The ruins whispered in the dark. Each echo carried fragments of voices that had long since vanished—priests, believers, executioners. Mael felt them brush against his consciousness as he descended deeper, the air thick with the smell of iron and stone.
Aria walked beside him, torchlight trembling in her hand. Her steps were hesitant now. She hadn't spoken since they left the surface, not since the night she had seen what Mael became when the Mark burned crimson through his veins.
The chamber below opened into an impossible vastness. Pillars of black marble stretched toward the unseen ceiling, and between them shimmered faint outlines—statues that weren't entirely solid, caught between matter and memory.
Mael stopped at the edge of a pool. The water reflected no light.
> "This is it," Aria whispered. "The cradle of the Marks."
He didn't answer. He could feel it—the same pulse that had once come from the Sanctuary now echoed here. It was weaker, fractured, but familiar.
Something stirred beneath the surface of the black pool.
A face emerged, pale and blindfolded, lips trembling as though gasping for air. The voice that followed was layered, half-divine, half-broken.
> "You… return what was taken. Or take what was forgotten?"
Aria took a step back, but Mael remained still. "Who are you?"
> "I am the echo of the one you defied. I am the memory of the god who forgets."
The pool rippled violently. All around them, the statues began to move, shifting into humanoid shapes. They bore no faces—only masks carved from obsidian, each etched with a single, glowing symbol: the Mark of Silence.
"Mael," Aria murmured, her voice trembling, "we should go."
But Mael's eyes burned red. "No. I came here for answers."
The faceless guardians stepped closer, dragging blades that seemed woven from starlight and shadow. One spoke without sound; the words appeared directly in Mael's mind:
> "You are the anomaly. The god's mistake. You should not exist."
The ground shuddered. Runes ignited around the pool, pulsing like veins of light through the stone.
Aria's torch went out. Darkness swallowed them whole.
---
When light returned, Mael stood alone. The ruins had changed—the pool gone, the pillars rearranged, the air heavy with ash. Aria's voice echoed faintly somewhere far away, distorted by unseen distance.
"Aria!"
He ran toward the sound, his boots striking ancient sigils that burst into brief light beneath each step. The deeper he ran, the more the architecture twisted—walls folding into themselves, corridors looping endlessly.
Then he saw her.
Aria knelt in the center of a vast hall, her body trembling, surrounded by floating fragments of broken glass. The pieces reflected different versions of her—each from another time, another fate.
One version of her wept. Another smiled coldly. Another wore the Mark on her forehead.
"Don't come closer," she whispered.
Mael stopped, heart hammering. "What happened?"
Her voice cracked. "He's inside me, Mael. The god. The one who forgets. He used me to find you."
Before he could answer, the shards exploded outward. From within them stepped a figure draped in tattered divine robes, its face a mirror reflecting only Mael's eyes.
> "So you survived the Purge," the god said, voice calm and inhuman. "And still you seek meaning."
Mael clenched his fists. "You made me. You gave me the Mark."
> "I gave you nothing," said the god. "You stole my sin."
The words struck deeper than any blade. Images flashed—burning temples, the cries of marked children, his own face twisted in rage centuries ago. For a moment, he saw himself as he once was: not a man, but an executioner for the gods.
The truth hit him. He had been one of them.
"Then why did you erase me?" Mael asked.
The god's mirrored face cracked. "Because you remembered mercy."
Lightning surged through the hall. The god raised a hand, and reality fractured. The floor shattered into endless void beneath Mael's feet.
He fell—then stopped, suspended in midair by unseen threads. All around him swirled memories, each one a life he'd lived and lost. Aria, the Sanctuary, the war of shadows—everything was connected to this single divine being.
> "You can still return," said the god. "Forget what you were. Forget who you are."
Mael's voice broke into a snarl. "No."
He raised his arm, and the Mark on his skin ignited brighter than ever before. The darkness screamed. The god staggered backward as Mael unleashed a surge of crimson energy that tore through the void, fracturing the divine mask into shards of light.
Aria collapsed to the ground, free of the god's grasp—but unconscious.
Mael landed beside her, shaking, blood dripping from his nose. The ruin trembled, cracks racing up the pillars as the ceiling began to crumble.
He lifted her into his arms. "I won't forget," he whispered. "Not again."
As he turned toward the collapsing passage, the voice of the god whispered one last time, fading into static:
> "Then neither will I."
The entire temple erupted into light.
---
When Mael awoke, the world above had changed. The moon was gone, replaced by a crimson halo that burned across the sky. Towns below were in chaos—people screaming, fleeing as marks began to appear across their skin.
Aria stirred weakly in his arms. Her eyes glowed faintly, a trace of the god still inside her.
"Mael… what did you do?"
He looked up at the bleeding heavens. His voice was barely a whisper.
> "I broke the cycle."