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24

 

Thane moved through the chamber slowly, the fractured symbols casting long shadows across his path. The six doorways remained sealed, but the mirror-split glyph pulsed faintly, as if waiting for him to return.

He turned toward the pedestal where the oath tablet had once rested. In its place now stood a second relic: a ceremonial clasp, shaped like two hands reaching but never touching.

He picked it up.

It was cold—colder than the air around him—

And etched with a phrase in the Archive’s ancient tongue. Solenne translated softly:

“To hold is to risk. To release is to remember.”

Thane, at this point, wondered what he had got himself into, he closed his fist around the clasp.

The chamber responded.

The walls shimmered, and the obsidian surface began to ripple like water. A new memory emerged—not his own, but someone else’s. A woman in a crimson robe, standing before the council. Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed sorrow.