The walls pulsed.

The chamber dimmed.

The echo pressed the blade's hilt against Lindarion's chest.

"Take it," it whispered again, "and face the part of yourself you reject."

Lindarion's jaw tightened.

He reached out—

and the moment his fingers brushed the hilt—

the entire chamber ignited.

Light and shadow spiraled upward like twin serpents, coiling around his arm, his core, his mind. The echo dissolved into him, sinking into his marrow like returning blood.

Lindarion gasped.

He staggered.

The blade dissolved into particles of light that threaded into his veins.

The chamber floor cracked beneath him from the force of the resonance.

The voice spoke once more:

"Inheritance synchronizing."

"Identity confirmed."

"You are not the devourer's heir… but the one who will decide the devourer's fate."

Lindarion's vision blurred.

He fell to one knee, gripping his chest as the last echoes of light sank in.

His breathing steadied slowly.

And when he finally lifted his head—

a door in the chamber wall was opening.

Bright, blinding white light poured out.

A silhouette stood there.

Nysha.

Eyes wide.

Sweat on her brow.

Dagger drawn.

"Lindarion—!? Where did you fall? We've been tracking the sigil point for minutes—!"

She saw his expression—saw the change in his aura—and froze.

"…What happened to you?"

Lindarion rose, slowly.

The chamber's hum vibrated at the edge of hearing.

"I passed the second trial," he said simply.

Ashwing flew in behind Nysha, panicked. "Please tell me it didn't try to eat your soul again because I have a limit and we're so close to it—!"

Lindarion shook his head.

His voice was calmer than before.

Deeper somehow.

"It wasn't testing my strength," he said.

Nysha frowned. "Then what?"

Lindarion stepped through the doorway.

Into the final ascent.

The air beyond was colder than any desert wind.

The light dimmed.

And the voice of the trial whispered one last warning:

"Prepare yourself, successor. The third layer is not a test…but a truth."

The doorway sealed shut behind them with a sound like stone grinding against bone.

Nysha flinched. Ashwing swore under his breath.

Lindarion didn't even look back.

The corridor ahead of them was narrow, hewn from rough stone, nothing like the polished ritual chambers above. Runes were absent. Crystals were absent. The air tasted raw, old, untouched by shape or intention.

As if this part of the ruins had never been meant for visitors.

Nysha walked beside him, blade out, watching his face as though she expected it to crack open and reveal something else wearing his skin.

"You're… different," she said quietly.

Lindarion didn't stop walking. "Am I?"

"Don't pretend," she snapped, voice soft but sharp. "Your aura shifted. Your presence shifted. Even your breathing rhythm changed."

Ashwing hovered over Lindarion's shoulder, tail puffed out like a terrified cat. "Yeah—yeah—he's right. You're like… calmer? But also scarier? Like if serenity learned how to stab people."

Lindarion exhaled once. "It was a trial meant to reveal the self. Nothing more."

"Liar," Nysha said immediately.

Lindarion paused.

Not out of offense, but because she said it with such casual, blunt certainty that it cut deeper than accusation.

Nysha stepped in front of him, forcing him to stop.

"When you came out of that chamber, you weren't hiding pain. You were hiding… decision."

Her silver eyes narrowed.

"What did you see?"

Lindarion looked at her for a long moment.

A beat.

Two.

Three.

Then—

"Not now."

Nysha stared, but she didn't argue.

Because something else was happening.

The tunnel was widening.

Stone walls split apart like petals opening on a dead flower, revealing a cavern so vast it might have once been the heart of a titan. A sphere of darkness floated above the center of the room—dense, pitch-black, swallowing light.

Not shadows.

Absence.

Even the air around it seemed to distort, bending and warping.

Ashwing recoiled so fast he nearly hit the wall.

"That—THAT—NOPE! No no no—"

Nysha's breath hitched. "That's pure void-element mana. Concentrated. I've only seen notes about this in ancient texts—"

"No," Lindarion said softly, stepping forward.

Nysha grabbed his wrist. "Lindarion, don't—!"

"It's not void."

He walked to the edge of the platform.

The sphere pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

Responding to him.

"Then what is it?" Nysha asked, tension mounting.

Lindarion stared into the abyssal sphere.

"…Dythrael's heart."

Nysha froze.

Ashwing stopped breathing.

The sphere pulsed again, as if recognizing its name.

"Impossible," Nysha whispered. "The Devourer's core—the sealed fragment of its will—it was supposed to be lost, destroyed in the Third Era—"

"It wasn't destroyed," Lindarion said.

"Just buried."

"And this?" Ashwing squeaked. "This is a good thing? A bad thing? I'm voting BAD THING—"

Before Lindarion could answer—

The sphere cracked.

A thin line of white light split down its center.

Nysha stumbled back. "No—no, it shouldn't be able to activate—there's no catalyst, no bloodline trigger—"

Lindarion didn't move.

He simply stood there, watching as the world broke open.

Because the one thing the novel never explained was what the Devourer's heart actually contained.

He knew fragments. Theories. Narratives from the hero's perspective.

But this—

This was new.

The crack widened.

The chamber shook.

And then—

A figure stepped out of the heart.

A silhouette of pure shadow and light interwoven, shifting between shapes too quickly to name. Not human. Not beast. Not titan.

Something older.

Something ancestral.

It regarded Lindarion with no eyes.

And then—

It spoke with his voice.

Or rather…

the voice he would one day have.

"Child of the shifting fates," the echo-being whispered.

"You have touched the inheritance. But you have not yet chosen the path."

Nysha grabbed Lindarion's shoulder hard.

"Do not answer it. Do not acknowledge it. That thing carries fragments of the Devourer's mind—!"

But Lindarion stepped forward anyway.

He had no choice.

This was why the desert called him.

Why the titan kneeled.

Why the monolith awakened.

"Tell me," Lindarion said quietly, "what is this place really? What is the inheritance you speak of?"

The being tilted its shifting head looking directly at Lindarion now.