They fell.
Not through space, not through time, but through the boundaries of reality itself. The world unraveled like a ribbon, spinning and twisting around Raine and Sylara as they passed through the spire's unseen threshold. For a moment, Raine felt as though he were suspended in a sea of stars, each one a memory of a world that had already ended.
Then they landed.
Not with a crash, but a breath. The air was still. The light was wrong.
They stood in a mirror of the Hollowdeep—but one made of inversion. The sky above was an abyss of pure white, glowing yet blind. Trees grew downward from floating cliffs, dripping black sap that steamed upon the ground. The spire they had entered now loomed above them, though it looked... unfinished, as if it were being built from the top down.
Sylara drew her sword. "This place is cursed."
Raine nodded. "This is the Deep. Or at least, a vestibule of it."
They moved forward cautiously. The land pulsed beneath their feet like the surface of a slumbering beast. There was no sun, no wind, only the ever-present hum of something ancient stirring below the surface.
Raine could feel the Flame within him reacting—surging and shrinking in rhythm with something unseen.
They crossed a bridge of bone and crystal, leading to what resembled a throne room carved from obsidian and echo. At its center stood a figure.
It was neither man nor woman, neither light nor shadow. Cloaked in fragments of reality itself, it turned slowly to face them, its eyes twin spirals of stars.
"You are early," the being said. Its voice echoed through both air and thought.
Raine stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"I am the Curator. Guardian of the Final Archive."
Sylara narrowed her eyes. "Archive?"
"Everything that ever was, that could have been, and that still might be," the Curator said. "Preserved. Watched. Pruned."
Raine felt a strange pressure behind his eyes, as if memories were trying to break through.
"You were Flame," the Curator said, turning its gaze on him. "But now you are more. A bearer of truth. A mistake that cannot be unmade."
Raine gritted his teeth. "Why was I brought here?"
"Because the Deep remembers," the Curator said. "And it has judged your kind unworthy."
Sylara stepped between them. "He's not alone."
The Curator tilted its head. "No. He never was. But that does not absolve the choice."
With a wave of its hand, the chamber dissolved.
They stood in a field of dying stars. Then a battlefield of the future. Then an empty cradle.
Visions washed over them—of worlds consumed by imbalance, of civilizations torn apart by unchecked magic, of gods weeping as their creations fell.
"This is what comes," the Curator whispered. "Not because of you. But because of what you are. Flame births fire. Fire consumes."
Raine clenched his fists. The visions tore at him, but he held fast.
"Then we learn to shape it," he said. "We don't run. We don't burn blindly. We build. We heal."
The Curator paused.
"An answer not given in ten thousand echoes," it said at last. "Perhaps... perhaps this time is different."
The visions faded.
The Curator extended its hand. "Then come. The Deep has chosen its mouth. Speak to it. Prove your truth."
Raine stepped forward. Sylara grasped his arm.
"Whatever happens," she said, "you are not alone."
He nodded.
And together, they walked into the Deep.