"Ash speaks to the stars."
Where once the stones would sing —
now the wind is silent.
Memory burned in the dark,
smolders like a betrayed dawn.
Who calls us through the ages?
Who breaks through time?
It is the voice of ash and silence —
the one that remembers us.
Night had not yet released the earth when the group crossed the borders of the Northern Pass.
Dawn was stuck in the grey, silent air — even the birds held their songs.
Magic seemed drained — not entirely gone, but stretched thin, like a thread about to snap.
Tarion walked ahead like a ghost.
His face was shut off.
His eyes — empty.
His thoughts — torn by memories that were not his own, but now lived within him as if they were.
"I saw the world burn. I saw Resonance devour souls… and my father burn within it."
Gret followed in silence, but every step he took echoed like defiance.
He had always been hard to break — but after what he saw at the nexus — the shadow of a brother who died in a forgotten war, the renouncement, the fear — he now walked not from calm, but from exhaustion.
"Tarion…" Laina's voice came softly from behind, nearly like a prayer.
"You haven't said a word since then."
"What is there to say?" he replied without turning.
"The world speaks for itself."
She swallowed the tears that rose without warning.
The vision she endured in the Temple of Mirror Memory had shown her mother… as a traitor.
Not the woman she remembered — but one who had once sealed spirits into foreign bodies to preserve so-called "peace."
"Have I been deceived all my life?" she asked herself. "Was I a daughter of light… or a tool of darkness?"
Lian walked last.
He spoke little after the visions.
He claimed there had been no revelation — at least, that's what he said.
But someone once overheard him mumble in sleep:
"Kael… I didn't mean to…"
Yet by dawn, he was once again composed, distantly collected as always.
Only his eyes had changed — deeper, darker.
A river flowed in them now, and something ancient had drowned within it.
A wind swept over the rising dawn.
All five of them halted at the edge of the height.
Before them, in the distance, gaped the ruins of Val'Kharas — a city that once sang with magic, now groaning with ash.
Tarion inhaled deeply.
"We don't go there for power. We go for the truth," he said at last.
"And if it breaks us?" Laina asked.
"Then it breaks us. But at least it will be ours..." He turned to them. "Our choice. Not someone else's legacy."
And they descended into the scorched hollow.
The Ruins of Val'Kharas
The city of the dead breathed.
The air was heavy, saturated with dust, ozone, and something else — old magic that refused to die.
In the narrow alleys between shattered towers and scattered frescoes, soft cracklings echoed — as if the stone itself still argued with time.
Once, Val'Kharas had been a jewel of balance:
here, ley lines converged, temples were raised for the spirits, and each night lights rose to the sky in thanks to Resonance.
Now, everything had burned.
The streets, once paved in white stone, were blackened.
The domes of the temples lay broken like the skulls of giants.
Arches hovered above them, upheld only by oaths of the past.
"There's still a trace of energy here," the young shamaness said, stopping under a collapsed gallery.
Her fingers touched a fragment of an ancient sign — it responded with a warm pulse, like a memory refusing to die.
The main character looked up at the sky — grey, like a faded scroll.
And again he felt it: a blend of reverence and dread.
This city remembers.
"Val'Kharas didn't simply fall," Gret murmured, gazing at a fresco where the symbol of Resonance had been crossed out by a black mark.
"Someone made it go silent."
"There should have been a Sphere of Purification here," Lian said.
His voice was barely present, like a shadow.
"An artifact able to align the soul with Resonance. If it survived, we must find it."
"Even among ashes," Tarion added.
Suddenly, danger stirred the air.
It was as if the very heart of magic flinched.
From a dark gap between ruined obelisks, an arrow shot out — black as ash, soaked in curse.
It hissed into the ground near Gret — and exploded into a dark sphere, pulling in light, warping space.
"Get to cover!" Laina shouted — but it was already too late.
Roma Lazar, [22.06.2025 17:38]
From the shadows — as if torn from the very foundation of the world — emerged Eriks Weigart.
His figure stood straight, compressed by fury.
Dim light barely grazed the edges of his black cloak, torn like memory.
His face was sharp, scarred by experience.
His eyes — silver, like wounds that never heal.
"You are the heirs of tyranny," he said.
His voice was deep, dry — like ash in the wind.
He didn't wait. He struck the earth.
A leap — almost silent — and he was already beside Tarion. But between them stood Gret.
The force of the blow was like a storm's sweep.
The man's shield trembled, then split in two, shattering with sparks.
Gret was thrown back, his breastplate smoking.
Tarion rushed forward, sword in hand.
"Who are you?!" he shouted, dodging a lightning-fast strike that cracked the air.
"The one you will call a traitor," Eriks whispered. "But I call myself free."
With a sharp hiss, as if the air itself tore, Eriks activated his technique — dark signals around his blade began to pulse in a rhythm opposite to Resonance.
Anti-Resonance.
Magic broke.
Every strike Tarion made drowned in distortion.
