The silence after the crossing was worse than any roar.
Elara stood on the other side of the veil, the primary gate now a shimmering doorway behind her, and felt the world shift in ways that had no name. The air tasted like metal and memory. The ground beneath her boots was neither stone nor soil—it pulsed faintly, like the skin of something alive. Colors moved in slow rivers across the sky, and the light hurt her eyes in a way that felt personal, as if it knew her and judged her.
Thorne stepped through next. His hand found hers immediately, fingers interlocking like they had been doing it for lifetimes. He said nothing at first—just squeezed once, hard, as if to confirm she was real.
Mira came after, staff tapping the strange ground. Then Kael, his wings folded tight against the unnatural pull of this place. Nyx followed, smoke curling from her nostrils like she was tasting the air. The rest of the party crossed in quick succession, each face pale, each breath shallow.
No one spoke for a long moment.
The beings waited ahead—tall, luminous forms that shifted between shapes: sometimes draconic, sometimes human, sometimes something older than both. They did not move closer. They did not need to. Their presence filled the space like gravity.
One drifted forward, extending what might have been a hand. Concepts poured into Elara's mind, gentle but overwhelming.
You are the first in millennia to cross willingly.
Elara swallowed. "We came to understand."
Understanding comes with a cost.
The being gestured, and the landscape around them changed.
They stood on a vast plain now—endless, horizonless. In the distance, a radiant orb floated, the source itself. Dark veins threaded through it like cracks in glass, pulsing slowly.
"This is the wound", the being said. It began long before your world. Before dragons. Before the first note or beat. When some sought to own the source instead of share it.
Visions followed—ancient beings, neither human nor dragon, attempting to harness the orb. Catastrophe. Worlds are splitting. Magic twisting into poison. The First Purge—not the one Elara knew, but something older, deeper. Seals placed. Gates locked. The source wounded, bleeding slowly across all realities.
Your suppression was only one echo. The wound festers. The veil thins because the source calls for healing.
Elara's throat tightened. "How?"
Gather the First Accord fragments. Pieces scattered when the betrayal happened. Only when reunited can the source be restored.
The being showed her glimpses: seven fragments, each hidden in different realms connected by the veil. One in a frozen city beneath ice. One in a desert of living sand. One in a forest where time moved backward. Each guarded by trials, protected by ancient keepers.
You must retrieve them. You and your allies. The balance you forged in your world is the key.
Thorne stepped forward, voice rough. "And if we refuse?"
The being's form flickered. The wound will consume all. Veils fall. Worlds bleed into one.
Chaos. End.
No threat. Just a fact.
Elara looked at her party—faces pale, eyes wide. Mira gripped her staff harder. Kael's wings trembled. Nyx's smoke curled tighter.
"We accept," Elara said. "Tell us where to start."
The being pointed toward a distant shimmer—a new gate opening in the plain.
The first fragment lies beyond that gate. In a realm of endless winter. The trial there is memory. Face what you buried.
The gate widened slowly.
Elara turned to Thorne. "We do this together."
He nodded, hand still in hers. "Always."
They stepped through.
The cold hit like a blade.
They emerged in a frozen city—towers of ice rising into a sky that never saw sun. Snow fell endlessly, silent. No wind. No sound except their breathing.
The city was beautiful and terrible—palaces carved from ice, streets lined with frozen statues of people and dragons locked in mid-motion. Time had stopped here long ago.
Mira whispered, "This is the Realm of Memory. Everything here is what was buried—by individuals, by worlds."
A figure appeared ahead—tall, made of ice and shadow. It had no face, only a mirror surface.
"Welcome", it said, voice echoing inside their skulls. To retrieve the fragment, you must face what you hide from yourselves.
The mirror rippled.
Elara saw herself first—younger, tone-deaf, standing in the palace hall while courtiers laughed. The memory played: mockery, isolation, and the weight of being "broken."
Then Thorne: a boy watching his family burned in a border skirmish, helpless.
Mira: her clan destroyed in the purge, her screaming as flames took them.
Kael: his first flight, wings clipped by hunters.
Nyx: centuries of hiding in shadows, fearing the light.
The mirror spoke. You must accept these memories. Not erase them. Not bury them. Accept them as part of who you are.
One by one, they stepped forward.
Elara first. She looked at her younger self. "I was never broken," she said aloud. "I was waiting."
The mirror cracked slightly.
Thorne next. "I couldn't save them. But I can save others."
The crack widened.
Mira. "I survived. And I will teach what was lost."
Kael. "I fly free now."
Nyx. "I am shadow and light."
The mirror shattered.
The fragment appeared—a small glowing crystal pulsing with pure source energy.
They took it.
The gate reopened.
They stepped back through, the warm fragment in Elara's hand.
But the being waited, form dimmer now.
One retrieved. Six remain.
But time is shorter than you think.
A distant sound echoed—chains rattling, dissonance rising.
Someone else had found another gate.
And they were coming through.