The night in Vaelorian Hollow had never felt so taut. As Aeryn followed Thalanil down the descending stone corridor that led beneath the sanctuary, the stale chill hanging in the air brushed against his skin like unseen fingers. Roots—thick, pale, and veined with faint luminescence—ran along the ceiling, pulse-like glimmers traveling through them at slow intervals, as if the Worldroot itself were breathing in uneasy dreams.
He did not speak. He only listened to the sighing echoes, the distant hum, the muffled sound of dripping water somewhere far ahead. Every step brought a soft splash against thin puddles on the stone floor. His heart beat with a strange rhythm, as though something deeper, something ancient, was calling to him from the depths below.
Thalanil's steps were steady, but his silence said more than any lecture or warning. The mentor who always carried himself with a calm, measured nature now felt strained. His voice, when it eventually broke the heavy quiet, lacked its usual evenness.
"You must understand, Aeryn… not all awakenings are meant to be seen by others."
Aeryn swallowed lightly. "I know. And I didn't mean to—"
"It is not your fault." Thalanil slowed, his silver hair brushing his cloak as he turned halfway to look at him. The faint light cast shadows across his face, emphasizing the edge of worry around his eyes. "But it does mean you are now intertwined with something far older than our traditions."
Aeryn's mind flickered back to the memory he had forced out by accident—the burning meadow, the crimson sun, the ashen silhouettes turning to dust under a shrieking sky. The moment he realized the memory wasn't his, he knew something had been waiting within him longer than his current life.
Thalanil's voice turned lower. "The hollow beneath the sanctuary houses relics and remnants from eras before written scripture. I hope they will help us understand what lies inside you."
"And if they don't?" Aeryn asked quietly.
"Then we will turn to the Arbiters of the Root-Spiral. But I pray it does not come to that."
As they reached the bottom of the long stairway, the corridor widened into a cavernous chamber. At its center rose a massive spiraling trunk—dead, petrified, and hollow, split open from centuries of age and pressure. Its ridges curled like frozen waves, each one etched with spiraling runes that glowed faintly in pale-green hues. Aether mist hovered near the ground like thin fog, swirling around Aeryn's ankles.
But what drew his eyes wasn't the ancient trunk. It was the presence standing before it.
An elf robed in deep emerald and white, his hair long and braided with shards of crystal. His gaze held sharpness—piercing, evaluating. For a moment Aeryn felt as though the man had already dissected his entire existence with a single glance.
Thalanil bowed lightly. "High Scribe Calnor. I bring the one I told you of."
Calnor's voice was smooth yet carried an undertone of authority built from centuries of knowledge. "So this is the young elf who saw a memory that does not belong to him."
Aeryn bowed with respect. "It wasn't intentional."
"Most calamities begin with what is unintended." Calnor stepped closer, his robes trailing across the mist. "Tell me what you saw. Word for word. Do not embellish, do not omit."
Aeryn repeated it—the sky like cracked bloodstone, the trembling earth, the sound like a dying god roaring in anguish. The burned plains littered with silhouettes made of ash. And the scream—the one that didn't come from any throat he could identify—that pierced through his skull.
Calnor listened with no physical reaction. Even Thalanil seemed disturbed, but the High Scribe's expression remained carved from stone.
When Aeryn finished, Calnor placed a hand over the petrified trunk. A line of light crawled along the runes, spiraling inward like a star being pulled into gravitational collapse. Something deeper within the hollow responded—a low hum, almost like a growl.
Calnor murmured, "This memory is not from your soul, nor from your bloodline. It is not a vision granted by the spirits, nor is it an echo of shared ancestry."
Aeryn felt the System shift inside him, faint words flickering behind his eyes. He waited, but it did not reveal anything he could decipher. Only a distant vibration.
Calnor stepped around him, his eyes narrowing. "Child, what is within you does not belong to Elyndor."
Aeryn stiffened. "I was born here. Everything I have is from here."
"Your body, yes. Your soul… perhaps. But the imprint within you—the mechanism that responds when your ether stirs—that is foreign. It bears the structure of an engineered construct."
Thalanil's eyes widened. "Construct? You mean some sort of artifact bound to his spirit?"
"No." Calnor's voice dipped further. "An artifact has flaws. This does not. It is too precise. Too adaptable." His gaze fell upon Aeryn again. "Tell me, child. When you access your ability… does it speak? Does it display? Measure?"
Aeryn felt a knot tighten in his chest. Hiding the System would be foolish now. Thalanil already knew something was off, and Calnor's expression had no patience for deception.
"It displays," Aeryn said honestly. "It measures. It… guides."
