They left behind the forest with no name.
It was not farewell, nor an escape. It was something in between—like exhaling a breath you didn't know you'd held for years. Kael had spent three winters among those trees, learning their moods, listening to how they shifted in the dark. Now, their silence watched him go.
Liora clung to his cloak, her hand nestled against the small of his back. She didn't speak. She hadn't spoken since the night the fire burned blue. But Kael no longer mistook her quiet for fear. It felt heavier now. Intentional. As if something inside her was listening to the world more closely than he could ever hope to.
They followed a path that wasn't a path—just faint memory-trails in the moss, old animal tracks, and leyline scars that made the air taste like metal. He steered clear of the highlands and ruined stones that still bore glyphs from the Old Kingdom. Even bandits didn't linger near those.
What hunted them wasn't made of flesh.
On the second night, they reached the edge of the Hollowing Pines.
The trees here grew too close, their trunks warped and leaning, as if trying to escape something beneath the soil. Their bark peeled in long strands, revealing shimmering threads of copper and bone beneath. Kael kept his grip on his spear tight.
He'd only come through this place once before—chasing an elk that led him too far during the dead season. He remembered the unnatural hush. The scent of iron and rot buried under wildflowers that never wilted.
But it was the safest path now.
At least no magefire could track them here.
"Stay close," he whispered, his voice barely a breath.
Liora nodded, eyes sharp, watching everything. She stepped carefully over roots, never making a sound.
He wondered again what kind of child learned to move like that.
By the third day, they'd found shelter in the remains of an old watchtower. It leaned at a sharp angle, half-consumed by ivy and moonvine. The walls still held, though the roof had long since collapsed. Kael reinforced the corners with wood and hung a patchy curtain over the archway for warmth.
Liora collected stones. Not for fire or defense, but to build small towers in the corner of the ruined floor. She stacked them in spirals, then circled each with dried twigs. No two were alike. No pattern. Just instinct.
When Kael asked what they were, she looked up and said, "To remember."
He didn't press further.
That night, it rained.
Thick, heavy drops fell from a swollen sky, drumming against the tower ruins. The fire sputtered but held, casting flickering shadows across the mossy stone.
Kael sat with his back against the wall, cleaning his blades. His thoughts ran in circles.
Something had found them. Something would look again.
He didn't know if they were safe, but he knew standing still meant being seen.
Liora slept curled beside him, clutching the end of his cloak. She hadn't had a nightmare since they left, but her sleep was restless—lips twitching, fingers curling into her palms.
He watched her, jaw tight.
He had brought her this far.
But the path ahead…
South of the Hollowing Pines lay the Vireline Marsh.
A broken land of sulfur pools and memory fogs, where the stars didn't always match the sky. Most travelers avoided it, even smugglers and exiled pilgrims. Not because it was cursed—though it certainly was—but because it remembered you.
The marsh didn't like to forget things.
Kael had passed near it once, but never through.
Until now.
They reached its edge at dawn.
The sun filtered through low clouds, casting a pale, sickly light across the mire. Water rippled where there was no wind. Tall reeds whispered in voices not their own. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang once—clear and hollow—though no tower stood for miles.
Kael inhaled deeply. "This place…"
Liora held tighter to his hand.
They walked slowly, feet sinking into the sodden earth with each step. Strange stones jutted from the ground—smooth, obsidian-black, some etched with old runes faded by time and water.
Then, without warning, Liora stopped.
She turned her head, eyes locking onto something far ahead—beyond the mist.
Kael followed her gaze, seeing only shifting fog.
"What is it?" he asked softly.
She didn't answer.
Instead, she whispered, "They're watching."
He felt it too, then.
A presence.
Not footsteps. Not movement. But… awareness. A distant pressure, like the gaze of a forgotten god, or the echo of a childhood nightmare returning in a new shape.
Kael drew his spear.
And waited.
Nothing came.
Nothing moved.
But something changed.
The mist thinned ahead, revealing an archway—twisted stone wrapped in bone-vine and shadowblossoms, leading deeper into the marsh's heart.
Liora stepped toward it.
Kael grabbed her shoulder.
"We go around."
"No," she said. Her voice calm. Clear.
He blinked.
It was the first word she had spoken in two days.
"Why?" he asked carefully.
She looked up at him, and something ancient passed behind her eyes.
"Because it remembers me."
The arch pulsed once—soft light blooming along the runes like a heartbeat.
Then it opened.
Not physically, not with stone shifting or moss parting.
But in the mind.
Kael saw it.
A road of ash.
A storm of wings.
A name spoken in reverse.
He staggered, blinking hard.
Liora stood unharmed.
The path beyond the arch wound through ruins swallowed by the marsh—buildings twisted into impossible angles, doorways that faced nothing, staircases that led upward into the ground. Echoes whispered between the stones.
Kael didn't want to go.
But he followed her.
Because she was the only truth he had left.
They moved through the drowned city for hours, navigating fragments of memory made real. Once, Kael saw his old cabin in the distance—intact, with smoke rising from the chimney—but when he ran toward it, it melted into reeds and fog.
Liora saw things too. She didn't speak of them, but her eyes stayed wide and wet, and sometimes she stopped to whisper names into the air.
None of them were hers.
Not the name he gave her.
Not any he recognized.
At the city's heart stood a tower.
Not ancient, but waiting.
Black stone spiraled upward, cracked with veins of silver that pulsed like veins. Its top was shrouded in stormclouds that didn't move.
As they approached, the ground trembled.
And the voice returned.
Low.
Unreal.
"You walk the path of echoes, child of no line."
Kael froze.
Liora stepped forward.
Her small hands clenched.
The voice did not speak again.
But a single symbol burned into the earth before the tower.
Kael stared at it.
An eye.
Crowned in flame.
He didn't recognize it.
But Liora did.
She traced it with her finger, then whispered, "They used to call me Brightfall."
The name echoed strangely.
Like it had weight.
Like it remembered being spoken before.
Kael knelt beside her. "What do you mean?"
She looked at him, and—for a moment—he saw something behind her gaze that wasn't her.
Then it passed.
"I don't remember everything," she said. "But the stars used to sing."
They didn't enter the tower.
Not yet.
The mist thickened again, pulling the ruins from view, and the tower faded into shadow.
But the mark remained.
The path behind them was gone.
And ahead lay only one road.
As night fell over the marsh, Kael made camp near a half-sunken bridge. The fire refused to light until Liora placed one of her stone spirals beside the kindling.
Then it caught instantly.
He said nothing.
But his thoughts swirled like the mist.
She had a name.
She had power.
And someone—or something—wanted her back.
He stared into the fire as Liora slept.
He had promised himself he'd protect her.
Even if the world tried to burn for it.
Far across the continent, in the halls of the Aetherglass Conclave, a warlock awoke from a vision of falling stars.
He scratched a symbol into the ice before him—an eye, crowned in flame.
And whispered, "The Brightfall stirs."