THE SEAL THAT SCREAMED
The Shatterdeep Vault was no longer asleep.
It rose like a jagged wound in the earth's crust—its obsidian towers bent by time, scabbed with the divine ruins of dead languages. Its spires pierced the sky where no sky should have been. Reality itself warped in its presence, curving light and sound in impossible geometries.
Riven staggered across the uneven ground, blood matted into his fur, one arm hanging nearly useless. But his gaze never left the vault.
"It's waking," he muttered. "I can feel it in my fangs."
Aeron Vale nodded, pressing his palm to the ancient obsidian gate. "Not waking… ripping itself open."
Beside him stood Serah Vael, and for the first time, she looked uncertain.
Her breath came in cold clouds, though the air shimmered with heat. Her hand trembled at her side—not from fear, but the pressure of the seal within her unraveling.
"I was never meant to survive the unlocking," she whispered.
Riven turned. "Then why did you come?"
She looked at him, her hollow eyes deep with prophecy. "Because the only thing that can bind Aamon… is a part of him. And I am that."
Behind them, the wind shrieked... then shifted.
A black fissure tore open in the center of the vault. Shadow poured like smoke made of memory. Aamon stepped through, his vessel's form now fully eclipsed: wings of void, eyes like twin singularities, the runes on his skin burning through the world.
And in his arms—Elara.
Unconscious. Her lips stained with dreamroot. The Codex Nocturna clutched weakly in her fingers.
Aamon stepped forward, unbothered by the vault's distortions.
"She tried," he said aloud. "She tried to change fate. To destroy the future I already wear."
Riven snarled, lowering himself. "Let her go, you bastard."
"I already have. She's mine now not by force… but accord."
He set Elara gently on the ground. Her eyes opened—dim, glassy, but focused.
"Aeron," she croaked.
He stepped toward her. "I'm here."
"I know what to do," she said, reaching toward Serah.
A sudden pulse of force nearly knocked them all flat.
The vault was responding. To her. To them.
To the Codex.
Serah stepped forward. Her body pulsed with a new light—a crystalline matrix glowing beneath her skin, fracturing her voice.
"You were always the lock," she said to Elara.
"And you," Elara replied softly, "were always the key."
Together, they touched the vault gate.
The earth split.
A scream—not sound, but history—tore through the air.
The Shatterdeep Vault opened, not like a door—but like an old wound bursting wide.
Inside: a cathedral of starlight and chains. Forgotten gods hung in silence, mouths sewn with dusk. In the center: the Throne of the Unnamed, pulsing with anti-light.
Elara stepped forward, arms outstretched. She began the chant—ripped from the Codex, from dreams, from voices that had lived in her blood since before time:
"Vas'naruk. Teth-rae. Hollowan-vell."
The Codex burned in her hands.
Serah screamed.
Aamon lunged.
Too late.
The seal activated.
Light erupted—not from sun, but from lost beginnings.
A massive shockwave rippled across the land. Valleys crumbled. Forests withered. Sky fractured into shards.
Aamon was thrown backward—screaming, but smiling.
"You've only made me whole," he whispered, vanishing into the rupture.
Elara collapsed. So did Serah.
Riven caught them both, snarling as ash began to fall from a sky no longer whole.
From the center of the vault, a pulse of breathless silence expanded in all directions.
The Breathless War had begun.