Nael knelt before the statue as it wept molten tears.
This was no shrine.
It was a wound.
A memory etched so deeply into stone that it bled when remembered.
The heart inside the broken god beat louder now, pulsing in rhythm with Nael's own.
The walls trembled.
Not from anger. From recognition.
He reached out.
Touched the stone cheek.
It was warm.
"You should have forgotten me," the god whispered.
Nael's throat closed.
He remembered the name now.
Not a name spoken aloud.
Not in prayer.
Not in song.
A name buried in the marrow of the world:
"Oradon."
The Stone God.
The one who knelt but never broke.
The one whose silence outlived thunder.
Visions surged.
He saw Oradon standing tall in a war-torn sky, holding a fallen star in his hands.
He saw Seriah beside him, her hands aflame, eyes wild.
He saw himself—Eidmun—watching, always watching, forbidden to touch, cursed to witness.
He had watched Oradon fall.
Watched him whisper his last words into the stone.
Watched him sink into the earth without ever begging for salvation.
And then… he forgot.
"I failed you," Nael whispered.
The god did not reply.
Only the walls did.
They showed images Nael could not bear:
A war council torn apart by betrayal.
A fire god laughing as cities burned.
A young woman reaching for Nael, her voice swallowed by silence.
A man—himself—sealing a door he should never have touched.
Nael turned from the visions. He could not bear their weight.
But the stone pulled him in.
Not with force.
With memory.
"Why me?" Nael asked the statue.
"Why let me watch if I was never meant to act?"
Oradon answered.
"Because to witness is to remember. And to remember is to bear the flame when others let it die."
The heart cracked.
A shard of glowing stone fell at Nael's feet.
Not divine. Not holy.
But true.
He picked it up.
And the world around him began to shudder.
A rumble echoed from deep below the temple.
Something massive was stirring.
Not Oradon.
Something older.
The ground beneath Nael fractured slightly.
And through it, he heard the voice again—not of a god…
…but of a forgotten one.
"Gravekeeper…"
"Witness…"
"We see you."
Nael turned slowly toward the breach.
And from within the cracked floor, eyes stared back.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Not human.
Not divine.
Something else.
The eyes blinked in unison.
No breath.
No sound.
Just stillness — so perfect it felt wrong.
Nael knelt at the cracked floor of the temple, holding the shard of Oradon's heart in his hand.
But now, that shard pulsed violently.
As if it feared what lay beneath.
"We see you."
The voice came not from a mouth, but from inside the stone.
It was layered.
Childlike. Ancient. Male. Female.
It spoke not in tones, but in remembered truths.
Nael stood, blade at his back, the mask still fixed to his face. But now, even the runes carved into its bone began to glow.
The presence beneath the floor… it wasn't Oradon.
It wasn't even a god.
It was something older.
Something the gods had buried.
The eyes began to rise.
Not like a creature crawling upward — but like a mountain being born, slowly lifting itself from the earth.
The ground cracked wide.
The statue of Oradon shattered completely, its molten tears scattering across the air like sparks fleeing a dying fire.
And Nael saw it.
The Forgotten One.
It had no true form — only impressions:
Teeth of glass.
Skin made of moving stone.
Runes etched into a body that wasn't born, but written.
Eyes… infinite, blinking in every direction at once.
This was not a god.
It was a record.
A ledger of every god buried.
And it had remembered Nael.
"You are the Witness."
"You watched them die. You watched us be silenced."
"And now you must bear what was left behind."
Nael backed away.
But the voices were inside his bones now.
Each eye blinked in rhythm with his breath.
Each word shook the temple's foundations.
"What are you?" he asked, barely whispering.
"We are the ledger."
"We are the lost breath between prayers."
"We are the memory that gods refused to carry."
The shard in Nael's hand shattered.
It did not fall.
It dissolved into salt.
And with it, the air around him changed.
No longer heavy.
Just… hollow.
As if the temple had stopped existing.
As if only memory remained.
And Nael realized—
This was not a tomb.
It was a trial.
"Will you remember them, Witness?"
"Will you hold the names of the forgotten, when the heavens have turned their face?"
Nael looked into the infinite gaze of the Forgotten One.
And whispered:
"I never stopped remembering."
The voices paused.
Then echoed:
"Then remember this."
The world went white.
And Nael was pulled into the memory of his own silence.
Nael remained on his knees, fingers pressed against the stone still warm with divine memory.
He wasn't sure if what he had just experienced was a dream, a vision, or some reality carved deeper than thought.
But something within him had shifted.
Not like a revelation.
More like a fracture.
The temple floor throbbed faintly beneath him, echoing a heartbeat that wasn't his.
The glowing rune—etched into the earth like a scar—hummed, pulsing a name no lips spoke.
"Eidmun…"
That name was no longer hidden.
It was a key.
And now the lock had been opened.
A dry wind swept through the ruins.
It did not carry sand.
It carried voices—no mouths, no breath.
Only thoughts without tongues.
Memories refusing to die.
Nael rose slowly.
His mask had cracked. A thin fracture split it down the right side.
Half of his face was now bare, exposed to ash and time.
He stood in the silence, listening.
And then—like a whisper woven into wind—
He heard Seriah's song.
No words.
Just a melody.
Fractured. Faint.
But real.
He turned his gaze westward.
Beyond the broken temple.
Beyond the mountains that mourned themselves.
There—through the swirling ash and fading sun—a sliver of golden light pierced the clouds.
Not warm.
But true.
He stepped beyond the rune, leaving the temple's shadow behind.
But the feeling of eyes never faded.
The presence of the Forgotten One still lingered in the space between breaths.
This was no longer a journey to bury gods.
This was a pilgrimage of reckoning.
Something ancient had awakened inside him.
Not power.
Not memory.
But purpose.
Nael reached into his coat and pulled free a leather-bound journal — old, charred, bound by salt-stained thread.
He hadn't opened it in years.
Not since the final war.
Not since he had sworn to forget.
But now… forgetting was no longer a mercy.
It was a lie.
He opened it with fingers still shaking.
Tore a blank page from the center.
And wrote:
"The Second Door has opened."
Then, beneath that—words he had never dared write:
"I am not only a Witness. I am their final voice."
The wind shifted again.
He looked back once—at the shattered temple of Oradon.
Only rubble remained.
Only silence.
Only the echo of a question still unanswered:
"Why did you watch?"
He didn't know yet.
But he would.
Because now, the path wasn't about sealing tombs.
It was about unsealing truths.
Nael walked.
Each step slower than the last.
Not from weariness—
But from weight.
The sky rumbled softly as if something distant and divine had stirred once more.
And far behind him, in the ruins of the temple, the broken rune flared one last time, then faded into dust.
The Forgotten One was gone.
But its legacy had passed into Nael's bones.
He was no longer alone.
In his shadow, something ancient moved.
Not a god.
Not a memory.
Something older than both.
He touched the cracked side of his mask, eyes distant.
And whispered to the wind:
"I will remember them all."
"Even if it kills me."