CHAPTER 489: MEMORIES (1)

The answer came not from the spirit, but from the air itself, a deep, resonant murmur that rolled across the canyons like thunder:

We did.

The ground trembled. Ashwing flared his wings and hissed, but Lindarion didn’t move. His golden eyes tracked the shimmer that coalesced near the broken citadel.

From the mist, shapes emerged, three towering figures, their forms woven of silver and bone, each draped in the tattered vestments of ancient high priests. Their faces were carved masks of stone, emotionless, their eyes burning with faint blue fire.

"The Triarchs," Lindarion murmured.

Nysha looked sharply at him. "You know them?"

"By name only," he said. "They were the first to serve Dythrael before they sealed him. They became his wardens, cursed to remain until his end."

The center figure, taller than the others, his voice smooth but carrying the weight of endless age, spoke. "You bear the mark of the Tree, and the blood of the elder flame. You should not be here, child of two worlds."

Lindarion’s tone stayed calm, respectful. "Neither should the god you keep."

The Triarch’s hollow gaze fixed on him. "You presume much."

"I know enough." Lindarion took one step forward, the earth beneath his boots humming faintly with power. "The seal is weakening. If it breaks on its own, this world will drown in what comes through. I intend to prevent that."

The other two Triarchs stirred, their skeletal hands tightening around the staves they carried. "No mortal can withstand what sleeps below," one hissed.

"I don’t intend to withstand it," Lindarion said quietly. "I intend to end it."

A long silence followed. Even the wind seemed to pause. Then the lead Triarch extended his staff, and three glowing sigils formed in the air before Lindarion, floating like eyes of light.

"If you speak truth," the ancient warden said, "then prove it. Pass through the Gates of Remembrance. Face the echoes of what this world was before the Tree’s mercy. Only then will we allow you to walk deeper."

Ashwing’s tail bristled. "Oh great, another test."

Nysha’s expression was unreadable, but her eyes flicked to Lindarion. "If we go in there, we might not come back out."

"We’ve already stepped too far to turn," Lindarion said.

The gates appeared behind the Triarchs—colossal, carved from crystal that seemed to contain the stars themselves. They pulsed faintly, as if alive.

Lindarion sheathed his blade, his voice steady. "Open them."

The Triarchs moved as one. The gates trembled, then parted with a sound like the slow tearing of the sky. A torrent of mist poured out, thick with memory and sorrow. Within it, faint shapes moved, ghosts of the first war, the echo of divine betrayal, the fall of the elder realms.

As the light flared, Ashwing muttered, "You really don’t know how to pick easy paths, do you?"

Lindarion’s lips curved faintly. "There’s no easy path left."

They stepped through.

The mist closed behind them, swallowing their forms whole.

And in the silence that followed, the Triarchs turned toward the horizon, where, far away, the storm above Lorienya still churned.

"The line continues," one of them whispered.

"Yes," said another. "And the world holds its breath once more."

The moment Lindarion crossed the threshold, the world inverted.

Sound ceased, color vanished, and for a heartbeat there was nothing, no sky, no earth, no self. Only weightless silence, the kind that swallows even the thought of breathing. Then the silence broke like a mirror struck by lightning.

Light flooded his senses.

When the brilliance dimmed, Lindarion found himself standing on the edge of a vast, endless plain. The air shimmered gold and violet, rich with mana so dense it rippled visibly through the atmosphere.

The sky was fractured into multiple layers, each holding suns and moons of their own, rotating in slow, beautiful chaos. The horizon burned with the iridescent glow of living cities, towers grown of crystal, bridges made from threads of song, entire constellations pulsing in time with heartbeats that weren’t their own.

Ashwing landed on his shoulder, eyes wide. "Okay... this is not normal forest stuff."

Nysha turned a slow circle, her crimson cloak drifting in the strange wind. "This... isn’t a memory. It’s alive."

"It’s both," Lindarion said quietly. "The world remembering itself."

The ground beneath them gleamed like molten glass, smooth yet warm, humming faintly with life. Each step left a faint imprint of light that lingered before fading.

Then the sky shifted.

A ripple passed across the horizon, and in an instant the living cities flared brighter, then went dark. The suns flickered, the moons cracked, and the wind carried a low sound like the beginning of a scream.

The world’s pulse faltered.

Lindarion’s system chimed faintly in his mind:

[Memory Reconstruction: Epoch I — The Fall of Divinity.]

[Warning: Temporal echo unstable. Proceed with caution.]

Ashwing glanced up nervously. "Fall of what now?"

"Divinity," Lindarion said. "The end of the age before gods learned death."

Across the plain, shapes began to move—colossal, radiant forms descending from the broken skies. They weren’t like the gods sung about in temples; they were beautiful and terrifying, their forms too vast to comprehend. Wings of starlight, eyes like miniature galaxies, bodies woven from liquid flame and shadow.

One of them fell.

Its scream became a physical force, tearing the ground open into chasms that bled light. From those wounds in the world, beings rose, smaller, darker, half-formed: the Demi-Humans, crawling from the ashes of the divine.

Nysha’s voice was hushed. "We’re watching creation... or its failure."

Lindarion’s eyes narrowed. "The day the gods fell and the Demi-Humans inherited their ruin."

In the sky, the remaining divinities gathered around something, a vast sphere of intertwined roots and light suspended in the firmament. The World Tree, still newborn, its glow pure and unscarred. It trembled as if in pain.

"...They fought for it," Lindarion whispered. "For the seed of continuity."

A figure broke away from the chaos above, a being wrapped in molten armor, eyes like twin suns. His voice carried even across the distance.

"You cannot contain the cycle!"

Another answered, softer, yet sharper than steel.

"Then the cycle will consume you."

The two collided, and the world screamed.

The air turned molten. Waves of light cascaded across the plains, flattening entire mountain ranges like parchment. Lindarion shielded Nysha and Ashwing instinctively, a barrier of gold and shadow forming around them.