"Why did this not vanish with the rest of its body?" I asked, expecting the Keeper's voice yet still startled when it came.

For the same reason that bullets or vials do not.

"Keeper..."

I do not know. She confessed, imparting an image of her with arms spread in a prolonged shrug. Only that it was from such bones that the First Flame was kindled.

"The Flame," I mused. Gently, I tucked the dark, mottled bone into a crease in my armour, wearing it diagonally as one would mount a sheathed blade or brimming quiver.

Surely you do not mean to-

"I do." I interjected, following her logic swiftly, for it was in a way, also mine. She knew that I intended to build again the First Flame, construct it here in the heart of Darkness. "It was not hate for the Flame that gave me cause to murder you." My voice still pitifully broke at the memory. "But of the Cycle it perpetuated."

You are dying already; blighted as you are by the Darkness, I doubt you can survive the Flame's flare.

"But if I do, I can save this realm." I had already begun striding toward the chamber's far side, where an elevator waited recessed in the stone and lost to shadow; a predator's maw gaping wide and eager. "And that is enough for me."