The fire had long gone out, but its scent clung to the folds of Alric's cloak as the three of them sat beneath the knotted willows. Dawn had not yet broken, but the black had begun to give way to indigo, and the forest held its breath, caught between night's stillness and the stirrings of day.
Konrad wrapped Joren's body in a shroud of rough canvas. His expression didn't shift, but his hands lingered on the knot. Alric watched him, eyes heavy not just with grief but calculation.
"He died too clean," Alric said.
Konrad raised a brow. "Clean?"
"Silent blade. No stumble, no scream. He never had a chance. Whoever did it knew us."
Konrad's mouth flattened. "Or knew him."
They shared a glance. There were no more words.
By midday, they reached the edge of the Starfall Basin — a deep scar in the land where smoke drifted up from beneath the earth, as if the realm was slowly exhaling its ancient grief. The trees here were leafless, charred husks reaching toward the sky like pleading hands.
Maela joined them as the mist curled through the ruins. She wore a thick grey cloak clasped with an onyx brooch and her dark hair was bound in a braid wrapped around her neck like a rope. Her expression was unreadable.
"You're late," Konrad said.
"You're lucky I came at all. The Circle watches everyone now. Even ghosts."
Alric studied her face. "You found something."
She nodded once and pulled out a shard of obsidian, veined with faint red light.
"This came from beneath the altar. It's not just stone. It hums — with memory, with intent."
"And you brought it here?" Konrad asked, warily.
"We need answers. And I think this basin remembers more than we do."
They descended together.
The path was narrow, winding down into fog and ash. Bones littered the ground — not fresh, but recent enough that the smell hadn't left. No beasts stirred, no birds called. Only the slow creak of their boots in the scorched soil.
At the basin's heart stood a broken monolith, half-buried in soot. Its surface bore faint carvings in the old tongue, worn down by time and fire. Maela ran her fingers across the symbols.
ma"Here," she whispered. "This is where it broke. The sky. The law. The line between what was and what was meant to be."
Alric crouched beside her. "This was a gate."
"A door," she corrected. "To something older than kings."
Konrad said nothing. He was looking at the shadows — not the ones cast by sun, but the ones that moved on their own.
"We should go," he muttered. "Now."
But Maela placed the shard into the hollow of the monolith.
And the ground shuddered.
Light bled from the stone, red and violet and silver, casting their faces in ghostfire. Wind howled from nowhere, and above them, the clouds began to spiral.
Then — a voice.
Not from the sky, not from the stone.
From within.
"Ash does not forget. Ash remembers the shape of betrayal."
They staggered back. The voice was many — male, female, young, old — and it spoke not in words but in the ache of old wounds.
Alric drew his sword, though it felt absurd. "What are you?"
The monolith cracked. Light spilled like blood.
"I am the shard left unclaimed. I am the oath broken in flame. I am the face you turn away from in every mirror."
The light exploded.
Then nothing.
Dark.
When they woke, hours — or perhaps only seconds — had passed.
Maela was pale. Konrad bled from one ear. Alric's hand was burned where he'd touched the stone. They looked at each other with new wariness.
"It showed me a city," Maela whispered. "Not of this world. A place before names. And a man with no eyes, only mirrors."
Alric nodded slowly. "It showed me a throne made of bones. And me — sitting on it."
Konrad's voice was barely audible. "It showed me nothing. Just... a name. Yours."
Alric stared. "Mine?"
He nodded. "Whispered like a curse. Or a prayer."
They camped that night in the ruins of what might once have been a watchtower, long swallowed by the earth. There was no fire — the ground still pulsed faintly, and none of them wished to tempt it.
Maela sat alone, pressing the shard to her forehead. Alric cleaned his blade. Konrad didn't sleep.
Far above, something moved in the sky — vast, winged, silent.
In the capital of Ebron, a new decree was read aloud in the Hall of Veilstone:
"All bearers of forbidden symbols shall be named traitors to the Crown and burned beneath the Judgment Tree."
The noblewoman in violet — Lady Vael — listened in silence. Then she turned to her Whisperer.
"Send riders to the basin. If they still breathe, I want their tongues. If not — their bones."
By morning, Alric and the others had begun their climb out of the basin. But the land had changed.
Paths were not where they'd been.
The bones they had stepped over now pointed skyward.
And the sky bled light in unnatural shades.