The boy who had once been the First Flame slept for two days and two nights.
During that time, Haven held its breath.
Sera watched over him, refusing rest. She sat at the edge of the infirmary's sun-dappled alcove, the Book of Embers in her lap, though it no longer spoke. Its pages had gone dark. Not black—simply… still. As though the story had paused, waiting to see what would be written next.
He murmured in his sleep. Not words, but fragments of things lost—old names, snatches of songs, one particular line whispered over and over: "I am not the fire—I was the wick."
Lucian came by twice each day. He never entered. He just looked at her through the curtain and left without speaking.
On the third morning, the boy woke.
His eyes opened slowly, gold flecks dimming like fading embers. He blinked against the brightness of the window, then turned his head and looked at Sera.
"You should have let me burn."
Sera didn't flinch. "You were already burning. Alone. Forgotten. That's worse."
He sat up, spine rigid. His voice, though calm, trembled at the edges. "You don't understand. The thing that comes after me… it doesn't test. It consumes."
"We know," Sera replied. "We've seen its breath in the Reverie. Felt its weight in the weave."
"It doesn't come from the dream," he said. "Or the waking. It comes from the between."
That word sent a chill through her bones.
The Between. The space that wasn't space. The crack that formed when dream and reality overlapped imperfectly. Not even the Reverie's worst shades ventured there willingly.
"No map has ever shown it," he said. "No name survives its touch."
"Then how do you know?" she asked.
"Because once," he whispered, "I tried to seal it. And failed."
He looked at her now, fully alert, gaze heavy with memory. "There was another city before Haven. Before the first war. Built of stone and glass and silence. We called it Ullareth. It stood at the seam of reality and Reverie. I was one of the six Dreamkeepers sworn to hold the Between back."
Sera leaned forward. "What happened?"
"We grew proud," he said simply. "And proud minds mistake warning for prophecy."
He turned his hands upward. Scars crisscrossed his palms—so old they looked etched in bone.
"The Between doesn't shatter cities. It erases them. As if they were never born. Ullareth is gone. Not ruined. Forgotten. But I remember, because I was caught halfway inside when the sealing broke. The fire kept me anchored, barely. But I lost the others."
Sera's throat tightened. "And now it's returning."
"It never left," he said. "It's just waking up."
✦
That night, they summoned the council.
The sky above Haven was eerily still. The wind refused to move. Even the river below the cliffs whispered too softly, as if sound itself had grown cautious.
The boy stood at Sera's side as she spoke.
"We know what's coming. We've felt it pressing against the veil. We can't face it with steel. We can't dream it away. It doesn't fear war—it feeds on memory, on silence, on the cracks between belief."
Lucian's arms were crossed. "So what, then? We let it swallow us?"
"No," the boy said, his voice clearer now. "You go to it."
The room erupted.
"You can't mean—"
"Madness—"
"We have children in Haven, we can't—"
"LISTEN," Sera said sharply, and the council fell quiet.
"We send a small group. Into the Between. Not to fight it—but to anchor us here. If it forgets us, we vanish. If we hold to who we are—every scar, every story, every name—we might buy the time Haven needs."
Lucian's eyes locked with hers. "And who do we send to do the impossible?"
Sera turned to the boy. "He goes. And I go with him."
Lucian's jaw clenched. "You're all that holds this place together."
"Then I better make sure we're remembered," she said.
A long silence followed.
Then, slowly, Lucian nodded. "I'll hold the wall. No matter what bleeds through."
Elyan stepped forward next. "And I'll guide you to the threshold. But once you cross—I can't follow."
Sera offered her hand. "Thank you."
Elyan took it with solemn grace. "Bring back a world."
✦
The path to the Between could not be walked.
It had to be forgotten.
At dusk the next day, Sera and the boy stood on a cliff outside Haven. The place was called Greyglass Reach—no longer used, since the war. It overlooked nothing. Just sky. Just wind. The edge of things.
Elyan began the Rite of Unbinding.
One by one, memories were peeled from them—not destroyed, but tucked away in sigil stones they wore around their necks. Names. Faces. Even the sound of Haven's bells. If they brought too much of the world with them, the Between would notice and erase it.
"You will feel like you are unraveling," Elyan warned. "You must hold onto your core. Not what you've done. Who you are."
"I know who I am," Sera said. "I'm the echo of every voice that refused to forget."
The boy touched her shoulder. "Then you may survive this."
Elyan drew a final circle around them. "Now—step forward."
They did.
And the world disappeared.
✦
There was no light in the Between.
Not darkness, either.
Just... absence.
The rules of form dissolved. Sera felt herself stretched, folded, made thin. Her breath was thought. Her skin, memory. The sigil stone around her neck pulsed slowly—a heartbeat in a place that didn't know what hearts were.
She felt the boy beside her, though she could not see him.
"We must find the Anchor," his voice came, "before we're forgotten."
Shapes drifted in the void. Shadows of lives unlived. Possibilities that had died unborn. One reached for her—her mother's face, twisted with regret. Another—Lucian, holding a broken blade.
Lies, she thought. These aren't memories. They're traps.
The Between was not empty. It was hungry.
And it fed on uncertainty.
She clenched her fists and whispered her truth aloud: "My name is Seraphine. I remember the fire. I remember Haven. I remember hope."
Each word sparked like flint in the dark.
Beside her, the boy cried out, "There! I see it—the Anchor!"
She turned—no longer floating, but falling. Toward a light. Faint. Steady. A single stone platform held in place by golden threads of memory.
They landed hard.
The void shrieked in rage.
The boy fell to his knees. "They're coming."
Sera stepped forward and placed her palm on the Anchor.
The light surged.
From it, echoes began to spill—names, stories, moments. A tapestry of Haven, unspooling through her blood.
She wept as she gave herself to it.
To remember, so that others would not be forgotten