The cavern reacted. The roots overhead pulsed, their light intensifying for a heartbeat.
Calnor exhaled long and slow. "Then it is true. You possess an Etherbound Interface."
Aeryn blinked. "What is that?"
Thalanil answered quietly. "A myth. A relic mentioned only in the Ashen Chronicles—fragments of scrolls older than any dynasty. They speak of a 'void-born system' capable of turning even the weakest into sovereigns. Capable of rewriting fate. Capable of—"
Calnor cut in, his tone sharp. "Capable of catastrophe if mishandled."
Aeryn absorbed the words, but something felt off. If something so powerful existed, why had no one ever found one? Why was it only myth?
Before he could ask, Calnor gestured toward the petrified trunk. "Place your hand on it, Aeryn. If your Interface reacts, we may understand the nature of its origin."
Aeryn hesitated. The runes glowed faintly, as if expecting something. He took a breath, stepped forward, and pressed his palm against the cold surface.
The world folded.
Aether mist surged upward, wrapping him in a spiral of green and silver. The cavern faded into darkness. And suddenly he was falling—not downward, but inward. Into himself. Into the System.
He landed on something that felt like a floor but looked like nothing. A blank, dark expanse stretched infinitely. Above him hung a single shimmering sphere, floating just out of reach. Runes flickered across its surface in shapes and languages he could not comprehend.
Then the System's voice echoed—not the usual calm monotone, but something deeper, fragmented, strained.
[Warning… Unknown interference detected.]
[Source: Ancient Aether Construct.]
[Harmonization… failed.]
[Stabilizing host consciousness.]
Aeryn winced as static tore through the space around him. The sphere cracked slightly, releasing streams of light that curled in spirals before dissolving into the void.
Then something else entered the space.
A second presence. Vast. Heavy. Like a mountain of pressure pushing against his shoulders. A ripple of red light shimmered at the edges of the darkness, and a voice—not spoken aloud, but whispered into the marrow of existence—curled around him.
"So it wakes again…"
Aeryn's breath caught. The voice was neither male nor female. It was ancient and exhausted, like something that had died but refused to forget it had once lived.
"You carry the last shard," the voice murmured. "And with it, the burden of remembrance."
Aeryn forced himself to speak. "Who are you?"
A laugh—dry, hollow, bitter—echoed. "Names matter only to the living. I am a remnant. A shadow of an era erased."
The sphere cracked further, and Aeryn felt something pulling at him—trying to drag him out.
The voice surged, urgent. "Listen well, bearer. The Interface you wield… does not belong to your world. It is the final fragment of a star that died beyond the Veiled Horizon. It was never meant to awaken. It was never meant to choose another."
Aeryn clenched his fists. "Then why me?"
"That… I do not know." The voice dimmed. "But your fate is already tangled. The Arbiters will hunt what they do not understand. The clans will fear what you may become. And the roots of this world… will remember the calamity your power once unleashed."
The pressure grew. Cracks widened. Light burst from the sphere like shattering glass.
The voice whispered one last sentence before the world ruptured.
"Do not let the Interface control you, child of Elyndor. For when it fully awakens, it will not ask."
The void collapsed.
Aeryn gasped as he was thrown back into his body. His knees hit the stone floor. The cavern shook violently, dust raining from the ceiling. The petrified trunk's runes flared blindingly bright before dimming back to their usual glow.
Thalanil rushed to his side. "Aeryn! Are you hurt?"
Calnor stared, eyes widened with a rare expression of shock. "What did you see?"
Aeryn tried to speak but stopped as the System flickered in his vision.
[Warning: Interface destabilization detected.]
[Partial awakening initiated.]
[New Path unlocked.]
[Directive Imprinted.]
He inhaled sharply, bracing himself.
Calnor stepped closer. "Aeryn. Tell us."
Aeryn met both their gazes, grounding himself.
"There is something inside the System," he said slowly. "Something ancient. Something that remembers a world that died."
Thalanil's breath caught.
Calnor whispered, "So the Chronicle was true."
But Aeryn wasn't done.
"And it said one more thing."
Calnor leaned in. "What?"
Aeryn's voice dropped.
"It said the clans… the Arbiters… everyone will fear what I might become. And that the power within me… was once a calamity."
Silence spread across the cavern like creeping frost.
Thalanil's hands trembled.
Calnor's expression hardened.
And somewhere deep below the sanctuary, the Worldroot pulsed once in a slow, ominous beat—like a warning or a prophecy.
The path ahead had already begun to twist.
And Aeryn realized there was no turning back.