"Light doesn't expose—it reveals."
Aarav hadn't realized how cold the chamber was until Meera's hands settled on his shoulders. Warm, steady, insistent. Almost stubborn in how firmly they anchored him to the present.
He blinked hard. Once, twice, again. The world returned in fractured shards, like a mosaic someone had stepped on: the cracked dome overhead, the drifting dust catching faint blue light, Amar's tense silhouette near the entry arch, and Arin's shadow leaning closer than usual, as if trying to read the tremor in Aarav's breath.
His pulse still hadn't settled.
His breathing wasn't steady.
His mind felt like it was trying to climb out of his body, dragging the rest of him with it.
Meera cupped his face, forcing his unfocused gaze to meet hers. "Aarav. Look at me. Stay here."
He tried. Stars, he tried. But the echo of that void-eyed figure clung to him like frost biting down to the bone, refusing to melt even under Meera's warmth.
Amar stepped closer and squeezed Aarav's arm once, a grounding gesture that somehow always worked better than words. "Tell us what happened."
Aarav swallowed. His throat felt scraped raw, as if he'd screamed without realizing it. "He wasn't just a remnant. He wasn't a projection. He… looked at me. Like he knew I was standing there."
Arin's expression tightened. Not dramatically. Not enough that anyone but the three of them would catch it. But Aarav saw the shift. Fear, recognition, exhaustion all tangled behind his eyes like threads pulled too tight.
Arin's voice was quiet but iron-edged. "Tell me exactly. What did he say?"
Aarav forced air into his lungs. His chest ached as it expanded. "He said I carry what he lost. And that it will break me."
Meera's jaw locked. She shook her head with quick, protective heat. "He's wrong."
Amar nodded once, sharp and angry. "He's trying to scare you. That's all these ancient ghosts ever do."
But Aarav shook his head. His voice came out too soft. "No. He wasn't threatening me. It felt more like…" He searched for the word, but everything he reached for crumbled before he could voice it. He settled on, "Regret."
Amar's eyebrows shot up. "Regret? From a monster?"
"He didn't feel monstrous," Aarav whispered. "Just… empty. Like he lost something so important that everything else vanished with it. Like he wasn't looking at me, but at whatever he used to be."
Arin closed his eyes. His shoulders rose in a long, deliberate breath. "The King wasn't born hollow. He became hollow. That's what makes him dangerous."
The title hung in the chamber like a curse. Aarav hated how familiar it felt now.
Meera squeezed his hand. "But that doesn't mean you're destined for the same fate."
Arin didn't respond. And that silence spoke louder than any answer.
"Arin." Amar's tone cut the air like a blade. "Say something."
Arin finally opened his eyes. The resignation in them made the chamber feel even colder.
"What he saw," Arin said quietly, "is what every Anchor fears. The moment resonance becomes stronger than identity. The moment you stop being yourself."
Aarav felt the weight of those words settle in his stomach, heavy and merciless. A pit already forming.
Meera leaned closer until her forehead nearly touched his. "We are not letting that happen."
Arin stepped back, giving Aarav space to breathe. "The temple trial wasn't meant to show you him. Not directly. Remnants don't form that clearly unless something is amplifying them."
Aarav stiffened. "Amplifying?"
"Yes." Arin's eyes drifted toward Aarav's chest, where the faint pulse of the resonance always lived beneath skin and bone. "Something out there connects you to him more deeply than we realized."
Meera frowned. "What could do that?"
Arin didn't look away. "The Anchor bond. It isn't dormant anymore. The fracture, the shard, the remnant… they've all been reacting to the same awakening."
Aarav felt his breath hitch. "So something inside me is connecting to him?"
"Something inside you is visible to him," Arin corrected.
Amar cursed under his breath. "Meaning he can track him."
Arin didn't deny it.
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
Aarav dragged a trembling hand through his hair. "Then what do I do? Block it? Shut it down? Rip it out before it gets worse?"
"You can't shut it down." Arin's tone was soft, but final. "But you can control it."
Aarav clenched his jaw. "How?"
"The same way he once did," Arin said. "By choosing who you are before the resonance chooses for you."
Aarav hated that answer. Because it was true. Because it meant there was no magical fix, no convenient switch. Only choices. And consequences.
