The Sunken Archive smelled of damp parchment and the sharp, metallic tang of forgotten things.

  Aeris dragged Sorin through the arched entrance, her grip tight enough to bruise. He stumbled after her, still pale from the sewer horrors, his golden scars flickering like dying candlelight. "Archivist," he wheezed, "I appreciate the enthusiasm, but my arm isn’t a door handle—"

  "Quiet." Aeris didn’t loosen her hold. The Archive’s entrance yawned before them, a throat of carved stone and stained glass, half-submerged in the brackish waters of Lumin Hollow’s flooded undercity. The air hummed with the low, discordant chime of glass orbs shifting on their shelves—each one a memory, a history, a voice sealed away before it could fade entirely.

  Kael lingered at the threshold, Lyria perched on his shoulders. "So, just to clarify," he said, eyeing the murky water lapping at the steps, "we’re willingly walking into a place called the Sunken Archive?"

  Aeris shot him a glare. "You’re welcome to wait outside with the Sanctum Knights."

  Lyria giggled. Kael sighed.

  Sorin, ever the poet, muttered, "I’d take sewer rats over holy executioners any day."

  Aeris ignored them all and stepped inside.

  The Archive’s main chamber was a cathedral of lost time. Glass orbs lined the walls, suspended in networks of tarnished silver wire, each one glowing faintly with captured light. Some pulsed like heartbeats; others were dark, their contents forgotten. The floor was a mosaic of shattered glass—memories that hadn’t been strong enough to last.

  Aeris’s boots crunched over the fragments. "Memory is fragile," she said, more to herself than the others. "Even the loudest voices fade."

  Sorin picked up a shard, turning it in his fingers. "Cheery thought."

  A shadow moved in the corner of the chamber.

  Virellia stepped into the light, her fire-dancer’s silks rippling like liquid flame. "Sister," she said, voice dripping with false sweetness. "You brought strays."

  Aeris’s dagger was in her hand before she could think. "You."

  The air between them crackled.

  Virellia’s smile was all teeth. "Still holding grudges, I see." She flicked her wrist, and a tiny flame danced over her fingertips—a child’s trick, one they’d practiced together as girls. Aeris’s chest ached.

  Lyria gasped. "Fire lady!"

  Kael, ever the diplomat, coughed. "So, uh. Family reunion?"

  Sorin, for once, was silent. His scars pulsed in time with the orbs’ glow.

  Virellia’s gaze locked onto him. "I dreamed of you," she said, blunt as a knife. "Your face was in the murals. The old ones, deep in the Sanctum."

  Aeris stiffened. "What murals?"

  Virellia’s flame guttered out. "The ones they tried to burn."

  A voice echoed from the shadows: "Because some echoes refuse to fade."

  Master Tellen, the Archive’s blind keeper, emerged from the shelves, his hands trailing over the orbs as if reading their histories through touch. His milky eyes gleamed in the dim light. "Aeris," he said, "you were warned not to return."

  Aeris swallowed. "I need answers."

  Tellen sighed. "Answers are brittle things." He turned his face toward Sorin. "And you, boy—do you even know the question?"

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  Sorin’s fingers twitched toward his scars. "I’m starting to think I don’t."

  The deeper they ventured into the Archive, the heavier the air became—thick with the scent of old ink and the ozone-tang of unstable magic. The glass orbs whispered as they passed, their surfaces rippling with half-seen images.

  Lyria darted ahead, her small fingers brushing against the walls where faded murals clung to the stone. "Look!" she called, pressing her palm against a cracked depiction of a crowned figure—the Hollow King, his features eroded by time. His outstretched hand gripped that of a child, their face deliberately scraped away.

  Kael peered at it. "Well, that’s not unsettling at all."

  Sorin didn’t laugh. His breath came too fast, his scars burning brighter.

  Aeris stepped closer, her archivist’s instincts warring with dread. "This shouldn’t exist. The Sanctum purged all depictions of the Hollow King after the fall."

  Virellia’s voice was quiet. "Not all." She traced the edge of the mural, where the paint blistered as if scorched. "Some things refuse to burn."

  Master Tellen’s staff tapped against the stone. "And some things," he said, "are better left buried."

  Aeris rounded on Virellia. "You knew. You’ve always known."

  Virellia didn’t flinch. "I dreamed it. That’s not the same."

