Naeria slammed another crystal against the tabletop. It cracked, sending blue shards skittering across the ancient stone. The seventh attempt in as many minutes, each one yielding nothing but frustration.

"Hold still," she ordered, seizing a copper rod etched with spiraling script. Her movements had grown jerky, impatient. "This should resonate with the shard's frequency."

Soren remained motionless on the uncomfortable stool, his bare chest covered in dried sweat and strange powders from her previous tests. The shard pulsed cold against his skin, but revealed nothing to Naeria's increasingly desperate probing.

The rod touched his chest. Nothing happened.

"Impossible," she muttered, tossing it aside and reaching for a small vial of silvery liquid. "The properties should align perfectly."

The liquid felt ice-cold as she painted it in a circle around the shard. Again, nothing.

Naeria's questions grew shorter, more demanding. "What did you see in the flame? Exactly what words did you hear? Did the temperature change before or after the visions?"

"I've told you everything," Soren replied, exhaustion weighing down each word.

Her gray eyes narrowed. "You're holding something back. The resonance should be unmistakable."

She tried incantations next, words in languages Soren had never heard, each one falling flat in the stale air of the underground chamber. Her voice grew sharper with each failure, her movements more abrupt as she cycled through her collection of arcane tools.

After nearly an hour, she stepped back, her shoulders slumping in defeat. "So the Flame chose at random... disappointing." The words were barely audible, meant more for herself than for him.

Without another glance in his direction, she turned away, moving toward her scattered scrolls and texts. Her quill scratched against parchment as she began making notes, already lost in her own theories.

Soren sat there, suddenly invisible. A failed experiment. A curiosity that had lost its shine.

'Her hunger is not for you,' Valenna whispered as he reached for his tattered shirt. 'Let her lose herself.'

His fingers trembled slightly as he pulled the fabric over his head, the coarse material scraping against raw skin where Naeria's instruments had left marks. The wound in his shoulder throbbed dully, a constant reminder of how much had been taken from him in such a short time.

'Let her lose herself,' Valenna had said. Yet Soren couldn't shake the hollow feeling expanding in his chest. First the Church had tried to reduce him to nothing, a heretic to be burned, erased from memory.

Now even these outcasts, these supposed enemies of that same Church, saw him as little more than a tool. A disappointing one, at that.

He stood, legs stiff from sitting so long. Naeria didn't look up from her frantic scribbling. The scratch of her quill filled the chamber, somehow more isolating than silence would have been.

"Soren Thorne."

The voice cut through the chamber like a blade, silencing Naeria's quill mid-stroke. Sylas stood in the doorway, his tall figure framed by the rough-hewn stone. Those unsettling green eyes fixed on Soren with predatory focus.

"Enough games," he said, each word precisely formed. "He comes with me."

Naeria's head lifted, her gray eyes narrowing slightly. For a moment, Soren thought she might protest. Instead, she merely shrugged, her gaze lingering on him with faint disappointment, the look of someone discarding a dull blade that had failed to cut.

"Take him," she said, already turning back to her work. "The resonance is minimal. Whatever the Flame saw in him, it doesn't respond to conventional probing."

Sylas gestured for Soren to follow, no explanation offered. Two hooded assassins materialized from the shadows of the corridor beyond, their movements so synchronized they seemed more extensions of a single mind than separate individuals.

The passage beyond Naeria's chamber sloped downward, taking them deeper into the ancient ruins. Sylas led the way, his steps confident despite the uneven flooring and occasional debris.

The air grew damper with each turn, carrying the mineral scent of underground water. Moss glistened on the walls in patches, luminescent blue-green in the dim light of Sylas's blade.

Above them, ancient water channels murmured, still carrying runoff from somewhere far above. Occasional droplets fell from cracks in the ceiling, each one landing with a musical plink that echoed through the narrow passage.

Soren's boots slid on slick stone as they descended further. No one spoke. The assassins' footfalls remained eerily silent despite the treacherous footing, while his own seemed thunderous in comparison.

After what felt like an eternity of twisting corridors and downward slopes, Sylas halted before what appeared to be a collapsed doorway. Recent excavation was evident, piles of broken stone and debris had been carefully arranged along one wall, tools still scattered nearby.

