The jungle greeted them with a silence that was far too loud.
Thick with wet air and the scent of ancient decay, the Cambodian wilds near Angkor lay sprawled like a sleeping giant, unmoved by time, unmoved by memory. The sun, filtered through a net of hanging creepers and towering canopies, had the hue of old brass—tired and watching.
Veyne adjusted the strap of his rucksack as he stepped over the gnarled root of a strangler fig. Beside him, Nalini wiped the sweat from her brow with the edge of her kurti, her eyes scanning the underbrush warily. Behind them, their local guide, Dara, muttered something under his breath—perhaps a prayer, perhaps a curse—and tapped the wooden amulet hanging from his neck.
"This place," he said finally, in hesitant English, "not on map. Not meant to be."
Veyne smiled faintly. "That's precisely why we're here."
Dara didn't respond. His gaze darted between the dark patches of forest like a bird expecting a predator.
They had left the known ruins of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom behind two days ago, following a crumbling French military map from the 1920s that had been recovered from the archives of a forgotten temple in Kerala. That map, already worn with age, had curled in on itself this morning as if resisting the route. Then—without flame or spark—it began to blacken. Before their eyes, the route etched on its parchment shifted, scorched, and reformed.
It was not a trail made for mortals. It was a memory rewriting itself.
"The path wasn't there yesterday," Nalini said, not for the first time. "This grove, this rise of land—it just appeared."
Veyne looked down at the track they were following. There was no road. No trail, no footsteps ahead of theirs, not even animal prints. Yet the earth bore the unmistakable look of having been walked upon, pressed down by something. Something that came and went not by walking, but by remembering the way.
"Even the birds don't sing here," Nalini added.
True. The jungle, usually a riot of noise—cicadas, shrieking monkeys, flocks of parrots—was devoid of sound. A muffled hush held everything still, like the world was holding its breath.
Dara stopped suddenly. "We turn back now, sir," he said, shaking his head. "I take you to Angkor. To Bayon. Even to Banteay Srei if you like. But this place… this is forest of ghosts. Even ancestors forget it."
"You've brought us as far as we needed," Veyne said, gently. "Wait at the last marker. We'll return."
"If you return," Dara muttered, his voice trailing off. "I will burn incense. And wait."
He handed Nalini a small silver bell. "If you ring, it will reach me. Maybe. If jungle still remembers your sound."
Without another word, he turned and slipped away into the underbrush, vanishing between two trees like mist chased by sunlight.
And then there were two.
Veyne and Nalini pressed on, deeper into the tangle of shadow and vine. The trees here grew taller, but more crooked, like they had leaned toward something once and forgotten what. Their trunks bore moss not green, but a dull grey tinged with blue. Strange sigils, possibly natural, possibly not, glimmered faintly on the bark as they passed.
Every step brought with it a strange sensation, like stepping through a thin film of memory. Sound repeated. A bird's call looped. The wind whispered the same gust twice. Even the crumbling leaves underfoot seemed to rustle in a rhythm. Not random. Not entirely.
Nalini spoke softly. "I saw this place… once. In a dream. Or something like it. Before I even met you. A tree split down the middle. A temple that had no name."
"Do you believe we've been here before?" Veyne asked.
"I don't know if we have been," she said slowly. "But something inside us has."
They came upon the tree soon after.
A massive banyan, its roots clawing through stone and time, stood ahead—split right down the middle like it had been cleaved by a divine axe. The trunk had grown around something—stone steps, half-hidden and barely visible beneath a curtain of roots. The split was not clean. It was jagged, a wound, and yet there was a strange order to how the roots parted, how the branches above twisted like fingers pointing downward.
A gust of wind blew from inside the tree.
From inside.
Veyne stepped closer. The temperature shifted as he approached. Warmth drained from his limbs, replaced by a coolness that was not merely physical. It was the coolness of a forgotten room. The feeling of stepping into a house you once lived in but no longer remember.
Nalini placed a hand on the bark. Her breath caught. "It's watching us."
"I know."
Together, they stepped through the cleft in the banyan.
The world behind them dimmed. The thick jungle noise, already faint, disappeared entirely. All light came from above, diffused through thin leaves, yet the roots below glowed faintly, illuminated from within like veins full of some ancient fire.
The steps beneath the banyan wound down, slow and deliberate. The air grew heavier with each step, full of damp secrets. The walls around them began to show carvings—simple at first, then increasingly complex. They depicted no human figures, but silhouettes—elongated shadows shaped like monks, dancers, warriors. Some bore weapons made of pure black flame. Others wept from eyeless faces.
