The corridor felt like stepping through someone else's dream.
The walls pulsed faintly, veins of pale violet and green flickering with low electrical rhythm. The floor shifted subtly underfoot—solid one moment, soft the next, like stepping across breath. Every few meters, shadows moved just outside the corner of vision. Not enemies. Not quite illusions.
Ghost echoes.
Memories that hadn't faded completely.
Kael reached a junction in the path and hesitated. Two passageways yawned open in the gloom, identical at first glance.
"This isn't on the Vault map," Lira murmured, holding up her locator slate.
Corren drew closer, frowning. "Loop trap. They want intruders to spiral into the wrong thread."
A child's laughter echoed faintly down the left corridor. From the right, a metallic clang, rhythmic and urgent.
Kael didn't move.
He closed his eyes. For a moment, the corridor fell quiet.
Then he stepped right.
Corren started to speak. "We don't know if—"
"It's right," Kael said without opening his eyes. "The left one folds inward. It ends in a memory choke."
"How do you know that?" Lira asked.
"I remember the way the Vault breathes when it lies."
He walked ahead. Neither of them followed immediately.
Corren turned to Lira. "You saw that too."
She nodded. "He's not just remembering events anymore."
"He's remembering how to be."
They followed him into the deeper dark.
The corridor twisted unexpectedly—doors where there should have been none, whole rooms replaying scenes that flickered out as they entered. Kael didn't react to them. He walked like he'd been here before, feet steady, posture taut but sure.
At one point, he paused and placed his hand against a flat pane of black stone.
"This wall shouldn't be here," he said.
He pushed.
The stone slid inward with a whisper.
Behind it, a hidden stair spiraled downward.
Lira stepped beside him. "You weren't supposed to remember this path."
"I don't," Kael said. "But something inside me does."
They descended together into silence, the shadows pressing tighter, the pull of something immense and waiting at the bottom.