CHAPTER 510: EVERYTHING

Nysha blinked. "You’re saying the echo was guarding it?"

"No." Lindarion’s voice grew colder. "It was testing if I was compatible."

Ashwing’s small forehead wrinkled. "Compatible with what?"

Lindarion didn’t answer.

Because he didn’t know the full answer yet.

Only that the crystal pulsing in his grip—

it felt like the missing half of something buried deep within his own core.

And it frightened him more than the echo ever had.

They reached the top of the stairway just as the desert wind swept in, a hot, dry gust carrying sand and fading sunlight. The fissure that had cracked open above now revealed the sky, painted in late-afternoon orange.

They stepped out.

And froze.

Because the graveyard was gone.

Where titanic constructs once sprawled in shattered ruins, now the dunes were smooth—untouched—like the desert had erased the battlefield entirely.

Nysha scanned the horizon. "The landscape shifted. Completely. As if the ruins never existed."

Ashwing’s wings drooped. "Okay but, hear me out—maybe we died and this is the afterlife?"

"No," Lindarion said quietly.

"We’re in the same place."

He turned his head toward the Heart, now glowing more softly.

The world responded to it—subtle changes in mana currents, faint tremors underfoot.

"The desert rearranged itself after we completed the trial."

"That’s..." Nysha hesitated. "That’s impossible."

"It’s a living tomb," Lindarion murmured.

"And we’re standing on its surface."

The wind shifted again.

This time colder.

Carrying something else.

Footsteps.

Not heavy like titans.

Not soft like drifting sand.

Human.

Nysha instantly drew her dagger. "Someone’s approaching."

Ashwing ducked behind Lindarion’s neck. "Please be friendly. PLEASE be friendly. Please—if it’s another mind-eating illusion I swear I’m moving to a different timeline—"

A figure appeared on the far dune, silhouette sharp against the dying sun.

A cloak billowed.

Boots sank into the sand.

And a mask gleamed—a smooth featureless obsidian faceplate etched with a symbol Lindarion recognized immediately.

A descending crescent.

A broken fang.

The mark of a human cult forgotten by most of the modern world.

The Devouring Choir.

Nysha tensed. "How did they find us?"

"They were already here," Lindarion said.

The masked figure raised both hands, unarmed—yet unmistakably threatening.

His voice carried across the dunes.

"Bearer of the Heart," he called,

"you stand where no mortal should tread."

Lindarion stepped forward.

"So do you."

Sand shifted behind the figure.

More masks appeared.

Five.

Ten.

Fourteen.

Ashwing squeaked, "We’re going to die. We’re going to die in a sandpit because someone couldn’t resist touching the glowing artifact—"

Nysha flicked her dagger. "Focus."

The lead cultist tilted his head.

"Come with us peacefully, successor," he said.

"The Choir does not wish to spill your blood."

Ashwing whispered, "Oh. So they’ll kill us painfully instead. Great."

The cultist continued:

"It is the Devourer’s will that the Heart returns to its rightful place."

Lindarion’s grip tightened on the crystal.

"Then you’ll have to take it from me."

The figure laughed softly.

"No, successor."

He lifted one hand—

and the sand beneath Lindarion erupted.

A sigil.

Circular.

Ancient.

Burning with violet fire.

Nysha lunged backward.

Ashwing screamed.

And Lindarion—

fell straight through.

Down into the second layer of the tomb.

Where the real trial awaited.

The world snapped sideways.

Lindarion plummeted through violet fire, past shifting symbols and echoes of voices he couldn’t decipher. The sigil swallowed him whole, twisting the air, bending gravity, until—

He slammed onto stone.

Hard.

He rolled, caught himself, and slid to a stop on one knee, breath sharp and ragged. The chamber he landed in was nothing like the vast cavern above. This place was...

Silent.

Still.

Cold.

A circular room of dark aetherstone, walls carved with spiraling runes that pulsed faintly like veins carrying moonlight. The ceiling was too high to see. The floor—perfectly smooth—reflected his silhouette back at him like a pool of polished obsidian.

But he wasn’t alone.

The runes lit up.

One by one.

As though greeting him.

"Successor... descent confirmed."

The voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere.

Lindarion rose slowly.

"Where is this?" he asked.

"Layer Two," the voice replied.

"The Chamber of Echoed Selves."

Lindarion’s brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"

"Inheritance is not strength alone. Nor lineage.

It is identity."

The floor brightened—

and a shape stepped out of Lindarion’s reflection.

Human-shaped.

His height.

His build.

A dark silhouette of pure shadow and flickering gold, as though someone sculpted his spirit from starlight and dusk.

Ashwing would have screamed.

Nysha would have drawn steel.

But neither were here.

It was just Lindarion.

And the echo.

His echo.

The shadow-being tilted its head.

Its voice—when it came—was deep, distorted, yet undeniably his.

"You seek the truth of your blood, Lindarion Everhart...

but you don’t even know what you are."

Lindarion narrowed his gaze.

"I know enough."

"Do you?" the echo said softly.

"You wield the light... yet you fear it.

You command the dusk... yet you deny it.

You chase legacy... yet you ignore destiny."

It stepped closer.

And for the first time, Lindarion felt something like discomfort coil beneath his ribs.

Not fear.

Not pain.

Recognition.

The echo was not a monster.

Not an illusion.

Not an enemy.

It was a mirror made sentient.

A reflection of everything he had avoided confronting.

Lindarion readied his stance. "If this is another fight—"

"It is not a fight," the echo cut in.

Then it raised its hand.

A blade formed—shimmering gold on one side, devouring black on the other.

Balanced.

Contradictory.

Whole.

Lindarion’s breath caught.

That wasn’t his weapon.

That was—

Aetherglass steel.

A weapon of demi-human kings.

"Take it," the echo said.

Lindarion didn’t move.

The echo tilted its head.

"Or do you fear what it means?"

Lindarion clenched his teeth. "I fear nothing."

"That is a lie you’ve told yourself since the day you arrived in this world."

The blade lowered slightly.

"You fear losing yourself.

You fear becoming them.

You fear that the blood of the devourer god runs too deep."

Lindarion froze.

Everything inside him went still.

"...How do you know about that?" he whispered.

The echo stepped closer.

"I am everything you bury. Every question you refuse to ask. Every truth you refuse to name."