Kaelen sat near the edge of the Cradle, knees pulled loosely to his chest, golden tattoos on his arms dimmed to a soft shimmer. The sphere of memory hovered before him, rotating slowly, casting flickering glyph-light across the stone floor. He wasn't sure how long they'd been in this sanctuary beneath the ruined cathedral because time moved differently down here, wrapped in a veil of magic and recursion.
The Cradle breathed like a living thing. Its walls were etched with ancient designs, half-lost prayers, algorithmic scripts, glyphs in forgotten languages. Some glowed faintly with residual mana, others flickered in and out as if caught between two versions of truth. The air smelled of parchment, ozone, and distant rot, as though every memory stored here came with a corpse and forgotten by time.
Clara leaned against one of the book-laden arches, arms crossed, her breathing steady again. Her eyes were darker now, like shadows pulled tight across twilight. She watched Kaelen with an expression half-curious, half-surpised.
Across from them, Silence knelt beside the memory core, her porcelain mask fractured further now. Faint tendrils of golden code leaked from her arms, vanishing into the floor like spilled light drawn to gravity. The more she knelt there, the less human she seemed—less Archivist, more echo.
Kaelen had been watching it happen for the past hour. How her form jittered subtly, how her words fragmented mid-sentence, how her presence seemed to bend the room slightly, as if something were rewriting her from the inside.
He didn't want to press her. Not again.
He exhaled softly. "You're being rewritten."
Silence did not answer at first. She tilted her head slightly, as though hearing something neither of them could.
"Wecan't see it, but we can notice it." Kaelen continued. "Your voice... the way it fractures. You're losing parts of yourself. I don't want to ask you things that accelerate it, but looks like there is no option."
Silence's voice was softer than usual, a single thread of memory instead of many. "Memory and truth are a burden. The closer I get to speaking it, the more I lose."
Kaelen nodded slowly. "The more you have to loose my ass." He retorted with his voice raised which caused Clara and the archivist to be marveled "Don't just tell us what would break you, just tell us what we need to know, like the way into the vault or The one that can't reach you, but wants to."
Clara straightened at that, eyes narrowing.
Silence froze for a moment. Then said "It has no name. Not one that can be spoken without cost."
Her lantern flickered. Kaelen's tattoos sparked in response.
"And it's been alive?" Clara asked.
"It is aware. Older than the scripts written here. Hungrier than the void between endings."
Kaelen leaned forward. "Is it... human?"
"No."
"A god?"
Silence paused again. The ink in her arms twisted. "Not in the way you understand gods."
Kaelen frowned. "Then what is it? What does it want?"
Silence tilted her head, her voice glitching faintly: "It is the witness. The one who sees without skin. It watches. But cannot touch."
Clara crossed her arms. "If it can't touch you, why are you so afraid of it?"
"Because it is learning," Silence whispered. "And because it wants to leave."
Kaelen blinked. "Leave what or rather leave where?"
"Its cage."
"Where is it caged?" They both asked in unison.
Silence's voice fell to a trembling hush. "Here. In every thought. Every thread. It is bound in form. It seeks a door. A way out of its mortal shackles."
Clara's expression darkened. "And the Vault could be that door."
"It's shell was never built to hold it," Silence said. "Only to delay it, but what it needs to shed it's mortal shackles dwells in the vault"
Kaelen sat in silence for a long moment. His fingers flexed against his knees. The weight of her words pressed against his ribs.
"Has it ever spoken to you?" he asked.
Silence looked at him for a long time. Then nodded once. "When I dream. It asks me what I remember. What I've forgotten. What I'm hiding, it thinks I'm the guardian of the vault and knows where it's located."
Clara shifted uneasily. "And what do you tell it?"
"Nothing," Silence said. "Because if I answer... it will know it's real."
Kaelen looked at Clara. "We need to figure out how to move without drawing its attention. It's already close enough to whisper."
Clara pushed off the arch. "Then we stop talking to ghosts and start looking for exits."
---
Meanwhile...
The forest above the Vault was ancient and wrong. Trees grew too tall for their roots, they gnarled like fingers trying to claw upward. The sky was sickly gray, the air thick with the metallic tang of old magic. Birds did not sing here. Only the silence moved.
Regan crouched near the edge of a fallen tower wall, his fingers brushing the moss-covered stone. Theo was adjusting the calibration on his sidearm, eyes scanning the treeline. Viola knelt nearby, rune-paper spread across a portable divination disk.
"These readings make no sense," she muttered. "There shouldn't be a Vault signature this strong. Not unless it's open."
"Wait—" Theo squinted at his HUD. "You're seeing this too, right?"
All three went quiet.
> [SYSTEM PULSE: UNSECURED VAULT DETECTED]
Registered Players: Kaelen
Status: Vault Seal Engaged
Regan stared.
Theo laughed once. "That greenie found the Vault?"
Viola's mouth twisted. "Beginner's luck. Has to be."
