The path to the Archive's forbidden center was not marked on any map.
No portal led there.
No door opened by key.
The only way in… was through blood.
---
Skyler stood before a wall of flickering memories, now breathing with him—alive and shifting.
Each glyph in the wall mirrored his pulse. Not a security mechanism.
A recognition system.
"It knows you," said Aelira. Her voice was almost reverent.
Skyler nodded, hand outstretched. The glyphs on his fingers lit up like constellations.
The wall—if it could be called that—unwove itself into threads of time and sank inward.
Behind it was a void of utter silence.
And then?
A staircase. Floating. Made from memory-crystal, each step pulsing with golden-white threads that hummed when touched.
The two descended into the Hidden Archive.
---
This place was different.
No records. No books.
No data stacks or flame codices.
Instead, suspended in the void, were memory shells—millions of glowing orbs, each housing a living truth erased from history.
Aelira approached one. Inside it flickered the image of a burning city.
"I think these are the things the Archive couldn't afford to remember," she whispered.
"Too dangerous. Too honest."
Skyler reached for a massive sphere at the center—darker than the others.
It pulsed. Waited.
Then opened at his touch.
And memory poured out.
Aeria, standing atop the original Archive tower, flanked by gods of creation, flame, silence, and recursion.
She held a newborn—Skyler.
Only he wasn't born—he was extracted from the Archive itself.
A voice—hers—narrated:
"The child cannot be born from flesh. He must be built from truth. From flame. From what we agreed to forget."
Skyler staggered back, eyes wide.
"I was never her son…"
Aelira caught him. "Skyler—"
He looked at her. "I was her creation. A failsafe. A living backdoor into the Archive's sealed heart."
The sphere pulsed again—showing a hidden chamber where seven Seals floated around an empty throne.
The throne glowed faintly.
"Only one who carries all seven," said Aeria in the memory, "may sit and ask the Archive to choose."
"And if he chooses to remember… everything ends."
Skyler turned to Aelira.
"I'm not just here to break seals."
"I'm here to decide whether reality keeps existing."
The chamber shook violently—outside, the multiverse felt the breach.
And in that moment, Skyler's body ignited—not in flame, but script.
His veins pulsed with glowing code. His voice echoed with flame-wrapped syllables.
The Archive began to fold inward, pulling its layers into alignment.
It was preparing something.
A test.
A question.
A final memory locked behind Seal Six.
---
"What happens when the blood remembers why it was cursed?"
Skyler took Aelira's hand.
The Seventh Seal still slept.
But now, the Archive demanded:
"Break the Sixth."
"And awaken the Truthweaver."