Meera helped him sit upright more fully. "Let's start with something simple." Her voice softened. "You're still here. You're still yourself. Nothing has taken you. Not the shard. Not the remnant. Not the temple."
Amar added, "If he wants you to break, then our job is simple. Don't."
That earned the smallest, weakest flicker of a smile from Aarav. "Right. Just… don't break."
"We'll hold you together," Meera said. "That's the point of us."
Aarav let out a shaky breath. "Thank you."
Arin stood. His staff clinked softly against the floor. "Rest for a moment. But not long. The temple never stays calm after a trial."
Aarav frowned. "What do you mean?"
Arin tapped the staff against the stone floor.
The sound echoed.
Too far.
Too deep.
Too loud.
The chamber answered with a shudder.
From the corridor behind them came a low hum, barely audible at first, like the breath of something enormous waking from a long sleep.
Not the resonance inside Aarav.
Not the temple's heartbeat.
Something older.
A ripple of energy ran across the chamber walls, warping the carved sigils until they flickered like candle flames fighting dying air.
Amar's hand flew to his knife. "Arin. That's not normal."
Meera stood immediately, pulling the boy protectively behind her. "What now?"
Arin stared at the corridor, eyes narrowing. "The trial awakened echoes deeper in the temple. Ones that respond to fear. Pain. Memories."
Aarav pushed himself to his feet, unsteady but unwilling to stay vulnerable on the floor. "So… what do we do?"
Arin's voice dropped to a whisper. A rare thing. A dangerous one.
"We run."
The chamber trembled. A groan rumbled through the stone beneath their feet.
Dust rained from the ceiling in soft cascades.
And something stirred in the darkness of the corridor.
A slow, rising presence, thick and deliberate.
Not rushing.
Not lunging.
Just awakening.
It felt wrong in a way the shard never had. Not sharp or violent. Something older. Something patient.
Aarav's chest pulsed hard.
Not warning.
Recognition.
Whatever was coming wasn't a fracture.
Wasn't a remnant.
Wasn't anything that should have been awake.
It was something the temple itself had buried.
Something it had locked away so deep that even echoes weren't supposed to reach it.
Something bound to memory, not matter.
Meera grabbed Aarav's wrist. "Move."
He didn't need convincing.
They sprinted toward the far exit, boots pounding against stone as the hum behind them deepened into a low vibrational roar that made the carvings buckle and distort like stretched skin.
Lights embedded in the walls flickered violently, switching between cold blue and dull red. The shift cast the corridor in irregular pulses of light, as if the temple itself couldn't decide what it wanted them to see.
Arin led the charge, staff raised like a beacon despite the air vibrating so intensely it blurred his silhouette. Amar stayed behind Aarav and Meera, ready to intercept whatever emerged from the darkness.
The hum grew into something closer to a voice. Not speaking. Not calling. But remembering.
A remembering so intense it pressed against Aarav's thoughts, worming into the edges of his mind.
A flood of emotions not his own flashed through him.
Loss.
Desperation.
A hollow ache like a wound that never closed.
He staggered.
Meera yanked him back to balance. "Stay with us. Aarav. Stay."
"I'm trying," he gasped.
The presence behind them shifted.
Stone cracked.
Air fractured.
And a pressure wave slammed through the chamber, strong enough to shove them forward like leaves in a storm.
They stumbled into the next corridor just as the passage behind them collapsed inward, sealing whatever was waking on the other side for a brief, fragile moment.
Arin didn't slow. "That won't hold it. Move."
Aarav forced his legs to keep going, each step scraping adrenaline from bones that already felt too thin.
"What is it?" Amar shouted.
Arin didn't answer at first. He ran until they cleared another archway, another slanted hallway filled with old murals depicting Anchors of centuries past.
Finally he said, breath steady despite their pace, "A memory-beast."
Amar swore. Meera's grip tightened on Aarav's wrist.
Aarav blinked. "What is that?"
"Remnants are fragments of consciousness. Fractures are broken resonance. But memory-beasts… they're built from what the temple refuses to forget."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning," Arin said, "it's not hunting your body. It's hunting your memories."
Aarav's stomach lurched. "Why mine?"
Arin didn't look back. "Because something inside you called to it."
The corridor shook again.
The presence roared.
And the temple answered.
"What the chamber showed him wasn't flaw or failure, but possibility."