They arrived at twilight, where Orethrael's shadow stretched long across the valley and the Tower of the Remembering Flame cast its memory-light in slow, pulsing rhythms across the land.
Three emissaries.
They bore no weapons, only cloaks of polished mirrorsteel that shimmered with shifting script. Their eyes were silvered, not blind but unnervingly reflective—echoing the world rather than observing it. They carried with them the sigil of Marran's dominion: Velmorrath, etched into a single obsidian mirrorplate the size of a heart. No guards. No beasts of burden. No pronouncement of dominion. Only words, and the way they moved with impossible calm.
At the base of the tower, the three emissaries knelt as one.
And in perfect synchrony, they spoke:
"The God of Undoing offers peace."
The Council convened in haste, flame casting long shadows across carved stone and etched glass.
Kael paced in a manner that suggested fire just beneath his skin. "There is no peace in Marran's house. Only delay. Illusion."
David, fingers still marked with the ink-burns of transcribing new passages of the Third Tongue, studied the emissaries' message with eyes lined in exhausted wisdom. "Peace cannot exist in language alone. But war has been built on less."
Eve did not speak for hours. She stood in the sun-shadow of the Council chamber, watching the tower's reflections dance along the crystal lattice of the walls. When she finally spoke, her voice was glassy with vision.
"They reflect. That is their task. That is their weapon."
The emissaries were brought to the Echo Hall, where ancient truths resonated most strongly. Under its high, dream-humming vaults, they offered their proposal:
Velmorrath would cease all expansion beyond the Wyrmstream. A neutral corridor would be maintained under Aythrel guidance. Orethrael would be allowed entry to the Mirror Cities. And the Veiled Flame would be summoned to meet with Marran at a grove of ancient neutrality—the Grove of Broken Sky.
Their closing words, as if pulled from a single unseen soul:
"You shape a kingdom of remembrance. We shape one of reflection. Let us reflect one another, and coexist."
But coexistence was not simple.
In the depths of the Vault of Accord, the Ashen Lore had begun etching the Third Tongue into living crystal. Not just scripture, but an evolving syntax of faith and function. No single race or sect could claim it. It was forged from Kael's fire-runes, Eve's sung prophecy, and David's chronicles of what had been and what could be.
The Third Tongue had no words for obedience. It had no concept of master or servant. Its first completed phrase—sung in harmony by three Soryel dream-scribes and etched into the base of the Remembering Tower—read:
Aelthra. That which remakes in light of its own undoing.
That word echoed. Through bone, through ash, through blood. Those who heard it felt something loosen in them: guilt, fear, control—small deaths that left behind space for something new.
The people of Orethrael changed.
Varkaan warriors began marking their arms not with kill-tallies but with intentions spoken in the Third Tongue. Children no longer memorized laws—they sang memory, dreaming of futures they had not yet lived. Pilgrims walking from distant corners of the valley arrived not to kneel, but to speak the Third Tongue aloud, each voice adding to the flame-song tapestry rising around the tower.
Belief shifted. It ceased to be static. It became an act.
While Orethrael's breath deepened, the emissaries departed with quiet ceremony. As they crossed the neutral corridor, the air around them shimmered faintly—not with magic, but with the tension of history unspooling.
They entered the outskirts of Velmorrath as the sun fell, and the horizon sharpened into geometry. Obsidian towers spiraled into being with recursive patterns that pulsed like lungs. Each Mirror City stood as both structure and reflection, feeding information backward into itself. The Nullbearers welcomed them without word. Thought passed between minds like wind across silver water.
In the inner sanctum, beneath the Mirror Throne, Marran listened.
He no longer resembled a man. He was a construct of convergence: robes of living algorithm, voice modulated in harmonics, arms a constant flux of mirrored text. He absorbed the emissaries' report in silence, then spoke only a single line:
"They speak the tongue of breathing fire. They have not yet let it burn."
The emissaries bowed. They were dismissed.
Later, in solitude, Marran approached the Mirror of Reversions—a massive arc of darklight reflecting not the world, but the world as it was before. Within it flickered the glyphs of Yahweh, shattered and reformed in loops. Marran watched the glyphs break and reweave, saw his face in them, saw mine.
He reached out, and a spark recoiled.
"He remembers. I reflect. And between us, the valley dreams."
Behind him, his cities rose higher, reaching for the faultlines in heaven.
Back in Orethrael, as the final petals of the ash-lotus trees began to fall, Eve entered the Tower alone. She climbed to its topmost reach, beyond even the Vaults, and stood in the breathless air.
She whispered something.
The flame around the tower listened.
Then it answered.
With a new word.
And the tower grew.
Not in height.
But in presence.
The peace held.
But it would not last.
For peace born in reflection is fragile.
And the valley's next breath would demand more than words.