"Here," Sylas said, gesturing toward the opening his people had uncovered.

Beyond the collapsed entrance lay a small chamber, its walls remarkably intact despite the centuries. What caught Soren's attention immediately was the far wall, a solid sheet of ancient stone etched with spiraling patterns similar to those that had formed the barrier during their escape from the Cathedral.

The assassins moved into the chamber with practiced efficiency, positioning themselves along the walls, their hooded faces revealing nothing of their thoughts.

To them, Soren realized, this was just another sealed wall in endless ruins. But as he approached, something changed.

A faint vibration ran through the stone floor beneath his feet. Not light, not heat, but a thrumming pulse that seemed to rise up through his boots and into his bones. The shard against his chest responded with a subtle pulse of cold.

"Do you feel it?" Sylas asked, those green eyes gleaming with sudden intensity.

Soren nodded, unable to find words for the strange sensation. The spirals on the wall seemed to shift slightly when viewed from the corner of his eye, though they remained motionless when he looked directly at them.

"The Church built its cathedral here for a reason," Sylas continued, moving to stand beside him. "Not to honor their god, but to bury what came before. To seal away what they couldn't destroy." He gestured toward the etched wall. "They put their weight on the lid of a box they didn't dare open."

The vibration grew stronger as Soren moved closer to the wall. Not unpleasant, but unsettling, like standing too near a massive waterfall, feeling its power through the ground rather than hearing its roar.

"The Flame bent to you," Sylas said, his voice dropping lower. "If these stones answer as well... then perhaps you are worth more than their judgment."

He didn't say it outright, but his meaning was clear: Sylas was testing whether Soren might be the key to unlocking whatever lay sealed behind that ancient wall.

'Careful,' Valenna warned, her voice sharp with sudden alertness. 'He seeks to use you as a key. Keys are discarded once doors are opened.'

Despite her warning, Soren found himself moving forward. Something about the spiraling patterns called to him, familiar despite their alien geometry. He raised his hand, hesitating just inches from the etched stone.

The shard pulsed once, cold and certain against his chest. He pressed his palm flat against the central spiral.

No dramatic light show erupted. No thunder shook the chamber. No ancient door swung open to reveal forgotten treasures. But beneath his palm, the stone seemed to warm slightly, and the vibration intensified, focusing itself beneath his hand as if the wall itself acknowledged his presence.

"The stone remembers you," Valenna whispered, her voice carrying notes of wonder and wariness in equal measure, "though you have never been here."

Soren pulled his hand away, the sensation lingering in his palm like the memory of touch. When he turned, he found Sylas watching him with that expectant stare—calculating, measuring, weighing his value against whatever plans the assassin had woven.

The unease that had begun in Naeria's chamber crystallized into something sharper. These people didn't see him as a person, only as a tool, a key, a means to ends he couldn't yet fathom. And keys, as Valenna had warned, were discarded once they'd served their purpose."So I'm just another disappointment, then." Soren stared at Sylas, his words hanging in the stale underground air. "A failed test for Naeria, and now whatever this is."

Sylas tilted his head, studying Soren with that unnerving stillness that made him seem more predator than man. "Disappointment implies expectation. I merely observe what is."

The assassin's perfect indifference stung worse than scorn would have. Soren rubbed his palm against his tattered pants, trying to erase the lingering sensation from the wall. The shard's cold pulse steadied against his chest, a counterpoint to the chamber's unsettling vibrations.

"What did you expect to happen?" Soren asked, gesturing toward the etched stone. "That I'd touch it and some ancient door would magically swing open?"

"Perhaps." Sylas's mouth curved in what might have been a smile on anyone else. "Or perhaps I simply wanted to see if the stone would recognize you as the Flame did."

One of the hooded assassins shifted position, the slight movement drawing Soren's attention. Unlike their leader, these figures revealed nothing, not through expression, posture, or voice. They might as well have been shadows given physical form.

"And did it?" Soren pressed, suddenly desperate to understand his value to these people. "Recognize me, I mean."

Sylas's green eyes narrowed slightly. "It responded…"

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