The air in the vault had turned electric—too quiet, too still. Riven flattened against a column of memory-light, twin daggers humming softly in her grip. Aeneas stood poised at the terminal, his breathing heavy from the psychic blast.
Then came the footsteps.
Not hurried. Not hesitant.
Just inevitable.
A figure emerged through the flickering data spires—a silhouette in obsidian armor, his face shrouded beneath a lattice of Elythium veins. His voice, when it came, was modulated steel.
"You are not welcome here, Echo."
Aeneas froze.
Only two people had ever called him Echo.
One had died at his side.
The other had killed him.
"I knew it," Aeneas said, voice low. "They kept you."
The armored figure tilted its head. "More than kept. I chose to remain. You saw betrayal. I saw a future worth preserving."
"You call this preservation?" Aeneas gestured at the glowing tombs of memory. "You sealed lives like files, turned pain into fuel for obedience."
The figure stepped closer. "And yet, you came back."
Riven lunged, but the Keeper moved like a mirrored thought—catching her mid-strike, hurling her across the chamber. She skidded hard into a pillar of light, consciousness slipping.
Aeneas moved fast—not to attack, but to unlock.
Fingers blurring over the terminal, he muttered ancient code into the archive core. Behind him, the Keeper advanced. Before him, the vault hissed open... revealing a crystalline shard wrapped in black sigils.
His memory. Raw. Unfiltered. Untouched.
He grabbed it—and screamed as it surged through him: Earth drowning. Fire in the forge. Her face—his sister, Ila—vanishing in the light.
Then darkness.
When Aeneas opened his eyes, the Keeper was gone.
So was the vault.
The floor beneath them had ruptured, the archive crumbling into the abyss.
Aeneas crawled to Riven and lifted her.
Her eyes fluttered open. "We get it?"
He looked up at the stars breaking through the cracked dome.
"I think... we got more than we wanted."