His fire fizzled, his lightning chains unraveled in the air.
He tried to harness Resonance — but everything crumbled, as if the world itself turned away.
"Why did you attack us?!" Tarion cried, breathless, his face covered in sweat and ash.
"For the truth. And the end of your legacy," Eriks replied.
He extended a shard of black stone — and the young heir's magic dimmed.
The true name of the stone was unknown, but its essence was clear: to break. To take.
Tarion tried again — but Eriks stopped his lightning with a bare hand.
"I know who you are," he whispered. "Tarion Bayden. Son of Oren."
His face contorted — like someone swallowing blood.
"I know what your father did at the end of the Great War. I watched as he became a silent tool of the Resonance..."
"Don't you dare—" Tarion began, but Eriks halted him with a single step.
"Oren was evil... with good intentions. Just like you are now."
The battle continued — not just in movement, but in meaning.
Each step of the mysterious mage shattered the structure of space around him.
The lines of Resonance cracked like strings cast into shadow.
He didn't fight to win — he fought to break.
Tarion tried to summon a barrier — a thin dome of blue light wrapped around him —
but Eriks pierced it with his blade as easily as slicing through cobwebs.
The blow sent the boy flying backward, sliding against a charred wall.
His back burned, his hands trembled, lips clenched in pain.
"You are all pieces of a great lie," Weigart rasped, standing among them, soaked in sweat, blood seeping from a gash on his forehead.
Gret, drenched in sweat, barely stayed upright.
Laina shielded him, channeling the last remnants of magic into a weakening barrier.
Lian... remained silent.
His gaze followed Eriks — and something faintly shimmered within.
A knowledge too deep.
"Resonance is not a gift," Eriks said.
"It's a covenant of death that keeps the world in chains.
And I'm the one who will break it."
And with those words — he vanished.
Leaving behind no trace, no portal, no energy — only the aftertaste of something vast and painful, like blood still fresh on a blade.
The air thickened — as if it finally allowed breath again.
Silence fell so swiftly that even the whisper of wind felt foreign.
Laina was bandaging Gret's shoulder — he was wheezing but trying to smile.
"That... was a serious guest," he whispered, tearing at the soaked bandage.
"He seems like an enemy," she replied, "one who knows too much."
"Or someone who's tired of staying silent," added Lian, his eyes still fixed on the place where Eriks had vanished.
Tarion didn't want to speak.
He stood among the ruins, his dust-covered face frozen, lips tightly pressed.
Something inside him cracked — not from pain or fear, but from doubt.
What if Eriks is right…?
His hand clenched the talisman — a shard of Resonant stone still vibrating from the battle.
But not with power… with fracture.
What once felt absolute — now had a crack.
Behind them — the charred city.
Ahead — truths more painful than any blade.
Val'Kharas remained silent.
But in that silence now echoed a story — not only of a ruined city, but of the ruin of trust.
After the battle, there were no words for a long time.
Only breath, the scent of scorched magic — and the sound of wind stirring ash among the ruins.
Gret sat against a wall, his shoulder bandaged.
But his gaze wasn't on the wound — it drifted into the distance, toward where Eriks had disappeared.
"Do you also think he's our enemy?" asked Laina, inspecting the broken fragments of a sword still steaming with residual Resonance.
"Or just a reflection of what we might have become?..."
"Both," Lian said quietly.
His eyes shone with involuntary sorrow.
"An enemy is always the shadow of our choices."
Tarion sat at the center of the arch from which Eriks had just emerged.
The marks of battle still clung to the stones.
But his thoughts were elsewhere.
His voice — as if speaking inward:
"I knew we would face shadows of the past.
But I didn't think those shadows would carry so much truth."
He stood and unrolled a fragment of the map — glowing with pale light, pointing further east.
"There was no Sphere in Val'Kharas. Only a warning... and another sign."
Laina stepped closer, holding her palm over her talisman.
It dimmed — but did not go out.
Its heart beat in rhythm with the heart of the land.
"We haven't reached the end yet. But... maybe we've reached the truth. At least its beginning."
Lian exhaled. Quietly. Almost imperceptibly.
And for the first time in a long while, even he couldn't hold back the question:
"If Resonance isn't a gift... but a curse...
then what are we looking for?"
Tarion didn't answer immediately.
Only when the wind grew stronger and lifted a scrap of cloth from the ruins — bearing the faded symbol of one of the ancient Keepers — did he finally say:
"We're searching for choice."
He opened the map — and a small crystal plate fell from it, engraved with a mark.
It looked like a fragment of a broken key.
Everyone froze.
"What is it?" Laina asked.
"The next node," Tarion whispered.
And then — in the distance, through fog and ash — came again the hoarse, fractured voice of Eriks, fading into the air:
"You are not ready... But the truth doesn't wait."
And then — silence.
And the sand within the cracks of the stone kept whispering the names
of those who still had choices to make.
End of the First Arc.