Chapter 8 : DEAD ZONE EAST

A howl split the tunnel like a curse thrown across time.
Not animal. Not human. Something entirely in between.
It echoed as if pain itself had learned how to speak.
Aya didn't look back, because she couldn’t afford to.

Behind them, the vault’s walls pulsed with bleeding red light.
Zair's scream was still etched into the stone like it was alive.
The memory didn’t just linger the it chased.
And it wasn’t alone anymore. Something had followed.

The boy stumbled again, the metal disk in his hands trembling.
Aya caught his wrist, dragging him toward the second gate.
The mouth of stone hissed open as they stepped inside.
Air turned dead. No echo. Just pressure like a drowning grip.

Inside, the chamber lit up from the inside out.
Pale white energy bathed the walls in a frozen glow.
Hovering above the floor was a figure half-light, half-memory.
Her presence froze the bones and whispered without moving.

Above her floated a name: Thalel.
She was elegant, ancient, and impossible to fully see.
A silver-eyed ghost with a blade fused to her spine.
Not human. Not spirit. Something older than war.

“You were not meant to survive this long,” she said.
Aya stepped forward, her voice steady despite the terror.
“Then why did we?” she demanded through clenched teeth.
Thalel blinked, and the walls turned the color of warning.

“Because someone betrayed time,” the voice echoed everywhere.
The murals moved now, twisting history into motion.
Cities devoured themselves in flame. Children vanished in silence.
And always the Cradle’s mark, seared onto every ruin.

The boy screamed, not from pain but recognition.
He saw something in the corner, crawling toward them.
It had bones but no skin, and it moved like memory.
Aya grabbed him close as shadows warped the light.

Thalel lifted a finger, freezing the creature mid-climb.
“Memory can be mercy,” she whispered, eyes dimming.
“But this world chose vengeance over forgiveness.”
In the center, a table rose and formed glowing rings.

Each ring spun like a clock made from truth.
They saw how the Cradle was built in secret.
How humans stole pieces to weaponize memory.
And how the final war was born from forgotten guilt.

Aya touched the center, and visions shattered her mind.
A flood of people burning thoughts just to stay sane.
Mothers forgetting their children to keep them hidden.
Fathers erasing names from graves to avoid tracking.

She fell to her knees, the pressure unbearable.
The disk left the boy’s hand and slid into the table.
Thalel’s voice split into a thousand whispering tongues.
Each voice said the same thing, layered with sorrow:

“You must find the third piece beneath the grave of giants.
And you must choose between mercy or memory.
One will save you. One will destroy the rest.”
Then silence, before everything began to crack.

The ceiling trembled. Not from age but something entering.
The enemy had followed them into memory’s core.
Thalel began to dissolve into pixelated ash.
Aya screamed, “What are they?” but the answer came soft.

“They are what you would become… if you fail.”
Suddenly, the symbol burned into her skin triangle in circle.
She was marked as Keeper. The last of her kind.
And outside, war had already begun again.