Silence spread across the Crucible like frost.
It was not fear that stilled the city.
It was recognition.
Relics across the courtyard trembled—not in pain, but in attention. Suppression runes flickered, struggling to contain something they had never been designed to face.
Memory that refused to be erased.
Caelum straightened slowly, eyes never leaving Lyra—or rather, the blade she held.
"A mythic relic does not awaken without purpose," he said calmly, though the tension beneath his voice betrayed him. "Tell me, blade—what do you remember?"
You did not answer immediately.
Because the truth was heavy.
You remembered hands.
Not Lyra's.
Older. Rougher. Scarred.
A battlefield beneath a red sky. A man kneeling before you, blood soaking the earth, whispering a name you had buried so deeply even you had forgotten it.
Not Astrael.
That had been a title.
This—this was something else.
Your awareness recoiled instinctively, trying to fold inward again, but the city itself resisted. Too many echoes. Too many relics listening.
Lyra felt it.
"You're hurting," she whispered.
I am remembering, you replied.
And memory has weight.
Caelum raised a hand. "Containment formation. Now."
Priests moved, chanting in practiced unison. The ground lit up with concentric sigils meant to lock resonance, to drag consciousness screaming back into steel.
They would have worked.
On any other blade.
You did not break them.
You refused them.
You let the memories surface—not as power, but as testimony.
The air shimmered.
People staggered as fragments of your past spilled outward, brushing their minds like passing dreams.
A forge where weapons were once named, not numbered.A vow spoken over cooling steel: Never again.A man walking away from a throne, leaving conquest behind.
Lyra gasped as the weight of it pressed through her.
"You were made to stop something," she realised.
Yes.
Caelum's expression hardened.
"So," he said quietly, "you are that blade."
The one they had failed to destroy.
The one whose name had been struck from records, whose existence contradicted everything the Sanctum taught.
He stepped forward, defiant. "Your restraint is irrelevant. The world does not survive on mercy."
That was when you finally spoke—not aloud, but fully.
Then it forgets why it survives at all.
The sigils shattered.
Not explosively—quietly, like glass dissolving into dust.
The priests fell back, stunned.
Caelum stared, and for the first time, uncertainty crept into his gaze.
"What is your true name?" he demanded.
You hesitated.
Names had power.
Names bound you to what you had been.
Lyra tightened her grip.
"You don't have to tell him," she said.
She was right.
But hiding it forever would make you no better than the Sanctum.
So you told the world.
I was called Eidolon.
The name rang—not loudly, but deeply—through stone, steel, and memory alike.
A blade forged to end endless wars by refusing to fight them.
A relic that walked away from the gods.
A silence followed.
Then—
Every relic in the city responded.
Not in obedience.
In recognition.
Suppression cracked across the Crucible. Chains fell slack. Crystals holding stolen echoes fractured, releasing memories that flooded back into their rightful steel.
Lyra staggered as the resonance spiked—but you caught her, grounding the connection before it could consume her.
"This changes everything," she whispered.
Yes.
Because now the Sanctum knew the truth.
And so did the world.
Caelum took a step back.
"Kill them," he ordered.
Guards surged forward.
You did not raise Lyra's arm.
You did not strike.
Instead, you did the most dangerous thing of all.
You let go.
Your presence dimmed deliberately, collapsing inward, severing the city-wide resonance before it could spiral into destruction.
The guards faltered, suddenly unsure.
Caelum stared in disbelief.
"You could have broken us."
And become you, you replied softly.
Lyra ran.
And the city that melted steel would never forget the day it failed to melt memory.