At the base of the steps, the roots ended, and stone took over.
And there it was.
The temple.
Not in ruins. Not broken. But whole, alive—and breathing.
It was a structure that defied logic. No angles. Only curves, arches, and layers like lotus petals. The walls shimmered slightly, not with paint or decoration, but with a sheen that moved like liquid glass. No two carvings were the same. One looked like a snake consuming a crown. Another showed a city crumbling into a child's eye.
As they walked toward it, the very jungle bent away from the structure. Vines moved, pulling back like curtains. The grass wilted where their feet landed, only to regrow as they passed.
Veyne touched one of the carvings. It shimmered. Changed.
It showed him—as he was once. Regal. Crowned. A smile full of fire. And behind him—seven thrones, empty.
He blinked, and the image vanished.
"I think this place doesn't want to be found," Nalini whispered. "It only allows itself to be remembered."
"Shadow doesn't die," Veyne murmured. "It only hides in the folds between memory and silence."
They stood before the temple's main entrance. There were no doors. Only a gaping arch, carved with the words: Prakāśa Kṣaya.
Light's Undoing.
A gust of cool wind spilled from the entrance. It carried the scent of old ashes, of lamps extinguished long ago, of forgotten songs and untold regrets.
Veyne stepped inside.
Behind him, the banyan's cleft closed—not abruptly, not violently, but gently. Like an eye choosing to blink.
And the temple that never existed welcomed its Child Returned to Silence.
The moment they stepped inside, time began to fold.
Not twist. Not unravel. But fold — like layers of silk stacked too closely together. The very air shimmered, as if dipped in lamp oil and left hovering between dusk and dream. Inside, the temple was impossibly vast. No source of light, yet nothing was dark. Shadows bloomed and withered on their own, like they were breathing — not cast, but alive.
Nalini stood close to Veyne, her fingers brushing his. "There are no walls," she said, looking around. "Only the idea of walls."
She was right. What looked like architecture at first glance dissolved upon focus. Stone pillars turned into trailing silhouettes. Archways blinked out and reappeared a few steps later, as though the temple was deciding what to reveal — and to whom.
At the centre of the entrance chamber was a large disc carved into the floor. Obsidian, smooth as still water. But when they looked at it, their reflections were not their own.
Veyne saw a boy — himself — younger, barefoot, wild-eyed, holding a flower and staring up at someone who had long since faded from memory.
Nalini saw fire. Not destruction, but birth. Herself walking through it — hands covered in blood that wasn't hers, yet the weight of it was hers to bear.
They looked away at the same time.
"This place…" Nalini whispered, "it doesn't just know who we are. It remembers what we try to forget."
As they ventured deeper, the architecture twisted. The carvings on the walls began to move subtly, only when one wasn't looking. Veyne caught glimpses from the corner of his eyes — scenes replaying in loops. A mother leaving her child behind. A soldier choosing silence over truth. A hand pulling back from a dying friend.
Illusions, yes — but not of the place. Of the people within it.
The deeper they walked, the more the temple played its games.
Mirrors began to line the corridors — not reflective, but responsive. Made of dark glass and obsidian, they pulsed faintly with a violet hue. When Nalini paused before one, it didn't show her reflection — it showed her mother, speaking to her in Sanskrit lullabies she had forgotten.
When Veyne paused before another, it didn't show his face — it showed Elias.
Elias, with the same half-smile he wore the night of the betrayal. Elias, calling him little brother. Elias, not holding the blade, but still close enough to stop it — and choosing not to.
"I don't trust what I see here," Veyne said.
"You're not supposed to," came a voice. Not from ahead. Not from behind. From everywhere.
Out of the shadows, she emerged.
A figure cloaked in silk and smoke. Her face was half-veiled, the other half etched with markings — not painted, not scarred, but woven into the very skin. Her eyes were mirrors themselves, deep and endless. Her hair flowed upward, defying gravity, coiling like living tendrils of ink.
She walked barefoot, her steps leaving behind small patches of ash that vanished instantly.
"You have returned, Child of Silence," she said, voice neither kind nor cruel — just final.
Nalini instinctively stepped closer to Veyne. "Who… are you?"
"I was once a priestess," the woman said. "Then I became a shadow. Then I became what shadows forget."
Her gaze landed on Veyne. "You unmade Atlantis. You survived what no one was meant to. And still you carry memory like it's armour. That will not serve you here."
