The night was unnaturally quiet as Aion returned to the crater.
The two fragments—his and Seln's—pulled toward each other with an invisible gravity. The Null shimmered around him, alert, tense, as if aware that what he was about to open was never meant to be unsealed.
Kael stood nearby, hand on the hilt of his short blade. "We seriously doing this? Because opening ancient, sealed vaults always goes great."
Aion didn't reply.
He stepped to the obsidian casing where Vaelith slept in his chained stasis. He raised the two halves.
They clicked together.
The sound was soft—gentle, even—but the world recoiled.
The black glass cracked.
The ground beneath the tomb split into precise seams, forming a downward spiral of steps, descending into a pit where light had never reached.
The Vault of Silence had opened.
---
They descended in silence, only the flickering nulllight in Aion's palm illuminating the passage.
At the base was a vast chamber, hollow and circular. Walls lined with glowing etchings—memories of erased timelines. In the center stood a pedestal, floating above a pool of shimmering void. Upon it: a crown of fractured crystal.
The Hollow Crown.
Itheon's voice echoed from the shadows. "That was Vaelith's source. Not of power—but identity."
Aion turned. "You followed us."
"I guided you," Itheon said. "But this—this is your burden to carry."
---
As Aion stepped forward, the crown pulsed.
Visions flooded his mind—wars not remembered, cities that never existed, people whose screams were still echoing in the gaps of reality.
He reached for the Hollow Crown.
And everything broke.
---
Aion's mind fractured.
He stood—yet also fell—through shards of memory. He saw Vaelith not as a tyrant, but as a man betrayed. A Nullborn used by the Empire, discarded, then hunted. The war he waged wasn't conquest—it was vengeance.
And he saw something else:
A woman. Cloaked in goldfire. Eyes like burning equations. The Architect.
"She will return when the Seal breaks," Vaelith's voice echoed. "And she will not come to save you. She will come to rewrite us all."
---
Back in the Vault, Aion's body floated in nullfire. Kael shouted, trying to reach him, but was thrown back by a pulse of anti-reality.
The Vault trembled.
The Hollow Crown disintegrated.
And Aion breathed in the last of Vaelith's memory.
---
He landed hard on the cold floor, eyes wide.
He was not just a Nullborn now.
He was a Wielder of the Forgotten Crown—a living archive of erased truth.
---
Far away, Maelrik stared into the Crimson Engine.
"It's done," he said. "He knows."
Beside him, Veyra readied her blade.
"Then we strike now," she whispered. "Before he learns the name of the Architect."
Maelrik's lips curled into a smile.
"Oh, child. He already has."