The map burned itself into Kairo's memory.
Not in ink, but in light and music—each location on the old world's skin marked not with names, but with chords, each humming a note only the Ashborn could hear. When he closed his eyes, the path revealed itself like a melody played in silence.
The Vault of Stars was buried beneath the ruined city of Virelai, once the capital of the Choir's empire—now a wasteland of shattered glass towers, echoing machines, and a sky that hadn't stopped crying in over a decade.
Their journey took six days.
Six days of ruin.
They passed fields where iron trees grew from the corpses of forgotten soldiers. Rivers that bled mercury. Statues that whispered in sleep. Every step was a reminder that the world they lived in was not dying.
It had already died.
And something had taken its place.
On the seventh night, they reached the outer edge of Virelai.
It looked like a city frozen in its final breath—buildings canted sideways like teeth in a broken jaw, roads caved in to reveal glowing runes beneath the pavement. The air shimmered with static, and the rain didn't fall—it hovered, suspended in time, as if the sky itself were holding its breath.
Yui stared into the distance. "There's… something under it."
Kairo nodded. "The Vault."
Aeska surveyed the ruins with wary eyes. "If the Choir knew this was here, they would've destroyed it."
"Maybe they tried," Yui said quietly. "Maybe they failed."
They crossed into the city.
Every sound echoed. The crunch of rubble beneath boots, the flutter of a loose tarp, the faint hum of dormant machines.
The closer they came to the heart of Virelai, the louder it grew—not noise, but a song. Faint, beneath their thoughts. Dissonant. Beautiful. Wrong.
"It's like it's inside my teeth," Aeska muttered.
"I hear it too," Yui whispered. "It's a warning."
Kairo didn't respond. The mark on his wrist was burning.
And beneath their feet, something was waking up.
They found the entrance just past what had once been a cathedral—now a collapsed skeleton of broken stained glass and scorched pews. In the center of its floor was a spiral of stone and steel, half-buried in ash. When Kairo stepped toward it, the spiral pulsed.
The stone unfolded like petals.
A circular platform rose, etched with twelve ancient runes.
"This is it," Kairo said. "The gateway."
Aeska gripped her dagger. "You sure we want to open it?"
"I need to," Kairo replied. "Whatever's down there… it's part of what I am. It's where the song began."
He placed his palm against the center rune.
The platform lit with blinding light—and began to descend.
They dropped into the earth.
What waited below was not a vault.
It was a sky.
An underground sky filled with floating stones, suspended constellations, and rivers of starlight coursing through blackened air. Giant statues of forgotten Ashborn stood on pillars of obsidian, their faces masked, hands outstretched as if holding invisible songbooks.
At the center of it all: a massive crystal, shaped like a heart, suspended above a pool of silver flame.
"The Vault of Stars," Aeska breathed. "It's… impossible."
Yui stepped forward, hand out. "It's beautiful."
Kairo moved closer to the heart-crystal.
It beat.
Once.
Twice.
Then a voice—soft, female, filled with sorrow—whispered in the air:
"Ashborn. Welcome home."