Veyne's jaw clenched. "Why am I here?"
"To remember what must be forgotten. And to forget what keeps you bound."
She turned and walked toward the altar chamber.
There was no choice but to follow.
The altar chamber was circular, surrounded by obsidian mirrors — tall, jagged, and cracked. At the centre stood an ancient pedestal — not carved, but grown out of the stone itself, as if the temple had once been a tree and this was its heartwood. Upon it floated a sliver of darkness — blacker than shadow, humming faintly. It was not shaped, not forged. It simply was.
The Shard of Absence.
"The Dominion of Shadow never needed temples," the priestess said. "It needed anchors. Places that could carry silence through time. This is one such place. That—" she pointed to the Shard, "—is its memory. Its will. Its hunger."
Veyne stared at it. "What does it want?"
"To be remembered. To be wielded. To remind the world that forgetting is a choice. But," she stepped forward, "it cannot be touched unless you leave something behind. Not lost. Given. Willingly."
Veyne narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"
"To claim the Shard of Absence, you must forget something of meaning. Not fact. Not trivia. But a memory that defines you. One that shaped your path."
Veyne's breath slowed. "What if I refuse?"
"Then the Shard will remain here. And so will you. Eventually, you too will be forgotten."
Nalini looked at him, eyes wide. "There must be another way."
"There isn't," the priestess said. "The path of Shadow never lies. It only hides."
Silence stretched between them.
Veyne stepped toward the pedestal.
He looked into the Shard. It did not reflect his face. It reflected scenes.
The day Seraya touched his hand for the first time — in a garden of the upper courts, where lilies floated in silver basins and she wore a robe of gold-threaded silk.
The night Daemon carried him home on his back after a fall from the cliffside, bloodied and laughing.
The secret gesture Elias made before every duel — a flick of his left thumb, invisible to others, known only to them.
Then… one more.
A memory he had hidden even from himself.
The first time he had ever loved — not romantically, not politically, not for advantage — but simply, truly. A child's gesture. A boy's offering. A moment of pure, uncalculated giving.
A single petal placed into a dying soldier's hand.
He had forgotten the face. The name. The war. Only the act remained.
The Shard pulsed. It had chosen.
"No," Veyne said, voice hoarse. "Not this one."
But the temple did not care.
The priestess only watched, silent.
Nalini placed a hand on his arm. "You don't have to—"
"I do."
He reached forward.
As his fingers touched the Shard, the memory began to unspool. It didn't vanish. It sealed itself away, within the temple's stone, into the mirrors that surrounded them. In one final flash, he saw the boy he had once been — hands stained with mud, eyes bright with grief, placing a flower into a dying stranger's palm.
Then it was gone.
And in its place — the Shard of Absence.
It settled into Veyne's palm, weightless and heavy at once.
He staggered.
The priestess spoke, almost gently. "You may leave now. But know this: what is forgotten here feeds the temple. And the temple remembers in silence what the world no longer dares to speak."
Nalini helped steady him. "Veyne… are you alright?"
He looked at her with eyes that felt slightly less his.
"I don't remember the first time I chose to be kind," he said.
And the temple, around them, began to pulse — walls retracting, mirrors darkening, doors shifting.
The path out had opened.
But something in Veyne had closed.
The jungle was no longer still.
The night had thickened — not in darkness alone, but in depth, as if the very air had been layered and rewritten while they were inside.
Veyne and Nalini stood just outside the threshold of the temple, though the doorway had vanished. The structure behind them had folded in on itself like a sleeping animal, stone blending into root, moss wrapping over carvings as if to hush them. Even the trees had inched closer. The vines had thickened.
The temple — Prakāśa Kṣaya, Light's Undoing — was regrowing.
Not decaying. Not crumbling. But regrowing.
Stone edges were softening, merging into bark. Steps were curling downward into soil. What had been a roof of obsidian and bone was now veiled in a fungal canopy that pulsed with quiet bioluminescence, like stars bleeding through skin.
They had walked hours, or maybe minutes. Time here was a wet cloth — stretched and heavy.
Dara, the local guide, stood near the edge of the clearing, peering into the jungle like a man trying to remember where he parked a lifetime ago.
He turned when he saw them, confusion thick on his face.
"You… you two came from—where?" he asked, genuinely bewildered.
Veyne exchanged a glance with Nalini.
"We were following you," Nalini said softly, her voice lined with caution.
