The fire was wrong.
It burned too blue at the edges, its heart a seething violet, its smoke coiling in spirals that stank of burnt hair and old parchment. Yren had built it with things that should never be kindling—a lock of hair bound in silver wire, a shard of glass from a Frostwell cell, a single page torn from a book that had no title.
The boy sat cross-legged in the snow, his breath frosting the air, his Ghost Sigil pulsing in time with the flames. Two years in the wastes had hollowed his cheeks and sharpened his silence into something lethal. He watched as Yren pressed her marked hand—the Kas-Nur sigil a twisted brand of ochre and black—into the fire's core.
The flames did not burn her.
They remembered.
—A vision unfolded—
A battlefield under a screaming sky. A younger Yren, barely fourteen, her braids matted with blood, her spear splintered in her grip. Her brother lay at her feet, his throat slit ear to ear by a soldier wearing the Sigil of Pride—a golden lion with emerald eyes. The killer smirked as he wiped his blade on her brother's tunic. Yren's scream was soundless, her rage a living thing, her Kas-Nur sigil igniting as she lunged—
The fire hissed, spitting the memory outward. The snow around them melted in the exact shape of her brother's corpse, the steam rising in the ghostly echo of his final breath.
Yren withdrew her hand, unburned.
"Kas-Nur," she said, voice gravel. "The Ash That Remembers. My sigil lets me burn a moment… and relive it. Once."
The boy stared at the fading impression. The snow where the vision had bled was now stained rust-red, as if the memory itself had left scars on the earth.
"Why would you want to?" he asked.
Yren's milky eye twitched. "Because some things shouldn't be forgotten."
She tossed him a sliver of petrified wood—Kasveth-Ra's memory-wood, harvested from trees that grew where warriors fell. "Your turn."
I don't want to remember.
But I reach into the fire anyway.
The heat doesn't bite—it whispers.
"Show me," it murmurs in Veresh, the words slithering up my wrist like serpents made of smoke. "Show me what you fear."
I think of Serah.
Not her smile. Not the way she left half her bread on the bench for me. Not even the ribbon, frayed and sun-bleached, still knotted around my wrist.
I think of the moment they took her.
The Grey Hearth's dining hall, silent as a tomb. The other orphans staring at their bowls, pretending not to see. Serah, two desks away, her fingers trembling around her spoon. Then the door crashing open. The Seers in their ash-gray robes, their faces hidden behind silver masks. Serah's breath hitching as they gripped her arms. Her eyes—wide but unafraid—flicking to the snow outside the window. A silent farewell. The way her lips shaped my name without sound as they dragged her away -
The fire SCREAMS.
My skin blisters. The flames turn black, lashing like serpents, the heat searing my bones. The Ghost Sigil on my palm ruptures, gold bleeding into the firelight, the spiral twisting unnaturally.
Yren lunges, yanking me back by the collar.
Where my knees pressed into the snow, a frozen tableau has formed—a perfect, miniature recreation of Serah's abduction, rendered in ice and shadow. The Seers' silver masks gleam dully. Serah's tiny figure strains against their grip. Even the snow outside the window falls in suspended motion.
"You didn't just remember," Yren breathes, her voice uncharacteristically shaken. "You anchored it."
I clutch my burned hand to my chest. The pain is nothing compared to the hollow ache behind my ribs.
"Can I undo it?"
Yren stares at the frozen memory. "No. This isn't Kas-Nur. This is something older."
That night, the boy opened the bone-bound book.
New words festered on the page, the ink still wet, glistening like fresh blood:
"Memory is a knife. Turn it inward, and you bleed. Turn it outward, and the world does."
Yren watched from across the fire, sharpening her blade with deliberate slowness. The whetstone's screech set his teeth on edge.
"That book isn't just recording history," she said. "It's rewriting it."
The boy traced the Veresh script. The ink squirmed, rearranging under his fingertips:
"Aelin walks the unwritten paths."
A name.
His fingers burned.
A drop of blood fell onto the page. The letters dissolved, reforming into a map—a jagged coastline, a tower half-sunk in a frozen sea, a single word etched where the waves broke:
"Thren-Vaern."
Yren's whetstone stilled. "That's not a place. It's a title."
"What does it mean?"
"Hollow Thread."
The fire guttered. Somewhere in the dark, something cracked—like ice underfoot. Or a sigil snapping.
At dawn, they found the footprints.
Not human. Not animal.
Perfect circles, burned into the snow in pairs, leading to the edge of camp.
Yren knelt, pressing her palm to one. The ash stuck to her skin, whispering:
"Velk eln solmir." (The hollow sees you.)
The boy's Ghost Sigil pulsed.
—A flicker of movement—
A figure stood between the trees.
Tall. Thin. Wrapped in a cloak of stitched silence, its edges fraying into the wind. No face. Just a smooth, porcelain mask—etched with a sigil he didn't recognize.
"Don't move," Yren hissed.
The figure tilted its head.
Then vanished, leaving behind a single item:
A crimson thread, tied in a knot identical to Serah's ribbon.