The scream of the rift wasn't sound—it was soul. A tearing of what should have been impossible. Maelis stumbled back, clutching her chest as her heartbeat stuttered under the weight of it.
Silver light bled from the edges of the rift like ink in water. Inside, glimpses of a world she didn't recognize flashed—ashen skies, a throne made of shattered bone, a battlefield littered with bodies glowing faintly blue.
The other Maelis stepped forward.
"You should have stayed asleep," she said coldly. "You weren't supposed to wake until the Reckoning."
Maelis drew her blade, hands trembling. "What are you?"
"I'm the you that didn't fail."
Before she could react, the reflection vanished—no movement, no blur. Just gone—and then—
Behind her.
Maelis twisted, parrying just in time as a wave of soulflame crashed into her, white-hot and burning cold. Her body screamed in pain as her sigil flared again—searing across her collarbone, lighting up the glyph like molten gold.
She was hurled into the cliffside.
Riven lunged between them, blades drawn, his eyes burning violet. "Fall back, now!"
"I can fight her—!" Maelis shouted.
"No," Riven snapped. "You're not fighting her. You're fighting what you could become."
Another blast of soulflame erupted, carving the ground open in a jagged scar. Riven deflected it with a twisting arc of his blade, pulling Maelis behind a fallen slab of stone.
"She's testing you," he said. "Trying to see how much you've awakened. She's not here to kill you yet."
"Yet?" Maelis breathed, fury rising. "Why wait?"
"Because if she kills you before your soul fully reconnects—she risks killing herself."
Maelis's eyes widened. The truth clicked into place like a blade finding its sheath.
This wasn't just some corrupted version of her. It was her own soul, fragmented and set on a different path. One that had been locked away for a reason.
She looked back at the rift. It was starting to collapse.
The other Maelis stood at its edge, expression unreadable.
"You think you're the real one," she said. "But you're just the echo. A mistake that was supposed to fade."
And then she stepped backward into the rift—and vanished.
The tear sealed with a low hum, leaving only silence behind.
Maelis stood trembling. Not from fear—but from something deeper.
A soul ache.
Riven placed a hand on her shoulder. "We need to move. The Gatewardens will come soon. And they won't care which version of you survives."
Maelis didn't move.
"I saw something… through the rift. A throne made of bone. A battlefield."
"That wasn't a vision," Riven said. "That was a memory."
Maelis turned to him, voice low.
"Then I need to find the rest of it."
And this time, she didn't wait for his lead.
She walked into the Hollow Reaches with fire at her back—and a war echoing inside her chest.
The Hollow Reaches were aptly named.
A graveyard of a world—ridges like skeletal fingers, valleys echoing with silence too deep to be natural. Maelis descended with Riven at her side, her boots crunching over ancient bones etched with soul-scorch.
She should have been afraid.
Instead, she felt… drawn.
The heat of her sigil pulsed with each step, like it was tugging her toward something hidden beneath the earth. Not just a memory.
A shard.
"Your soul's trying to guide you," Riven muttered, scanning the crevices. "But be careful. The deeper you go, the louder the dead become."
Maelis stopped at the edge of a broken altar half-buried in stone. Symbols older than the Order itself spiraled across its surface—glyphs she didn't recognize with her mind, but her soul did.
She reached out.
Her fingers brushed cold stone.
And the world shattered around her.
Vision.
Wind howled through a burning temple. A younger version of herself knelt before a black throne, surrounded by hooded figures—each bearing a burning sigil in their chest.
"I accept the severance," her younger voice declared.
The figures chanted.
"Then from flame, you are unmade. From ash, you shall rise again."
The sigil on her chest cracked. Split in two. One half stayed—glowing gold.
The other turned black—and was ripped from her body.
She screamed.
And the scene dissolved in fire.
Maelis fell back from the altar, gasping.
Riven caught her. "What did you see?"
"My soul," she whispered. "They… they ripped it in half. They sealed it. That other version of me…"
"She's the other half," Riven finished grimly.
The realization hit hard. This wasn't just about forgotten memories.
It was about a broken self.
A split soul.
And someone in the Order had done it on purpose.
Riven looked up sharply. "We're not alone."
Maelis felt it too—the shift in the air, the vibration underfoot. Something ancient. Something waking.
From a deep fissure ahead, light began to spill upward—green, sickly, flickering like a soul trying to cling to its vessel.
And then she heard it.
A voice from the darkness.
Low. Whispering. Familiar.
"Welcome back, Soulbearer."
A figure emerged, draped in ceremonial robes of the old Harvester sect. His face was covered by a mask carved from obsidian, mouth stitched shut with threads of soulwire.
In his hand, he held a staff tipped with a soul crystal the size of a heart.
"You carry the Severed Flame," the masked figure rasped, his voice echoing without moving his lips. "You were not meant to return."
Maelis stepped forward, fire blooming in her eyes.
"Then I guess fate's about to change."
The masked Harvester tilted his head.
"The Severed Flame burns again," he said, each word laced with power that pressed against Maelis's chest. "But flame without purpose only devours."
Maelis stood firm, soulfire curling at her fingertips. "You speak in riddles. Why did the Order split me? What did they fear?"
He did not answer. Instead, he raised the soul-crystal staff and struck the ground.
The fissure roared open.
From its depths rose forms—twisted shades of long-dead Harvesters, their souls bound in half-decayed husks. Their eyes glowed green, hollow with torment, as if caught between death and duty.
"Test her," the masked Harvester commanded.
The wraiths lunged.
Maelis moved on instinct, her blade igniting with golden fire as she met them head-on. One slash. Two. Flames danced across the shades—but they didn't fall.
They absorbed the strikes, feeding on her flame.
"They're soulbound," Riven shouted, slicing through a wraith that only reformed seconds later. "You can't kill what's already sacrificed itself!"
Then Maelis remembered the altar.
The spiral symbols. The severance.
It wasn't about killing.
It was about reclaiming.
Closing her eyes, she reached inward—not for her blade, but for the part of her soul that still echoed from the vision. The half that had been torn away.
She summoned the sigil.
Golden light burst from her chest, tracing across the air in ancient patterns. The symbols burned into the earth around her, and the shades halted mid-lunge.
For a breath, everything was still.
The wraiths turned slowly to face her, no longer attacking—kneeling instead.
The masked Harvester stepped back. "You've remembered enough to command them. Too soon."
Riven raised a blade to the Harvester's throat. "Speak. Now."
But the figure merely smiled beneath his obsidian mask.
"You are the unwritten truth," he told Maelis. "But beware. To reclaim what was taken… you must confront why you chose to lose it."
And with that, he shattered his own soul crystal.
A pulse of force knocked them both off their feet—and when they looked again, the fissure was collapsing, swallowing the altar and the dead along with it.
Maelis stood slowly, her heart pounding, her sigil still faintly glowing.
She was whole… but only just.
Riven looked at her with something between awe and fear.
"You commanded soulbound revenants. That's not Initiate magic. That's Harbinger power."
Maelis didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the dying light of the collapsed altar.
"I was split to forget something," she said quietly. "Now I remember just enough to know how dangerous I really was."
She turned to him.
"We find the next memory. We find out what I did."
And far off, deeper in the Hollow Reaches, a low, echoing voice whispered:
"One memory reclaimed. Six remain."