  "Don’t play word games with me." Aeris’s dagger was still in her hand, though she didn’t remember unsheathing it. "You vanished for years, and now you’re here, spitting riddles like—"

  "Like you’re the only one who gets to care about the truth?" Virellia’s laugh was sharp. "You hoard knowledge like a dragon hoards gold, Aeris, but you never stop to ask why it was hidden."

  Lyria, oblivious to the tension, tugged at Kael’s sleeve. "Why’s the kid in the mural all scratched out?"

  Kael’s usual grin was absent. "Probably because someone didn’t want them remembered."

  Sorin made a noise like a wounded animal.

  Master Tellen led them to the heart of the Archive, where a single orb pulsed with a sickly, uneven light. Unlike the others, its glass was webbed with cracks, as though the memory inside fought to escape.

  "This," Tellen said, "is the last witness of the Hollow King’s reign."

  Aeris reached for it—then hesitated. "If we open it—"

  "It shatters. Yes." Tellen’s blind eyes seemed to pierce her. "Some memories are too heavy to hold."

  Sorin stepped forward. "Do it."

  The orb broke like a dying star.

  Light exploded outward, painting the chamber in fragments of the past:

  —A throne room, its pillars cracked like bone.

  —The Hollow King, his crown slipping from his brow as he staggered.

  —A figure in a white mask (the Exiled One?) reaching for him.

  —A child’s scream (Kael’s? Lyria’s? Someone else?).

  And then, clearest of all, the Hollow King’s voice—Sorin’s voice—raw with grief:

  "You were never supposed to wake up."

  The vision snapped like a thread.

  Silence.

  Then—

  Sorin collapsed.

  Sorin came back to himself in pieces.

  First, the cold press of stone against his cheek. Then the muffled voices—Aeris’s sharp interrogation, Virellia’s hissed replies, Kael’s uncharacteristic silence. His skull throbbed as if split open, his scars searing white-hot.

  He remembered falling.

  Not the way he did in dreams—this was sharper, realer. The weight of a crown. The sting of betrayal. The child’s hand in his, slipping away—

  "You were never supposed to wake up."

  His own voice. His own words.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He flinched.

  "Easy," Kael murmured, helping him sit up. His usual smirk was gone, replaced by something unreadable. "You, uh. You know you just screamed in a dead king’s voice, right?"

  Sorin’s laugh came out broken. "I’m aware."

  Across the chamber, Aeris and Virellia stood locked in a silent battle of wills. Aeris’s dagger was still drawn, her knuckles bone-white around the hilt. "You knew," she repeated, voice low and venomous. "All these years, you knew the Hollow King wasn’t just some tyrant from a history book—"

  "I knew nothing," Virellia snapped. "I had dreams. Visions. The same way Lyria does." Her gaze flicked to the girl, who was now crouched beside the shattered orb, poking at the glass shards with morbid fascination. "The Sanctum calls it heresy. The Canticle calls it the Sight. But it’s just... echoes." She exhaled. "Echoes of him."

  Her eyes locked onto Sorin.

  The weight of it crushed him.

  The blind archivist knelt beside the broken orb, his fingers tracing the remnants. "This memory was fragile," he said. "Too much has already been forgotten."

  Aeris stiffened. "What was the Hollow King? A ruler? A monster? A—"

  "A man," Tellen interrupted. "A man who made a choice, and paid for it." He tilted his head toward Sorin. "And now the debt comes due."

  Kael cleared his throat. "That’s... ominous. Can we get a translation?"

  Tellen stood. "The crown isn’t lost. It’s waiting."

  Lyria’s head snapped up. "That’s what I said," she muttered, but no one heard.

  Aeris’s grip on her dagger tightened. "For what?"

  Tellen’s milky eyes seemed to stare straight through Sorin.

  "For the king to remember."

  Sorin staggered to his feet, drawn to a half-shattered mirror propped against the far wall. His reflection wavered in the cracked glass—golden scars, hollow eyes, the ghost of a crown hovering at his brow.

  Behind him, the mural of the Hollow King seemed to watch.

  You were never supposed to wake up.

  The words coiled in his chest, a truth too terrible to speak.

  Kael appeared at his shoulder, uncharacteristically solemn. "So," he said quietly, "what now?"

  Sorin exhaled. "Now," he lied, "we find the Wandering Saint."

  But his reflection mouthed something else:

  Now you remember.