Dara frowned. "I brought you to the river crossing, but then… then I waited. No one came. I thought you must have turned back. I've been waiting since… since…" He trailed off, eyes scanning the jungle canopy as though time might fall from it.
"How long?" Veyne asked.
Dara looked down at his watch.
Then blinked.
He wasn't wearing one.
"I—I don't remember," he whispered.
Behind them, the temple exhaled.
Not in sound, but in presence. A pressure lifting. Or perhaps slipping deeper underground.
Veyne felt something tug inside his coat.
He reached in and pulled out the Shard of Absence.
It had grown colder.
What was once obsidian-black now shimmered faintly with inner veins of pale grey — like memory trying to fossilize itself. When he held it closer to the jungle, the faint light pulsed. Not steady. Not warm. More like a heartbeat lost in mist.
He turned to Nalini.
"We didn't just find a relic," he said. "We fed it."
Nalini nodded, quiet. "And it fed on us."
She held up her left hand. Her fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from emptiness. A tremor that came from forgetting something you had once sworn never to let go.
They walked into the clearing proper, letting the thick forest canopy above part just enough to reveal stars. The moon was new, but shadows still clung to everything. Not cast by light — but by memory.
Veyne looked around.
It was denser now.
The trees had shifted.
He was sure — sure — that the path they had taken into the jungle no longer existed.
The trail was gone.
Overwritten.
Swallowed by root and time.
The jungle didn't just grow. It rewrote.
"Veyne," Nalini said suddenly.
He turned to find her standing before a tree. A banyan — old, ancient — yet still damp with dew like it had just been born. Carved into its base were glyphs. Not of Atlantis. Not even of the Dominion.
These were human.
Old Khmer script, woven with Sanskrit threads.
She traced a finger over the first line.
"Who forgets not, cannot pass," she translated.
And beneath it, etched so faintly it barely existed:
Shadow does not die. It watches. It waits. It weaves.
Something moved above them.
Not a creature. Not a wind.
A presence.
They both turned their heads upward. In the branches above — where vines coiled like serpents and orchids blinked with dew — they saw eyes.
Not literal.
Impressions. Hints.
Gazes, pressed across the veil.
The Shard pulsed again in Veyne's hand.
For a moment — he saw them.
Entities.
Figures draped in shadow and silk, woven from the grief of generations and the sighs of those who chose to forget. Watching. Waiting.
Across temples in Java and masks in Tibet. In forgotten scrolls buried beneath desert sands. In whispers caught between heartbeat and silence.
The Dominion of Shadow was not a faction. It was not a cult.
It was the act of forgetting made flesh.
Every time a people erased their past, every time a language died, every time a god was renamed and memory rewritten — the Shadow grew.
And now, it stirred.
Not as enemy. Not as friend.
But as force.
Elemental.
Endless.
Dara called out from a few steps ahead. "I think I see the river."
They followed.
The ground had shifted again — softer now, spongier. The trees no longer whispered. They watched.
The river had turned black.
Not dirty — just dark. Like it had absorbed too much sky.
They boarded the small raft Dara had tied up, and drifted silently across. Neither he nor Nalini spoke. Veyne sat at the edge, letting the jungle recede behind them.
But the feeling never left.
They weren't leaving it behind.
It was walking with them, just out of sight.
By the time they returned to the edge of civilization — a small hostel at the border of the protected zone — the moon had risen higher. A power outage had plunged the building into candlelight.
They ate in silence. Afterwards, Veyne stepped outside alone. He looked up. Not at the stars. Not at the moon. But at the gaps between them. The places the light didn't reach. He pulled the Shard from his pocket again. Held it in his palm.
For a second — just one — he saw something reflected in its surface.
A girl. Laughing. Long before Atlantis. Long before betrayal. Somewhere on a field of poppies that no longer existed. He blinked. Gone. He didn't know her name. Didn't know if she had a name. That was the cost.
Nalini joined him, arms folded against the cool night air.
"Where do we go next?" she asked.
"Delphi," Veyne replied, voice low.
"The Greek dominion?"
He nodded.
"I thought that temple was lost."
"It was," he said. "Until recently."
"And now?"
"Now it calls," he said. "And it remembers who silenced it."
The candlelight inside the hostel flickers.
The jungle sways without wind.
And back in the heart of Cambodia, where the jungle sleeps and temples breathe…
The banyan tree splits open again.
Just a little. Just enough. And from the opening, a single shadow slithers out, wearing a human face.