“I know.”
Serah deserved that.
She accepted it.
They reached Mount Arken after four days.
Behind them, news traveled.
Valoria still held.
Barely.
The golden Guardian, known now among survivors as Aurion, had driven the corrupted giant out of the capital but could not destroy him.
The Forgotten Army occupied the northern districts.
King Aldric declared martial law.
More importantly, he made an announcement.
A false prince had awakened forbidden magic.
The orphan Elias was accused of treason.
Anyone hiding him would die.
When Serah heard the proclamation from travelers, she laughed.
“He is terrified.”
Elias did not.
“A lot of people will believe him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because kings speak from towers.”
They climbed.
Snow began.
Elias had never been so cold.
Serah wrapped him in half her cloak.
Near the summit, they found a door.
Not wood.
Stone.
An enormous circular seal built into the mountain.
At its center was a handprint.
Child-sized.
Elias looked at Serah.
“Convenient.”
“Do it.”
He placed his hand.
Golden light spread.
The mountain opened.
Inside waited darkness.
Then hundreds of eyes.
Stone eyes.
Unlit.
Guardians.
Rows of them.
Some thirty feet tall.
Others sixty.
Hundreds frozen in an underground hall stretching beyond torchlight.
Elias whispered, “There were this many?”
Serah could not answer.
A voice echoed.
“There were more.”
A figure emerged.
An old man.
Or something shaped like one.
His skin was pale gray.
Eyes gold.
He wore no crown.
Only simple white robes.
Serah drew her sword.
The man ignored her.
He looked at Elias.
“Kneel?”
Elias frowned.
“What?”
“Would you like me to kneel?”
“No.”
The old man smiled.
“Good.”
“Who are you?”
“The last Keeper.”
“Name?”
“I had one.”
He seemed to search memory.
“Tal.”
Serah lowered her sword slowly.
The Keeper led them deeper.
He explained the war forgotten by history.
The Stone Guardians had been created by binding elemental spirits to mountain bodies.
Not slaves.
Partners.
The old royal bloodline did not control them.
It could communicate.
That distinction mattered.
Then came the First Shadow.
A being from beneath the world.
It corrupted Guardians by promising freedom through destruction.
Aurion’s brother, Varkas, was the first to fall.
The Forgotten Army followed.
The war lasted twenty-seven years.
The old dynasty sacrificed nearly everything sealing the Shadow beneath the northern mountains.
The surviving Guardians entered sleep.
Why?
Because the final seal required royal blood to remain unbroken.
When the dynasty vanished from public record, the Stone Covenant weakened.
Queen Elara’s birth revived it.
Elias’s birth completed something older.
“The Guardian did not awaken because you touched him,” Tal said.
Elias frowned.
“No?”
“He awakened because you finally asked him to.”