The ring weighed more than a world.

  Orrny held it as if his soul were trapped inside —and maybe it was.The fmes of the Urn did not burn. They waited.

  Something snapped within him.An old thread, tearing in silence.

  “You found me,” the voice had said.But he didn’t know if it was Lyssara.Or just his guilt dressed in her memory.

  He colpsed into a sit.The ring in his hands was warm. Not from fire —but from something that wanted to be felt.

  The ?nima whispered again.

  “Now it begins.”

  Orrny looked around.Ashes danced on a wind that did not exist, forming eyes that watched and dissolved.The world around the Urn unraveled —not like a colpse,but like a veil being torn away.

  And he saw.

  The temple.How it once was. Whole. Majestic.

  But empty.

  Footsteps echoed between pilrs of living stone.He saw himself as a child, running with Lyssara, ughing.And behind them…eyes. Always eyes.

  The vision followed them.Memories that weren’t his.Or maybe too much his.

  Past and present tangled.Until he no longer knew who was dreaming who.

  And then, on the temple stairs, a shadow.

  Tall.Incomplete.Like a man who forgot who he was.

  It spoke — with the voice of the future:

  “He has awakened.”

  And Orrny, still kneeling before the Urn, trembled.

  Not from fear.But in reply.