The sky over the Western Reaches burned.
Not with fire — but with silence. A dead, reddish hue had settled across the land, as though the sun was bleeding behind the clouds. Wind carried the scent of ash. Trees stood blackened, their leaves long since fallen. Magic didn't flow here.
It screamed.
Elara stood at the edge of a ruined village, her boots crunching over scorched bones and shattered stone. There was no one left. No survivors. No life.
Only a name carved into the earth in blood:
"Welcome home, Seer."
---
Smoke in the Mirror
Mira knelt by one of the ruined walls, running her fingers over the charred symbols etched into the stone. "These weren't caused by normal flame."
"No," Elara said grimly. "This was soulfire."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Only two kinds of beings can wield that. Highborn Watchers… or creatures beyond the veil."
Elara's voice was tight. "Then Theren has made his pact."
Mira turned. "But with what?"
Liora stepped forward holding a shard of blackened glass. "I found this in the center of town. It's a mirror shard. Old magic. Binding-type."
Elara touched it.
She saw herself — not as she was, but as she could become.
Crowned in bone.
Eyes hollow with power.
And behind her, in the smoke… something stirred.
---
The Shadow Prince
That night, they made camp by a silverwood tree that had somehow survived the fire. As Mira tended the ward spells, Kael sat beside Elara, watching her watch the stars.
"You've changed," he said quietly.
She didn't answer.
"You saw something in Serenhal. More than just Theren's plan."
"I saw him," she whispered. "The one guiding Theren. A creature that doesn't belong to any plane. Older than the veil. Older than death."
Kael looked into her eyes. "And you've met him before, haven't you?"
She nodded.
"In dreams. In reflections. In the space between moments. He calls himself Nocthros."
Kael frowned. "The name isn't in any Archive."
"Because it was erased," Elara said. "By the one who built the veil."
---
A Message in Blood
Before dawn, they were awoken by a sharp hum.
Liora was the first to react, sword drawn, pointing toward a tree nearby — one that hadn't been there before.
It wasn't a tree.
It was a statue.
And carved into its chest were three words, fresh and gleaming red:
"THE SEER BLEEDS."
Mira gasped. "That wasn't there last night."
Kael drew his blade. "He's playing with us."
"No," Elara whispered. "He's watching."
Suddenly, the statue cracked open — and a twisted creature fell out, crawling on too many limbs. It had no face, only a jagged maw and claws wrapped in rusted chains.
The team moved fast.
Liora slashed its legs. Mira burned it back. Kael moved for the heart — but it didn't have one.
Only Elara, eyes glowing with raw energy, raised her hand and spoke a word that hadn't been uttered in a thousand years.
The creature collapsed in silence.
Dust.
Nothing more.
---
When Blood Dreams
Later that night, Elara opened the Third Marker again.
She saw Theren — kneeling in a chamber of bone and whispers. Before him stood a throne.
Empty.
But watching.
Then a voice echoed across the vision:
"She remembers too much."
"She was always meant to."
"Then she must be broken."
Theren nodded. And behind him, the veiled figure of Nocthros emerged.
Elara woke with a gasp, bleeding from her nose.
Kael caught her. "What did you see?"
"They're moving for the fifth marker," she whispered. "And they're not hiding anymore."
---
What Lies Beneath
The next morning, they found an old map among the ruins — showing the location of an underground temple beneath the Cinderglass Mountains. The Fifth Marker.
But the map also had a note.
Not written in ink, but in Elara's own handwriting.
Only… she had never written it.
It said:
> "Don't go there. You'll lose him. Again."
She stared at it, fingers trembling.
"Lose who?" Mira asked.
Elara didn't answer.
Because deep inside, a buried memory cracked open — of another time, another life, another battle… and Kael bleeding out in her arms.
From before she was reborn.
---
The Truth Beneath Their Feet
As the group prepared to leave, Elara took a final look at the ashes of the village. There was something she hadn't told the others:
This place wasn't just the site of a massacre.
It was the last place she had lived before her soul was sealed into the veil.
She knelt and placed her hand on the blackened earth.
"Mother," she whispered. "I remember now."
A wind blew through the ashes.
And somewhere far away… Nocthros smiled.