They descended in silence.
Six cadets. One lift. A single torch glyph pulsing overhead as the platform sank into the black beneath the Severed Spire—a collapsed tower cratered by the first portal war and patched together by scarred resonance fields.
The walls wept old magic. Glyphs half-etched in stone shimmered like buried script struggling to be remembered.
"No channeling until the field calibrates," said Instructor Calder "Portalbreaker," voice flat. "You're not here to fight. You're here to listen."
The lift stopped.
Before them stretched Vault Five: a sunken cathedral of broken resonance architecture, echoing with hundreds of spell scars. No light reached this deep unless you carried it.
They stepped in.
Immediately, Kai felt it—pressure behind his eyes, like someone humming through cracked teeth. The dead portal below them pulsed once. Not in welcome.
Amara muttered a protective verse under her breath.
Jian's jaw clenched—no room for ritual here. Just noise and unspoken fear.
Izel flinched first.
A glyph on the wall lit up without warning—not drawn, but remembered. She stared at it. Her eyes glossed for a breath too long.
"Is that one of yours?" Nandi whispered, stepping toward her.
Izel shook her head.
"It's older. But it… it knows me."
Sarika, already damp with gathering pressure, reached up—called moisture to her fingertips, searching for atmospheric shifts. The air refused.
"I can't read the sky down here," she said. "It's like the air's... echo-proof."
Instructor Calder gave a sharp nod.
"Exactly. Vault Five isn't inert—it's interrupted. You're standing on the back of a broken hymn. Every team that's come down here has failed to hear the song."
He dropped a crystal node on the stone.
"You have four minutes to attune. After that—resonance flood. No spells. Just your voices."
The vault darkened.
One by one, the cadets began to hum.
Not as a spell.
As instinct.
Nandi started first—off-key, but full-hearted.
Kai followed, slower, fractured—like someone trying to mimic a memory they never owned.
Then Jian—perfect pitch. But hollow.
Izel didn't sing. She answered. Her breath caught on something buried.
Sarika cried once—not pain. Release. And the mist responded.
Amara's calligraphy lit up—but the ink didn't shape. It dissolved. She stared, baffled.
The stone rippled.
Then—it echoed back.
Not in song. In names.
Not all of them real.
But one... was hers.
Izel's lips moved.
She didn't remember speaking.
Kai grabbed her shoulder.
"Izel—what did it say?"
She turned.
Eyes wet.
"My name. Before."
The vault snapped dark.
Trial complete.
But something in the stone had listened, and this time... it remembered.