The valley no longer breathed.
Nael stood amid the cracked earth, his fingers coated in salt and light. The wind was gone. The sky had gone still.
And Seriah's echo still clung to his bones.
He had not moved since she vanished in fire.
Not because he couldn't.
But because the world had shifted.
The tombs had quieted. But not because the danger had passed.
No.
Because the world was holding its breath.
Then—footsteps.
Not divine. Not from below.
Real. Human.
Nael turned.
From beyond the rim of the valley came a procession.
Figures cloaked in pale ash-wool, faces covered in cracked bone masks, walking slowly—deliberately—carrying staffs crowned with burned symbols of the Old Faith.
There were seven of them.
Each walked in silence, their steps rhythm-bound, synchronized like a ritual long practiced. They did not look at Nael. They knew where he stood.
He recognized them not by name, but by scent.
Salt. Smoke. Earth.
They were Ash Walkers—wandering keepers of the half-forgotten rites. Followers not of the gods, but of their graves.
The first one stopped a few paces away.
A woman's voice, dry like parchment:
"We felt the seal rupture."
Nael gave no answer.
Another voice followed. Male, deeper:
"The heart bled. The light rose. The flame spoke."
A third voice, childlike:
"And you listened."
Nael finally moved. Slowly. Eyes narrowing.
"Why are you here?"
The eldest of the seven stepped forward, removing his mask. His skin was wrinkled and scorched, marked by years spent in sunless lands.
He looked directly at Nael.
"To escort you."
"To where?" Nael asked, though he already felt the answer in his blood.
"To the next tomb."
"There are hundreds."
"Not like this one."
The sky rumbled.
A low, aching sound, like thunder dragged across broken bones.
The elder raised a hand toward the horizon.
And there, beyond the dust, rose a shape.
A mountain. No—a temple forged into the side of a cliff.
Cracked. Crumbling. Wrapped in iron chains and divine vines turned to stone.
Nael's heart skipped.
"I buried no one there," he whispered.
The woman replied:
"That's because you couldn't."
The child:
"Because he was not dead."
Nael's breath turned cold.
"Who?"
All seven replied in one voice.
"The God of Stone."
Something stirred in Nael's memories.
Heavy breath. Broken teeth. A roar beneath the world.
He remembered now: the one god whose tomb he could never seal. The one who fell not in fire, but in silence.
The god who still turned beneath the earth.
And he had begun to wake.
"You expect me to bind him now?" Nael asked.
The elder shook his head.
"No. We expect you to remember."
A chill passed through the windless air.
And the seventh Walker—the smallest—stepped forward and offered Nael a bundle wrapped in silk the color of stormlight.
Nael unwrapped it carefully.
Inside: a mask.
Carved from obsidian and bone.
Marked with his name.
"You must not go as a man," the child said.
"But as what you were."
"The Gravekeeper?" Nael asked.
The child looked up.
"No."
"As the Last Witness."
Nael held the mask in his hands.
It was heavier than bone.
Heavier than guilt.
As he turned it in his palms, faint symbols beneath the surface shimmered—runes that moved like living scars, shifting shapes no mortal eye should recall.
One word pulsed behind them all: "Eidmun."
Not his name.
Not quite.
But close enough to bleed.
The Ash Walkers formed a circle around him, speaking no words.
They did not chant. They did not burn incense. They simply stood—as they had for generations—guarding the moment when a man became a memory.
Nael raised the mask slowly. His fingers trembled, not from fear…
…but from recognition.
He had worn this mask once before.
Long ago. Before he buried the gods. Before Seriah wept fire.
Before his name became salt on the lips of time.
He slid the mask over his face.
And the world changed.
He did not see the temple anymore.
He remembered it.
Its black stone was carved from the bones of the First Titan. Its heart was hollow and echoing, a chamber that swallowed prayers and vomited silence.
He had been here before.
Not as Nael.
But as the Last Witness.
He had stood beneath the altar when the God of Stone knelt—not to pray, but to die.
And he had watched. Not intervened.
That had been the law.
A Witness does not act.
He remembers.
The wind returned.
And with it, came the weight of stone.
The earth beneath them cracked—not violently, but with deep reverence, like a door unlocking after centuries of stillness.
The Ash Walkers bowed low, their staffs pressed to the ground.
From beneath the horizon, the temple stirred.
A groan.
A breath.
Nael's vision blurred, and for a moment, he saw him again:
A giant of stone and root, bound by grief, chained by time.
A god with eyes like meteors, and a mouth that never forgave.
"Eidmun," the god had said.
"Will you forget me?"
Nael dropped to one knee.
The memory was not just in his mind. It was in the stone. In the dust. In the wind itself.
He whispered:
"I never forgot."
And the earth answered:
"Then remember again."
Nael rose.
The temple loomed before him now, closer than it had been, as if the world had folded around his path.
He stepped forward.
The Ash Walkers remained behind.
Their task was complete.
The pilgrimage had begun.
But the truth was still buried beneath the stones.
And only the Witness could uncover it.
Nael crossed the boundary.
No gate. No walls. No guards.
Only a line in the dust.
The moment his foot touched the ancient path, the silence shifted.
The sky dimmed.
And somewhere beneath the world, something exhaled.
The temple loomed above, carved directly into the mountain's face like a wound that had never healed.
The stone was darker here—veined with silver threads that pulsed faintly with memory.
Chains wrapped the entryway, not to lock out intruders…
…but to keep the inside from leaving.
Nael approached the threshold.
Every step was harder than the last.
Not because of gravity.
But because the temple remembered him.
The runes along the entrance flared as he drew near.
They did not burn.
They shivered.
"You return," whispered the stone.
"But not as a god. Not yet."
Nael pressed his palm against the cold surface.
It didn't reject him.
But it didn't welcome him either.
He whispered the name etched into his mask:
"Eidmun."
The chains unraveled, one by one. Not clanging—sighing, as if tired of holding the world together.
The gate split open.
And Nael stepped inside.
The interior was not a hall, but a void.
There was no floor. No ceiling. Only light. And stone suspended in it, like bones in a stillborn womb.
In the center floated a statue.
But it was breathing.
Ten meters tall. Built of obsidian, wrapped in living roots.
Its face had been carved with great care—and then shattered by hands in mourning.
Nael knelt before it.
"I watched you die," he whispered.
"I remember your silence."
"But I do not know your name."
A pulse answered him.
From within the statue.
From within the roots.
From within himself.
"You once spoke it," said a voice—not in words, but in stone, in pressure, in ache.
The air grew heavy.
The statue cracked.
And from inside it, a heart of stone began to beat.
Nael stood, his hand over his own chest.
His pulse was matching it.
Beat.
Beat.
Beat.
Faster now.
The room began to shift, revealing visions burned into the temple walls:
A god falling into the sea.
A man kneeling beside him, unable to act.
A blade made of grief, plunged into the ground.
And a door—circular, old, watching.
The statue opened its mouth.
Dust fell from its lips.
And one word echoed across the temple:
"Why did you watch?"
Nael could not answer.
Because he knew the truth.
He hadn't only watched.
He had let it happen.
The statue wept molten stone.
And as Nael approached it, ready to remember what he had buried in the name of peace, the temple whispered:
"Memory is a blade."
"And you are no longer holding the hilt."