"He must've stumbled into a trigger chain," Theo added. "Maybe a dead Choir node opened something up for him."
Regan's jaw tightened. "Or someone gave him the final piece."
"He's not even ranked," Viola muttered. "Didn't even complete three full chain quests. And now he's opening Vaults. Is he with someone else? The other player who refused to join us?"
"Maybe he is, but Some people get all the dumb luck," Theo said. "Still, we're not letting him have it all to himself."
Regan stood. "Either way, we're going."
"You think he'd share it?" Theo asked.
Regan's expression didn't change. "No. But we're going anyway." Turning to face Theo "there is no rule against pking"
The trees rustled.
From between the trunks, a broad-shouldered man emerged. He had a Worn out armor. A hooked glaive slung across his back, dark eyes that seemed to study them before even fully stepping into view. His face was weathered—scarred at the jaw, sun-browned from exposure—and his boots looked like they'd walked a dozen dead worlds. A single crimson feather was tied to one shoulder pad, swaying with his step.
Regan raised his blade. "Stop and identify yourself."
The man lifted his hands. "Easy there lad. Name's Murdoc. A Player. I'm not here to fight."
Viola narrowed her eyes. "You're not registered." Looking at him Scrutinizingly trying to see if he was affiliated to a major or minor family.
"Neither's half the world if you look in the right places," Murdoc said. His voice was dry, gravelly—too calm for the tension in the air. "I was just tracking the ruckus I heard earlier. While running away from an insane maniac trying to kill me. Looks like I found you lot instead."
Theo didn't lower his weapon. "You usually track people with a glaive strapped to your spine?"
"Only when I expect company." Murdoc's grin didn't reach his eyes.
"What do you know about the Vault?" Regan asked.
Murdoc shrugged. "That it's open. That someone who doesn't understand how it works just walked in. And that something a lot worse is going to follow."
"You're vague for someone who seems to know a lot. Do you have any experience with vaults?" Viola said. Her staff glimmered with latent arcane tension.
"I'm alive, aren't I? That means I know enough not to spill everything upfront. And yeah vaults are kinda my niche" he grinned again
"You talk too much and weirdly" Theo said.
Regan sheathed his sword slowly. "You want to join us, the more the merrier."
Murdoc shrugged. "Sure. I want to be there when the world changes."
Theo awkwardly looked to Regan.
Regan nodded once. "You slow us down, and you're done."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Murdoc replied
As they resumed their trek, Murdoc walked beside Theo.
"So. This Kaelen guy... that his first run through the loop?"
Theo snorted. "Yeah. Total greenie. Quiet. Observant. Didn't cause trouble, and he snubbed the living hell out of us."
"Strange how that's the type that finds the unfindable," Murdoc said. " Would you say it's Luck. Or he is getting played?."
Viola joined in, glancing at Murdoc. "We'll find out when we get there."
Murdoc chuckled under his breath. "Hope you're ready to be surprised. Some ghosts aren't meant to stay buried, and some arent meant to be uncovered."
---
Kaelen stood before the Vault again. Silence had stepped back into the shadow of the arch. Her light dimmed. Her words had ceased.
She turned toward the eastern edge of the chamber, where the stonework narrowed into a long hallway. Faded inscriptions curled along the ceiling there, old Choir sigils merged with foreign geometry.
Kaelen followed her, but paused once to glance back at Silence.
"Will you be safe here if we leave?"
Silence didn't lift her head. Her voice was a hum of memory. "I am not safe anywhere. But here, I remember longer."
Kaelen hesitated—then nodded.
"Do you trust her?" Clara asked, not looking at him.
"I don't trust anyone down here," Kaelen said. "But I believe she's afraid. And that means she's still... real."
Turning back towards silence "before we start finding an alternative way to open the vault, what even happened to this kingdom?"
Clara replied, "The world's held together with old myths and broken math. You ask too many questions, and I really hope you don't cause our demise" looking at him sternly
Silence's voice broke the air like an old instrument, soft and distant, as if her words were not spoken but recalled.
"You asked what happened to the Kingdom," she said from beneath the archway. Her voice, though weakened, still carried with it the resonance of ancient halls, like bells buried in deep stone. "I remember the last breath of its spine. Not from books or carvings. I was there."
Kaelen and Clara exchanged looks. The light from the glyphs faded as they stepped back toward the threshold of the Cradle.
"You were there?" Kaelen asked quietly.
Silence turned her face to him, and the cracked porcelain mask caught the light of the memory sphere.
"Before I was the Archivist, I was... someone else. I had a name. I wore a crown of cinnamon mountain ash. But when the Kingdom fell, the Choir bound me. They turned my mind into a vessel and poured the history into me like fire into a mold. And then they locked the mold."
Clara folded her arms. "So this isn't just any secondhand lore. You actually lived it."
"I became it, the memories a subtle reminder and a constant punishment" Silence said. "And I will tell you. But you must understand—the Kingdom didn't fall. It was erased."