret—like gravity, but sideways.
She stood before a building half-hidden in the city's stone disguise. A brass nameplate above the rusted door read:
"MEMORY HOLDING TIER III ARCHIVAL"
She went inside.
The room behind was in partial shadow. Dust drifted in feeble slivers of light from gaps in the wall. Lines of dead consoles lined the floor, each one coffin-shaped and combined with a data core.
The pendant pulsed once more.
One of the devices activated.
Lira approached. The light grew stronger. The core exploded in a slow hiss of pressure release.
Then.....
A voice.
Soft. Female. Older.
"If you've found this, you are my final mistake. And my only hope."
Lira froze.
The air shimmered. A projection formed....shuddering like an antique holo.
A woman stood before her, hair tied back, robes embroidered with the crest of House Viremont.
Her mother.
"Is this real?" Lira asked herself. "A memory echo?"
The voice continued.
"They said you weren't ready. I said they didn't deserve to make the decision. So I hid it away......your awakening, your relic, even your heritage. If you hear this, then I failed to protect you. Or… maybe you survived because of me."
Lira's knees trembled.
"She imprisoned me. to save me."
The pendant burned once more—and something inside her unfolded.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't fire. It was truth.
She inhaled sharply.
Memories flew past her eyes—sigils, fire, incantations in languages she did not know. And then the sound of her pendant opening.
There was a shard of silver glass, alive, inside.
The image shuddered.
"Lira. When the time comes, don't run. Remember who you are. And if he is at your side… have faith in Kael."
And then the image faded.
And the room was silent.
Kael stood in front of Guild Handler Merik, a clipboard-toting half-elf who looked like she hadn't slept in three days.
"You cleared out a dungeon in the Hollowgate undercity?" she asked.
Kael nodded. "Was unstable. Already in formation when I got there."
"And you didn't report it first?"
Kael shrugged. "Didn't have time."
Merik muttered something under her breath, scribbled a note, and pushed a form across the table. "You'll still get hazard credit. But next time, protocol, Kael. If it had gone active—"
"It didn't," Kael interrupted.
She eyed him. "Anything unusual inside?"
"You mean besides absorbing a monster into my relic and hearing it whisper afterward?" he thought.
"No," he said flatly.
She raised an eyebrow but didn't press.
Far up over Hollowgate, a figure in grey robes extended a match to the flame and lit it against a crystal screen. Fire roared, painting images.
He watched Kael step out of the dungeon gate.
He watched the relic react.
He watched the feed distort—like the world itself didn't wish this observed.
Then he turned, writing three words into a book of red leather.
"THE VIREMONT HEIR."
And beneath that:
"Contact the Hollow Court."
In the memory safe, Lira sat on the ground staring at her flipped-open pendant. The shard inside had fused into the chain. It pulsed to a beat that was alive.
There were footsteps.
"Shouldn't be here," said a voice.
Lira turned quickly.
An old woman came out from behind a crashed shelf. She wore several shawls around her and a headband with tiny rune wards etched into it. A local witch, maybe.
"This is shut," the woman said. "Why did the machine wake up for you?"
Lira stood up, unsure if she should be lying.
"I suppose it recognized me," she said honestly.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "You're one of them, aren't you?"
"One of whom?"
The woman smiled, sorrowfully.
"One of the ones fate forgot. Let me walk you back."
Kael returned to the shop to find Lira already in bed, under her blanket. She said nothing. Just handed him the pendant and mouthed, "It opened."
He looked at it, then at her.
"You all right?"
She nodded. "I think… I remember something."
Kael sat beside her. "We'll get through this."
"Kael?"
"Yeah?"
Lira looked at him seriously. "You're not alone in this."
He did not answer at once.
Then: "Neither are you."
The room was quiet, but the pendant remained aglow.
And out in the darkness outside Hollowgate, something else became fascinated.