The Vault screamed.
Not loud. Not even human. Just a vibration so deep that air and stone forgot their places for a breath.
The walls rippled, silver crawling up their sides like veins beneath translucent skin. The runes that once looked like symbols now resembled eyes — watching, blinking, remembering.
The shard pulsed again, brighter, and the pedestal sank into the ground with a metallic sigh.
Then the floor moved.
"Mael!" Raal shouted, threads snapping taut as the ground split like paper.
The team scattered. The twins caught themselves against a rising platform of mirror metal. Lirra's boots slid on shifting stone before she jammed a blade into the floor, anchoring herself.
From the gaps came forms — not guardians this time, but faces. Dozens, maybe hundreds, pressed against translucent walls of living alloy.
Human faces.
Screaming silently.
Each one mouthed something different, but the chorus made meaning clear enough: Leave.
Mael didn't. He never did.
He raised a hand, and the vibrations in the air bent around his palm. Edge Pulse traveled out in perfect lines, like sound seeking purpose. The wall-forms shivered, flickered, then peeled away — not dying, but resetting.
"Not people," he said flatly. "Memories burned into metal."
"Looks alive to me," muttered Kest, hammering down a malformed shape that clawed at his boot.
"Alive enough to fight," Lirra hissed, slashing through another.
The Vault fought in pulses — every strike answered by the environment itself. When the twins leapt across a gap, the air beneath them turned solid for half a second before melting into smoke. When Raal sent his threads through a column, it reflected his movement half a second too late, weaving against his control.
They weren't battling constructs anymore; they were battling architecture.
Mael studied the rhythm — breath, pulse, collapse, rebirth — and moved through it like a composer. He stepped between moments, using Phase Mark to blink from one collapsing platform to another. His coat caught light from the runes, streaking gold before the glow dimmed again.
At the pedestal's former center, the shard now hovered midair, held in a column of pale energy.
Raal reached again. His threads hesitated, bending as if gravity itself doubted its orders.
"Wait," Mael said softly. "It's reading you."
Raal froze. "Reading what?"
"Your intent."
Lirra sliced through another shape. "Then what's it reading from you?"
Mael smiled faintly, almost ruefully. "Permission."
The Vault shuddered once more, as though in response. The runes flickered between gold and crimson.
Then, from behind the team, a circular pulse hit like a wave. The silver-haired woman turned just in time to see the air invert. Her Mirra barrier snapped in half — the Vault learning her defense — and slammed her into a wall. Blood traced lines down her cheek.
Raal swore. "We're running out of rhythm here!"
"Then make a new one," Mael said.
He dropped his palm to the floor again — another Edge Pulse, but layered, more complex. It didn't shatter the floor; it reprogrammed it, replacing the Vault's hum with his own. The chamber's pulse faltered. For the first time, its beat wasn't its own.
"Raal," Mael said. "Now."
Raal's threads wrapped around the shard, trembling with resistance. It didn't want to move.
Then, slowly, the hum lessened. The shard detached from its column like a leaf torn from a tree.
When Raal held it up, it pulsed once — then went still.
Everything stopped.
The Vault froze mid-collapse, every rune dimming to a ghost-light gray. Even sound held its breath.
Then, like an organism realizing its heart was gone, the Vault screamed again — this time in grief.
The entire structure convulsed. Stone cracked, metal twisted, columns buckled inward.
Mael turned sharply, eyes narrowing. "Everyone move!"
They ran, but the tunnels weren't tunnels anymore. They were closing throats.
Lirra's path crumbled; Raal caught her with a thread just in time. Kest smashed through a sealing wall, and the twins carried the injured woman.
Mael was last — walking backward, slow and deliberate. His eyes stayed on the now-empty pedestal.
He pressed his hand to the wall once, and the Vault's hum trembled one last time, as if recognizing the rhythm of the man who stole its pulse.
Then the chamber collapsed.
When they surfaced — dirty, bleeding, breathing hard — Velith's night sky looked almost kind by comparison. The shard glowed faintly in Raal's grip.
"Did we win?" the boy asked, voice thin.
Mael turned, blood on his sleeve, eyes distant.
"No," he said. "We started something."
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